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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: if statements
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 04:58:04 GMT
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Date: 2000-11-09T04:58:04+00:00
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In article <3A09456E.D1F1D3A2@bton.ac.uk>,
  John English <je@bton.ac.uk> wrote:
> You misunderstand. The robot embeds submitted assignment
> statements in a test program, runs the result against a set of
> test cases, and checks that the output is correct wrt a
> standard solution. So it would be quite happy with the xor
> solution, too. The reference to the robot being unimpressed is
> merely to do with the fact that I haven't yet managed to
> program a sense of aesthetics into it. If anyone has a
> solution to that, *I'd* be deeply impressed... :-)

OK, yes, I did misunderstand. I thought "deeply unimpressed"
was a code phrase for "completely confused" :-)

I do wonder if we go about things the right way by emphasizing
that the only criterion for a good program is that it works.
I realize that grading programs is a huge pain, but imagine
if we taught people to play the piano, and graded them merely
by using a robot that figured out if they pressed the right
keys :-)

I suppose one could at least introduce SOME notion of
aesthetics, e.g. evaluate layout against precanned style
rules, or evaluate complexity using established metrics.


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