   Homework questions, why are they taboo?
  Hi,I've read a couple posts from students asking homework questions. I am wondering why the general trend here is to not answer those questions.The point of an homework is to do research. I consider that asking a question on a game development forum, *is* research. And they will get an explication for the answer too. And maybe useful links :)I mean, most of my research have been done by asking questions on gamedev, and I got provide links and such that helped me a lot learning everything I know today. It wasn't part of my school, but I consider this similar.Just wondering,cheers.[Edited by - Ravuya on February 8, 2010 11:17:23 AM]
  In some cultures it's considered tabu cause it's assumed that the kid asking the question is naked and masturbating. Everybody knows that most gamedev members are 60 years old pedophiles, so it actually makes sense to forbid these kind of immoral acts.I'm a dolphin.   ;  I think one of the main reasons is to discourage them posting here first, looking for an easy answer, instead of trying to work it out on their own.   ;Quote:Original post by DaivukHi,I've read a couple posts from students asking homework questions. I am wondering why the general trend here is to not answer those questions.It's because the tone of the questions are often along the lines of wanting the easy answer outright, instead of asking for help understanding something.Often times, the question is along the lines of asking for a code handout to copy down, so they don't have to read a lesson.;  Asking for help is (usually) fine, asking for the answer directly isn't.   ;  The rule is primarily aimed at those who would try and get GameDevvers to do their homework for them, thus saving themselves the bother of actually having to think and/or learn something. It should be fairly obvious why this is frowned upon.Asking for help with research is slightly different from just asking to be spoonfed answers, and is generally fine. However, whether it's for homework or not, it's always worth trying to do that research yourself first, or you'll just get a lot of links to lmgtfy.   ;  Thanks for your replies.I like to mentor students sometime, but I really want them to *understand* the problem. But I guess that is part of having the passion or not. If you don't care about understanding it, and you just want the code. You will pretty much be a failure in the domain anyway.   ;  Posting a homework assignment verbatim with plz hlp!!!!!!!!! isn't productive.Most homework questions can be answered completely in about 3 lines of code, and for coders the temptation to just post the answer is too big. An interesting side effect is that most answers are incorrect (double check the comments). Since the topic is so trivial, most will just skim it without consideration.Homework is meant for each individual to arrive at solution. A good homework question is: "where can I learn more about ADTs, especially lists". "My Linked List doesn't work" is not a good question.And biggest part of homework is doing it yourself. There are 1,523,113 linked list implementations out there - that is not the point. Just like most of people had to apply Pythagoras equation twenty times, it is "doing it yourself" that matters. /wiki doesn't teach anything, even though it has the, more often than not, complete and correct answer.Also - how did everyone do their homework before internet?   ;Quote:Original post by AntheusAlso - how did everyone do their homework before internet?I never did it (the homework), not before and certainly not after teh intarwebs.At some point in the future, solving problems mentally is going to be a thing of the past. Just like doing math by hand. The good thing is that the transition from mankind_ruling_the_world to machines_ruling_the_world will be almost painless.   ;Quote:Original post by AntheusPosting a homework assignment verbatim with plz hlp!!!!!!!!! isn't productive.Most homework questions can be answered completely in about 3 lines of code, and for coders the temptation to just post the answer is too big. An interesting side effect is that most answers are incorrect (double check the comments). Since the topic is so trivial, most will just skim it without consideration.Quote:If you can successfully write a loop that goes from 1 to 10 in every language on your resume, can do simple arithmetic without a calculator, and can use recursion to solve a real problem, you're already ahead of the pack!this makes me feel even worse that I don't have a job yet! :'(From experience at my school, I'm dumbfounded at how little programmers can program around me. There's probably 20 people in my whole program who I'd really trust to be able to understand code.For example, I was trying to help someone with a file copy program we had to write in C for a class, and it took me probably 5 minutes to get him to use printf and scanf correctly. I don't even want to touch on the horror stories some of the SIs have told me about.I think the ill feelings towards homework questions comes from the fact that most of the questions are "how do I solve this...?" instead of "I have this code, and I'm getting X error, but I don't know what it means...?" It's incredibly lazy to ask questions before you've even made a file that will have the source code in it.