print("x") is you want to screw your students.
I think this is a good question and answer in the sense that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the student - exactly what you hope an exam would do! (Except for how this seems to combine javascript’s .length and python’s print statement - maybe there is a language like this though - or ‘print’ was a javascript function defined elsewhere).
This reminds me once of when I was a TA in a computer science course in the computer lab. Students were working on a “connect 4” game - drop a token in a column, try to connect 4. A student asked me, while writing the drop function, if he would have to write code to ensure that the token “fell” to bottom of the board, or if the computer would understand what it was trying to do. Excellent question! Because the question connects to a huge misunderstanding that the answer has a chance to correct.
Teaching complete “clean slates” is a great way to re-evaluate your understanding.
I’ve had to teach a few apprentices and while they were perfectly reasonable and bright people, they had absolutely no idea, how computers worked internally. It’s really hard to put yourself in the shoes of such persons if it’s been too long since you were at this point of ignorance.
It’s obviously:
Traceback (most recent call last): File “./main.py”, line 2, in <module> AttributeError: ‘str’ object has no attribute ‘length’
Are they using a red pen to write the checkmarks for correct answers to make it confusing but logical at least?
Grading in red is generally avoided, nowadays. Red is closely associated with failure/danger/bad, and feedback should generally be constructive to help students learn and grow.
I usually like to grade in a bright colour that students are unlikely to pick: purple, green, pink, orange, or maybe light blue (if most students are working in pencil). Brown is poo. Black and dark blue are too common. Yellow is illegible. Red is aggressive.
Anyway, I’m guessing they just graded everything in green. The only time I’ve ever graded in more than one colour was when I needed to subgrade different categories of grades, like thinking/communication/knowledge/application. In that case, choosing a consistent colour for each category makes it easier to score.
Is it wrong that I’m stuck trying to figure out what language this is?
Trying to figure out what string.length and print(var) exist in a single language… Not Java, not C# (I’m pretty sure its .Length, not length), certainly not C, C++ or Python, Pascal, Schme or Haskell or Javascript or PHP.
I’m very much guessing that this is just supposed to be a type of pseudocode given the context and vagueness of it.
It’s a big reason why I really dont like pseudocode as instruction to people learning the basics of what programming is. It made more sense 20 years ago when programming languages were on a whole a lot more esoteric and less plain text, but now with simple languages like Python there’s simply little reason to not just write Python code or whatever.
I took an intro to programming class in College and the single thing I got dinged on the most is “incorrect pseudocode”, which was either too formal and close to real code or too casual and close to plain English.
It’s not a great system. We really need to get rid of it as a practice
I mean once you get beyond bash-like scripts python is esoteric as fuck, adding oop to what is essentially a shell is a terrible idea
That said, there’s plenty of languages with good syntax that is still good when you get into more complex stuff (modern C#, scala, kotlin and more)
