[nicbou]

Wouldn't len(str(num)) be adequate here? This is a quite literal translation of what the code should be doing: measuring the length of the text representation of a number. The mathematical approach seems a little convoluted, although it serves the purpose of teaching a lesson.

[qwerty1793]

Be careful, doing str(num) requires python to convert the binary representation it has num stored as to a decimal. (C)Python implements a quadratic time change of basis algorithm. This is slow enough that now for very large inputs python will raise "ValueError: Exceeds the limit (4300 digits) for integer string conversion"

[smarklefunf]

assuming python

[bittumenEntity]

At the bottom of the article they mention that this was discouraged because they hadn't covered strings in the course yet

[MrJohz]

And more importantly, because it sidesteps the interesting pedagogy around edge cases and testing that the instructor is interested in.

[vsnf]

The correct solution here is to give credit for the problem to acknowledge genuine clever problem solving, and then offer extra credit for doing it the pedagogical way.

[MrJohz]

There is no correct solution here. A classroom is not a test environment.

The goal is to learn, and the point of the exercises is to teach a specific concept. If a student finds a different way around the problem, that may show that they're already proficient in other skills, but they haven't necessarily learned the concept being taught in this class yet. A good instructor would probably acknowledge the solution, but add extra boundaries to the task to get the student to explore the problem in a way that lets them encounter the testing difficulties discussed here.

It's like smuggling a calculator into a class about mental maths strategies: you'll probably do very well in the final test, but you won't have learned anything!

[_xnmw]

Len() and str() are a loop under the hood.

[emidln]

len() is an O(1) lookup of the stored length on the unicode/bytes object in Python.