[imurray]

Autograders are a mixed blessing. At my University some of our courses have autograders, and I think they can be great. There is a compiler course where the main goal is to create a compiler that has a specific set of measurable features. Encoding those features in a test-rig and making it available seems appropriate.

I deliberately don't use Autograders for my assignments though. I want students to be able to figure out for themselves whether to be satisfied with an answer, and work out how to test it. And I suspect many employers want the same. If a student asks me "is that right", I try to remember not to tell them, but to ask questions that will help them figure it out for themselves. Similarly, providing a test-rig that answers whether a piece of code is right is sometimes inappropriate.

[The_Hoff]

I totally get that, and leading a class in a way that prepares them for the 'real world' is awesome. The examples I'm thinking of involve occasions such as when I used a package (NumPy) for matrix multiplication instead of writing my own function to perform the task. I didn't think matrix multiplication was the main learning objective of the assignment and was counted off for failing to demonstrate how to code that. I guess my original comment doesn't really make sense in this [ranting] context though because mine probably would have still satisfied an autograder. I digress...