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by slashvar2701 2911 days ago
Where I was teaching, we've started doing code review in classroom in basically the same spirit.

The amount of students prevents us from real selection, instead we take exercises which failed tests (and that are not empty) and explain what was wrong, identify common mistakes or bad style and try to make it correct.

We had a very good feedback on this. And we saw an evolution in students' code. It was way better than trying to do collection of bad practice ...
1 comments
ziotom78 2911 days ago
This is some very good advice! I am teaching a C++ class and am struggling with the quality of the code my students are producing. Their programs output the correct answer, yet the style is really lacking. Periodic code reviews of some selected problems would be extremely useful, thank you for the tip!
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ryandrake 2911 days ago
> I am teaching a C++ class and am struggling with the quality of the code my students are producing. Their programs output the correct answer, yet the style is really lacking.

I remember trying to help fellow students with their C and C++ assignments back in undergrad, and reading some of their code I got the distinct feeling that most of it was “random-walked” code. Like they tried writing things that looked like C, making random, iterative changes until it compiled. Then once it compiled, made random, iterative changes until the output approached what the expected output would be. Sometimes the functionality ended up right, but with bizarre stuff like: unused variables all over the place, variables assigned then reassigned without using the first value, uses of pointer indirection that look like the student kept adding or removing asterisks until it didn’t crash, elaborate class hierarchies that went unused, etc. It’s like the Infinite Monkeys Eventually Producing Shakespeare thing but with programming assignments.

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ziotom78 2911 days ago
Yes, that's exactly my own experience. Moreover, we are forced to use ROOT [1] to compute histograms and create graphics: its weird use of OOP makes the students think that they have to use classes even to implement simple functions (e.g., printing a list of values).

[1] https://root.cern.ch/

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trentnelson 2910 days ago
> uses of pointer indirection that look like the student kept adding or removing asterisks until it didn’t crash

Oh c'mon, that's practically a right of passage when learning C or C++ for the first time, especially if you're new to programming as a whole :-)

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