Filching in Class is a Programming Sin
Monday, May 5th, 2008
Before I proceed with this post it should be said that a lot of very high quality programmers have come out of the university system and having a degree doesn’t in any way degrade from anybody’s ability to do their job. But there are other factors which come into play in the university programming paradigm that I feel are sadly deficient. I’ve passed a few units that were extremely hard on a wing and a prayer too, so I know it isn’t easy.
Filching, by the way, is the stealing of code or design artifacts and using them as your own. Its a common university passtime in the grey area between quality and plagiarism. At South by South West there was an entertaining panel on Filching worth listening to as an MP3.
One very bad thing in the university system is that, while it provides an excellent jumping point for the interested, it fails the average with an acceptance of mediocrity at every step of the way. University, after all, should teach students the value of research and at every step enforce the highest quality of code. Instead, it basically works on a set regime - here is problem Olga, now fix. Good fix for pass, very good fix for distinction.
