[Tutor] Help with Code (beginner) Error message

[Magnus Lycka]

At 02:57 2002-11-20 +0100, I wrote:
>At 01:09 2002-11-20 +0000, Gon=E7alo Rodrigues wrote:
>[Quite a lot]
>
>I'm not sure exactly how we should treat this, but I do think
>that school assignments should be done by the students, not by
>the mailing list. ...

I realized that this mail of mine might be seen as an
attack on Gon=E7alo and I just want to make clear this
this wasn't at all my intent.

I do think we have a problem with school assignments,
ranging all the way from direct attempts at cheating in
some cases, to completely open questions like this from
David who honestly stated that this was his schoolwork.

I don't think we really help students to learn if we solve
their problems for them, and I certainly don't think we
should help spoiling our own profession by helping people
to get grades they don't deserve.

I don't know how many times I've done this without being
aware of it... (I guess the python teachers should follow
both c.l.py and tutor to see how "creative" their students
are...)

I think the right solution is to point people to tutorials
like Danny did, or to explain general concepts that the
student doesn't seem to grasp. But not modifying their own
code to show this.

It seems to me that scopes is a tricky issue for many people,
and I haven't seen so many tutorials that really clarifies
this well. I think some people might also have been confused
by the implicit this pointers of some other languages...
(There are even some people (mislead by the poor design of
other languages I'd like to say) who see the explicit use of
self as a wart in Python. They need to "import this" more often.)



--=20
Magnus Lycka, Thinkware AB
Alvans vag 99, SE-907 50 UMEA, SWEDEN
phone: int+46 70 582 80 65, fax: int+46 70 612 80 65
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