[plug] qsort

[Colin Muller]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2002 at 10:27:44AM +0800, Leon Blackwell wrote:
> Where do we draw the line between helping people and helping them
> cheat on their studies?

At the point where helping someone to understand changes to providing
them with a ready-made answer?

I think the way that James asked his question exemplifies what is
acceptable, except for one thing: it would have been preferable for
him to mention in the first post that this was for the purpose of
studies. Apart from that, though, he was asking for help in
understanding how something worked, having already tried to understand
it by himself. He did _not_ just present us with a problem and ask us
to solve it.

Perhaps a good way to feel okay about answering this type of question
is to provide responses which enhance understanding, rather than just
giving a one-liner which does the job. (I think that the responses to
James's question did the right thing, for the most part.)

If the student was a friend who came to one of us in person, saying "I
can't get hold of my lecturer and I'm having some real difficulties
getting my head around this question", we'd help, I'm sure, in a way
which best helped them understand the problem, but without simply
telling them "Tick a), that's the answer." I don't think the fact that
the question is asked on a mailing list should make any difference to
that.

And if the student came to use in person saying "Which answer should I
tick," we'd probably discreetly try to convince them that this is not
a good way to learn stuff.

Colin