Are people getting dumber?
Or are the dumb ones just getting louder?
As you know, I’ve been more active online lately. I like to peruse SO as well as here.
And it is a non-stop barrage of people asking how to do things like:
“How do I properly convert a do-while loop to a for-loop?”
“Program is supposed to take "Oct 15 2021" string and return an array of integers such as "101521"”
Honestly, if you can’t figure this out, I don’t think a career in CS is for you.
I mean, I understand newbie problems like “MSVS can’t find CL.exe when I try to run the code”, but even on SO people are starting to do the same thing we get here all the time: people just post their homework prompt without even bothering to pretend to ask for help with what they’ve tried. They just want someone to do their homework for them.
To cheat. Losers.
Earlier today someone started a new thread on SO for an existing topic, I complained at him, he said “it was easier” to do it that way.
Really?
Why would I ever trust you near my software?
But it isn’t up to me.
Looooseeeeers.
As you know, I’ve been more active online lately. I like to peruse SO as well as here.
And it is a non-stop barrage of people asking how to do things like:
“How do I properly convert a do-while loop to a for-loop?”
“Program is supposed to take "Oct 15 2021" string and return an array of integers such as "101521"”
Honestly, if you can’t figure this out, I don’t think a career in CS is for you.
I mean, I understand newbie problems like “MSVS can’t find CL.exe when I try to run the code”, but even on SO people are starting to do the same thing we get here all the time: people just post their homework prompt without even bothering to pretend to ask for help with what they’ve tried. They just want someone to do their homework for them.
To cheat. Losers.
Earlier today someone started a new thread on SO for an existing topic, I complained at him, he said “it was easier” to do it that way.
Really?
Why would I ever trust you near my software?
But it isn’t up to me.
Looooseeeeers.
I fell your pain, all too much.....
What annoys me with all the demands for us to do the work for free is the over-powering stench of entitlement. They simply expect us to do it for free. Because....
And if we don't they get all huffy and have a stampy-foot trantrum.
What annoys me with all the demands for us to do the work for free is the over-powering stench of entitlement. They simply expect us to do it for free. Because....
And if we don't they get all huffy and have a stampy-foot trantrum.
| people just post their homework prompt without even bothering to pretend to ask for help with what they’ve tried. They just want someone to do their homework for them. To cheat. Losers. |
Remote teaching makes it a whole lot easier to cheat, no one is paying attention to the thieves. All the teacher/instructor/professor/TA cares about is the assignment was done. Who cares about plagiarism. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!
| Are people getting dumber? |
I don't think we are even close to Peak Stupid.
Idiocracy should be just a movie, not a how-to manual.
you see more of the bad than the good. The smart people did figure out these easy things, and either come here to ask a smart question (we do get some!) where they tried but can't quite put it together or struggle through it. By nature, a forum attracts more of the folks that won't try to figure it out. That is a small part of the answer.
a lot of colleges have auto graders now, on par with code contest sites. The teachers give minimal instruction and throw unprepared kids at a unix box that provides no feedback. I just helped my BIL through a set of classes at an 'elite' (has the reputation, but the quality is worse than a community college) school where they had an autograder that about 10% of the time marked things wrong that were right; I had to teach him to back-hack it so it would tell him what it was doing so he could give the wrong answer to get his points. The teachers tried but could not fix the bugs fast enough. They also didn't teach (a given at that school) so he had to learn it on his own while fighting the system while cut off from peers (covid) and so on. So the environment -- not an excuse -- is a lot worse than it used to be too.
I would not want to be taking classes in computer science today. That does not excuse people that don't even try at all, but I do see where someone less than excellent would have a very hard time of it all.
a lot of colleges have auto graders now, on par with code contest sites. The teachers give minimal instruction and throw unprepared kids at a unix box that provides no feedback. I just helped my BIL through a set of classes at an 'elite' (has the reputation, but the quality is worse than a community college) school where they had an autograder that about 10% of the time marked things wrong that were right; I had to teach him to back-hack it so it would tell him what it was doing so he could give the wrong answer to get his points. The teachers tried but could not fix the bugs fast enough. They also didn't teach (a given at that school) so he had to learn it on his own while fighting the system while cut off from peers (covid) and so on. So the environment -- not an excuse -- is a lot worse than it used to be too.
I would not want to be taking classes in computer science today. That does not excuse people that don't even try at all, but I do see where someone less than excellent would have a very hard time of it all.
I think we have a lot of traffic generators here. The motivation is not have a site where there is a very low traffic count because that is bad for business. These posters are not real people, or its a very small number of people with lots of accounts. So we get any kind of post that will engender replies, including abusive ones.
Examples are:
* "I am a beginner, I have no idea how to do this" ;
* Terrible code of any kind ;
* Not taking notice of any advice given, nor mentioning any appreciation ;
* Not asking a smart question, us finding out the actual problem 20 posts later ;
* Typical XY problem ;
* #include bits/stdc++.h I mean, who teaches that? Will get a comment for sure ;
* Wanting to be spoon fed answers over 4 or 5 pages of posts.
I agree with jonnin, there were questions I had to ask in order to learn, but hopefully I asked reasonable questions.
One of the main ideas for SO is to not have repetition of the questions asked, but we have here a lot. I remember when I first became a member here, the bulk of my first 1000 posts were answers to questions about Tic Tac Toe code. I unwittingly answered them, so they posted more & more Topics about that, and I kept answering.
Perhaps the main reason I am still here is to hear from those members who really know their stuff, I have learnt a lot from them over the years. If I was to be a super devils advocate (and bite the hand that feeds) I could speculate that some of the expert members may also be traffic generators - but obviously that is nowhere near being a bad thing. I could be totally wrong with that.
For anyone to do well these days, it would pay to start early (like age 10), so then one has a few years under their belt before getting to class, or University.
Examples are:
* "I am a beginner, I have no idea how to do this" ;
* Terrible code of any kind ;
* Not taking notice of any advice given, nor mentioning any appreciation ;
* Not asking a smart question, us finding out the actual problem 20 posts later ;
* Typical XY problem ;
* #include bits/stdc++.h I mean, who teaches that? Will get a comment for sure ;
* Wanting to be spoon fed answers over 4 or 5 pages of posts.
I agree with jonnin, there were questions I had to ask in order to learn, but hopefully I asked reasonable questions.
One of the main ideas for SO is to not have repetition of the questions asked, but we have here a lot. I remember when I first became a member here, the bulk of my first 1000 posts were answers to questions about Tic Tac Toe code. I unwittingly answered them, so they posted more & more Topics about that, and I kept answering.
Perhaps the main reason I am still here is to hear from those members who really know their stuff, I have learnt a lot from them over the years. If I was to be a super devils advocate (and bite the hand that feeds) I could speculate that some of the expert members may also be traffic generators - but obviously that is nowhere near being a bad thing. I could be totally wrong with that.
For anyone to do well these days, it would pay to start early (like age 10), so then one has a few years under their belt before getting to class, or University.
| Or are the dumb ones just getting louder? |
just getting more lazy.... During school they have probably been spoon-fed the answers to possible exam questions - which themselves lead the sitter by the nose through the questions.
Then they get to programming and suddenly they have to start to think and do some actual work and learn things and ... They don't like it. They just want the answers given as they are used to.
I blame stupid education systems that force people to 'do well' in subjects that they have no interest in just to keep an average up.
I had a friend who was trying to become an Math teacher, so they made her take a CS class. It was the CS class required for CS majors - a weeder class! Didn't make sense, especially since there's an easier CS class that is specifically for non-majors.
But really, I've seen the assignments people get in even the higher up CS classes which SHOULD be difficult but are really easy. Somehow I got stuck with the garbage 3 star programming professors for some of those classes, but most professors actually give out really easy assignments...
And then people who know me from university's online server come asking me for help on the most basic things. "How do I access this variable in the class?" I'm always honest, tell them to program on their own time otherwise they'll fail.
But really, I've seen the assignments people get in even the higher up CS classes which SHOULD be difficult but are really easy. Somehow I got stuck with the garbage 3 star programming professors for some of those classes, but most professors actually give out really easy assignments...
And then people who know me from university's online server come asking me for help on the most basic things. "How do I access this variable in the class?" I'm always honest, tell them to program on their own time otherwise they'll fail.
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to be fair, CS students are usually forced to take weed out math classes even if not useful to their job (the short few years I spent in IT .. the most advanced math I used was high school level)
| Are people getting dumber? |
I mean, I know I am. But to address your question directly: I remember that when I was more active, it was always a moderate lift to push people toward the jobs section. Anyone here who still recognizes my screen-name knows that I am an unabashed capitalist; and if you pay someone to do your work, the product of that work is yours. This is codified in US law. The ask of "Do this work for me" doesn't bother me. However the ask of "Do this work for me for free" is anathema.
| Furry Guy wrote: |
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| What annoys me with all the demands for us to do the work for free is the over-powering stench of entitlement. They simply expect us to do it for free. Because.... |
Because one time, someone felt sorry for one of these dimwits and decided to help him out, and then everyone else jumped on the bandwagon and started demanding that you
| Furry Guy wrote: |
|---|
| Remote teaching makes it a whole lot easier to cheat, no one is paying attention to the thieves. All the teacher/instructor/professor/TA cares about is the assignment was done. Who cares about plagiarism. |
My son had that exact experience with college last year. Online exams are super easy to cheat on, even if the teacher uses an exam remote proctor, like Proctorio, which was what his biology teacher used. He did a test by borrowing my laptop and bringing up some online cheatsheet stuff, and then opening the exam on our desktop. Easier than pissing in the shower.
They're getting better at it, but even if they have super-secure exams, you can always just cheat off the paper textbook, if you have one. Teachers probably just assume (ass-u-me) that kids would rather use the online version of the book because they're too lazy to try and find it in the textbook.
Last spring– spring 2020– my son was taking an intro C++ class, and it had weekly Zoom lectures on Monday and Wednesday. Early in the quarter, he accidentally logged in on Tuesday, and discovered that the CS teacher was using the same Zoom meeting for a Java class as well! So he got to learn Java basically for free, and nobody even noticed.
He didn't have the assignments, though, but he was able to find a free online Java course and got an A+.
They're getting more secure now, Zoom meetings have ID's, and passwords, and authentication, and security, security, security.
Not everyone demands free work, it is a very militantly obnoxious minority. Even asking politely for code they get all huffy. Claiming they did the work. So why not show us the work?
First time I ask nicely. After that I tend to be a bit stern.
Or I ignore them.
Most new people show the code they've tried to write, after being asked once. They are ones I don't mind helping as long as they continue to make the effort to do the work themselves with a bit of help and a nudge in the right direction.
An annoying sub-group are the few who beg for help, include code, and then ignore the advice given.
First time I ask nicely. After that I tend to be a bit stern.
Or I ignore them.
Most new people show the code they've tried to write, after being asked once. They are ones I don't mind helping as long as they continue to make the effort to do the work themselves with a bit of help and a nudge in the right direction.
An annoying sub-group are the few who beg for help, include code, and then ignore the advice given.
that is why I offer very little working code to people.
at one time, long ago, I did put up code but I often made it convoluted enough to scream "I got help" if they tried to turn it in as-is, so they at least had to rewrite it or clean it up which requires at least a half understanding of it. I still do that once in a while, that draw a tree problem was too tempting.
at one time, long ago, I did put up code but I often made it convoluted enough to scream "I got help" if they tried to turn it in as-is, so they at least had to rewrite it or clean it up which requires at least a half understanding of it. I still do that once in a while, that draw a tree problem was too tempting.
I am similar in what I do, generally rewriting what code was written so they can understand the changes/additions I made.
And I do understand that certain problems are programmer's cat nip. :Þ
And I do understand that certain problems are programmer's cat nip. :Þ
Just to re-assert what I said earlier: these are not real people IMO, someone is being paid to generate traffic. They purposely write any kind of crap code to get replies.
The difficult part is trying to determine who might be a real person.
The difficult part is trying to determine who might be a real person.