[Tutor] python

[Oscar Benjamin]

On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 00:30, Alan Gauld via Tutor <tutor at python.org> wrote:
>
> On 14/06/2020 21:49, DL Neil via Tutor wrote:
> > there are also 'services', often known as "paper mills" or "term paper
> > writing services", which offer to complete academic works - in exchange
> > for money.
>
> I can't pretend to begin to understand the rationale for
> using such a service.

Speaking as someone who teaches introductory programming to
undergraduate Engineering students I've seen this happen and in my
experience it comes more from desperation then calm rational thinking.

> Does such a student expect to get a job after qualifying? If they
> can't even do the near trivial assignments given out in
> school/college how do they expect to do a job in the real
> world with real problems?

Our students after graduating (as Engineers) will go on to do many
different things. Some of them will become professional programmers
and many more will be able to make use of their programming skills but
most will not really do any programming after graduating. We hope they
learned something from the experience of programming even if it
doesn't become a core part of their future career. I can see though
that some students think that programming units are just a hoop that
they might successfully go round rather than jump through.

> Such a service would never have succeeded in my time at school,
> students were in perpetual penury and could never afford to
> employ such a thing! Of course that was before "student loans"
> became a thing... :-/

There is significant variability in the wealth of students. There are
plenty enough who can afford to pay for these kinds of services that
it is clearly a viable business for those offering the services.
Whether it's viable for the customers is a different question:
generally the cases I know of do not lead ultimately to academic
success (i.e. graduation). Unfortunately I can't speak for the cases I
*don't* know of...

--
Oscar