Re: Making copies of files

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 03:28:15PM +0200, michael-franzese@gmx.com wrote:
> I don't see the problem with whether it is school or work related tasks.
> All this nonsense about school should be eradicated.  Aren't youngsters
> also entitled to learn and ask questions than always relying on some
> useless institution to teach them about technology.

There are two major reasons why we dislike answering homework questions:

1) The student is supposed to be doing this work on their own, so that
   they learn how to do it.  If we simply answer the question for them,
   they don't actually learn whatever it is the assignment is supposed
   to teach them.

2) The assignments *suck*.  They are profoundly bad.  Either the request
   itself is abysmally stupid and unrealistic, or quite often, there
   are artificial restrictions imposed on the student.  "You can't use
   a loop."  Or, "you must use sed".  Things like that.  And anyone with
   any experience looking at the problem and solving it without the
   restrictions would come up with a completely different answer than
   the one the teacher is expecting.

Now, one might argue that in real life, you will get abysmally stupid
requests, and you will have to do them, because that's the nature of
working as a programmer.  Well, that's fair.  But usually you have some
sort of feedback channel, by which you can discuss the request with
your boss/client, and come to a compromise about what makes sense to
implement.

With homework assignments, there is no discussion to be had about the
assignment.  You have to do this stupid thing, in this idiotic way,
or else you fail.  The end result is that the student learns how to
do things poorly.  All the negative stereotypes of shell scripting are
reinforced.  Another generation of terrible script writers is released
into the wild.