I think this is a good question and answer in the sense that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the student - exactly what you hope an exam would do! (Except for how this seems to combine javascript's .length and python's print statement - maybe there is a language like this though - or 'print' was a javascript function defined elsewhere).

This reminds me once of when I was a TA in a computer science course in the computer lab. Students were working on a "connect 4" game - drop a token in a column, try to connect 4. A student asked me, while writing the drop function, if he would have to write code to ensure that the token "fell" to bottom of the board, or if the computer would understand what it was trying to do. Excellent question! Because the question connects to a huge misunderstanding that the answer has a chance to correct.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 51 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Teaching complete "clean slates" is a great way to re-evaluate your understanding.

I've had to teach a few apprentices and while they were perfectly reasonable and bright people, they had absolutely no idea, how computers worked internally. It's really hard to put yourself in the shoes of such persons if it's been too long since you were at this point of ignorance.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I forget which one, but one of my flight instructor textbooks said "to teach is to learn twice." And BOY HOWDY is that accurate.

You will find no better teacher of expert aeronautics than a brand new student. They will show you a new perspective, every single time.

[–] abbadon420@lemm.ee 6 points 8 months ago

Second this. I'm a teacher aid and I get to fix student's code for students who are not technically inclined. It's so much fun and I've learned so much McGuivering all that shitty mess together.

[–] MrRazamataz@lemmy.razbot.xyz 29 points 8 months ago

For reference the "language" used in the exam would probably be Exam Reference Language (OCR exam board specifically, which I believe this question is from) which is just fancier pseudocode.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

To add on to exam reference languages, this is valid ruby