joshhug

Ah, that's because the "python" is actually just using javascript evals.

} else if (mode === 'python') { if (cmd === 'exit()') { mode = 'sh'; } else { try { // Safe(ish) eval for demo purposes. // In production, never use eval. Use a JS parser library. // Mapping JS math to appear somewhat pythonesque let result = eval(cmd); if (result !== undefined) output(String(result)); } catch (e) { output(`Traceback (most recent call last):\n File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>\n${e.name}: ${e.message}`, true); } }

The part about dad joke square theory got me thinking about this classic scarecrow joke, which feels like an example from some higher order version of square theory:

"Why was the scarecrow given an award?"

"He was out standing in his field."

The fact that a scarecrow's job is to be "out standing in his field", and that excelling at one's job can be phrased as being "outstanding in his field" is an incredible linguistic coincidence.

I had him as a teaching assistant when I was teaching data structures at Princeton back in Fall 2013. Princeton CS has their professors rotate through as TAs every so often through their courses.

That semester, I made a slight mistake on the final exam where I asked students to create an algorithm that could find the second shortest path from s to every other vertex in a graph. I forgot to specify that the second shortest path should be simple (i.e. should not reuse any vertex twice). Having to deal with non-simple paths makes the problem much much harder.

None of the students figured it out in the time available, and I'm sure I would also have been stumped if I had tried to solve the problem. Bob figured it out though. And then I remember he graded all 150 solutions to the problem himself, having as a blast as he went through students attempts at an effectively impossible problem.

I'm curious to hear feedback, especially:

1. Given the limited amount of scarce student time I want to spend on this, do pull requests / GitHub actions tests (provided for them) / code reviews seem like the right team processes to introduce?

2. Each student's work is independent of every other student's. Is there some way to have them working on different pieces of the same problem, or having the students solutions interact in some deeper way than random selection in a lottery? On my first post of this idea, a user named taftster imagined taking inspiration from Factorio in some way, with students each contributing some piece of a large system.

3. Is there a way we could naturally allow pull requests for the contest code or maybe even the README that establishes how to review pull requests? I'm thinking a bit about Fluxx or Nomic here.

I'm curious to hear feedback, especially:

1. Given the limited amount of scarce student time I want to spend on this, do pull requests / GitHub actions tests (provided for them) / code reviews seem like the right team processes to introduce?

2. Each student's work is independent of every other student. Is there some way to have them working on different pieces of the same problem, or having the students solutions interact in some deeper way than random selection in a lottery? A user named taftster imagined taking inspiration from Factorio in some way, with students each contributing some piece of a system. I've so far lacked the creativity to imagine what the API for this might look like for this assessment.

3. Is there a way we could have students make pull requests for the contest code itself? I'm thinking a bit about Fluxx here.