Can post a code but afraid of plagiarism

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2014-01-22, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Do you notice the assumption made? Let me highlight it for you:
>
>    THE WORDS OF OTHERS
>
> The hidden assumption here is that *words are property*, that
> they belong to whomever first publishes them. Having now
> written those few words, nobody else is permitted to use those
> same words in the same order without crediting me. Failure to
> credit me is a sin of the highest order, enough to get you
> kicked out of your university, your name blackened. Unless, of
> course, somebody else wrote those words before me, in which
> case *my ignorance* of that earlier usage does not diminish the
> magnitude of my sin. In that regard, plagiarism is rather like
> patent infringement.

>From The Cemetery Gates, The Smiths:

  You say, "Ere thrice the sun done salutation to to the dawn,"
  and you claim these words as your own. But I've read well and
  I've heard them said one hundred times maybe less maybe more.
  [...]
  You say, "Ere long done do does did;" words which could only be
  your own, and then produce a text from whence it was ripped [...]

When grading essays my wife is far more likely to detect the
first case.

> We do not know how strict the OP's college is about so-called
> plagiarism, whether they only intend to come down on outright
> copying of significant bodies of code, or whether they have a
> tendency to go after trivial borrowing of simple idioms or
> minor duplication of insignificant portions of the program. (If
> I walk a linked list using mynode = mynode.next, and you use
> the same variable names, is that an indication of copying?)
> Without knowing what the OP's college considers plagiarism, how
> can judge the OP's reaction to it?

Obvious copying of another person's program, nearly verbatim, is
most likely to be detected. Well, that and submitting one of the
entrapment-purposed answers that are sometimes made availalbe
here and elsewhere. 

-- 
Neil Cerutti