Timeline for Contrived homework questions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 29, 2014 at 10:03 | comment | added | Christoffer Hammarström | The close reason could be something like "Too specific arbitrary restrictions to be a useful question for others." | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 21:03 | comment | added | Servy |
@PatriciaShanahan That's true if the SO question is <dump of assignment's requirements> how do I do this? If they have a specific problem that is well defined that they came across while implementing their assignment, even if it has seemingly arbitrary restrictions, then that wouldn't apply.
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| Jul 28, 2014 at 20:08 | comment | added | Matt Burland |
@PatriciaShanahan: I'm not suggesting that these question might not be useful exercises for somebody learning programming (although it would be nice to have the instructor come up with a less brain-dead example of using a switch statement). The question is whether they are useful questions to have on SO? and if the limitations aren't likely in real-life should they be removed or otherwise marked to avoid anybody mistaking a good answer to a question with a restriction as being the right answer to the non-restricted question?
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| Jul 28, 2014 at 20:02 | comment | added | Patricia Shanahan | @MattBurland I think these questions are typical of an XY problem, but perhaps in a non-obvious way. The real problem is that the student does not yet know how to program, and the solution is to practice programming, including doing exercises with arbitrary limitations. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 19:24 | comment | added | Matt Burland | @JanDvorak: Two things; first, it's arguable whether that question would be useful or relevant to other people (depending on the obscurity of the 3rd party tool and it's appropriateness for the problem at hand) and second, I feel the level of arbitrariness I'm referring to would be more like "We must use [insert very specific function in arbitrary commercial 3rd party tool]" which, I think, falls into the category of XY problems | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 19:05 | comment | added | John Dvorak | @matt We must use the [insert arbitrary commercial 3rd party tool have]. We have paid [insert arbitrary large sum here] for it and PHB wouldn't like to hear we have wasted money on something we didn't need. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 18:41 | comment | added | user1804599 | +1 I couldn’t agree more. The "too localised" close reason did this well in the past. These days I just use "too broad" instead, since there isn’t really a better option. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 16:51 | comment | added | Matt Burland |
@user3791372: I think there is a difference between business reasons like "you can't use 3rd party libraries because the PHB thinks they are dangerous" and "you must use a switch statement here". I think there is a class of arbitrary restriction that is just out and out arbitrary, but the problem is identifying those cases and that might well make the proposed close reason unworkable.
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| Jul 28, 2014 at 16:38 | comment | added | user3791372 | agree with @Servy, there are often business reasons for restrictions to be imposed that may be seen as limiting to others. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 16:32 | comment | added | Phantômaxx | I'd change your close reason to "Seems like a homework"... ;) | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 16:29 | comment | added | mason | Completely disagree. Arbitrary restrictions exist in the real world and in the academic world. Learning to program is a difficult thing to do, and refusing to help when there's an arbitrary restriction will do a net disservice to the community. Instead, we should try to give them hints at how to proceed without just giving them the entire answer. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 16:00 | comment | added | Servy | This is a bad question, but not because it contains some seemingly arbitrary restrictions, and it's certainly possible for a question to contain restrictions that you feel are arbitrary that can make entirely fine questions. There is no reason at all for this close reason to exist. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 15:59 | comment | added | Matt Burland | I'm leaning towards agreeing that they'd best be closed. Of course, such a reason would also end up being used for questions like "how do I do X without using JQuery". Which isn't quite the same category (I think). But it might prompt them to explain more clearly why they couldn't use it. | |
| Jul 28, 2014 at 15:53 | history | answered | Patricia Shanahan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |