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Geez .... the person can't even ask for some help debugging code that they have ALREADY written ? I don't see what's the problem with helping somebody who is obviously making an attempt to do the work. It's not like they asked to be given the code.

" Geez .... the person can't even ask for some help debugging code that they have ALREADY written ? I don't see what's the problem with helping somebody who is obviously making an attempt to do the work. It's not like they asked to be given the code."

.. and, unless it were trivial, neither would we give him the code solution.

'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life'

If KLL discovers the joys of D.Knuths 'Algorithms and Datastructures' becuse of his post, and then goes on to turn the psudocode to real bash scrips ...then my job is done.

These posts were originally in this thread.

kowrip, Neo makes the rules. I don't agree with all of his rules either. But this one is on the money.

I have taught quite a few programming classes and I tell you that it crucial that I keep myself apprised of exactly what each student is capable of. I never give a student an assignment unless I am sure that the student can handle it. If I'm wrong, I need to know that. If I'm mislead, I will move ahead, leaving the student further behind.

What's more, the ability to locate bugs is one of the most valuable skills that a programmer can possess. If we point out bugs in a student's code, the student will never develop that skill. There are quite a few programmers who never make it there. These forums are full of them. Debugging skills are a separate fish that the student must learn to catch. You are ensuring that debugging is a fish that the student will never know how to catch. That is the harm that you find to be so very invisible.

In my academic experience, professors taught the concepts and very rarely got into the guts of the code. Learning the actual syntax and pitfalls of the specific programming code was the students' duty. Being that I didn't have much guidance in this area, I found it very helpful for somebody to point out an obvious problem in my code. As long as I understood what the mistake was, it was very beneficial to me.

I've also NEVER seen any professor give any sort of lecture or even GUIDANCE on debugging code. If it's such a valuable skill, it should be emphasized more.

kowrip,

The rules are the rules and they are not going to change (about homework problems).

Thanks.

Neo