[coldpie]

I had a professor tell the class, in response to a student's question, that the "0x" in the "0x1" memory address on the slide meant "a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter," like the "x" was a stand-in for some unimportant portion of the memory address that had been elided. I stopped attending that class. That professor was not significantly below the average at my school (University of Minnesota, late 2000s).

Blowing 4 years and a bunch of money at university getting a computer science degree is one of the biggest regrets of my life. Luckily I already had a software job during my 1st year, so those years weren't totally wasted.

[const_cast]

Is it possible he said that because that wasn't the primary purpose of the slide, or the thing you should focus on?

Like, when I was in school we saw a lot of pointers and yeah, 99% of the time the actual memory address was more or less useless. What mattered is it was a pointer and it was over there, and it was part of some struct or whatever. The actual numbers of it's address didn't matter much and would actually change between runs.

I don't know, I see people miss the forest for the trees with this stuff constantly. They don't understand that absolute veracity and education are pretty much orthogonal. As in, your professor isn't trying to just say correct things, they're trying to teach you. And, actually, saying too many correct things makes it harder to teach you.

[coldpie]

That doesn't seem better, I think lying to a student when asked a direct question is a pretty lame thing to do. Especially since the correct answer ("that indicates it's hexadecimal") is not complicated.

[const_cast]

It's not lying IMO, it's prioritization. Because, again, saying more correct stuff doesn't mean you learn better, and it could actually make you learn worse.

[coldpie]

Now the student is going to walk away thinking 0x1234 means 0<unspecified things>1234, in decimal. That's crazy, man. That is not good teaching.

[const_cast]

Personally I don't think it's that big of a deal or evidence of much. Most stuff has to be focused otherwise we lose the plot, that's just how people are. It's the same reason why when you go to the doctor your doctor is going to not mention 90% of the stuff about your condition. It's not necessarily helpful and might actually be harmful.