Exercises in slides [Spoiler]

[tansaku]

Hi there,  I've just been working through the coding examples in the lecture 4 slides.  At the risk of spoiling things I'd love to know if there are solutions to those coding exercises somewhere?  I've written my own solutions, but wanted to check if my solutions are correct, and if there are alternate formalisms.  

[Solutions removed]

I guess I could create test scripts for all of these, but that's a step further than I want to go right now, particularly if someone has already done the same.

I'd be very interested in discussing the relative merits of different register use etc.

Many thanks in advance
Sam Joseph, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Computer Science
Hawaii Pacific University

[ybakos]

I'd be happy to talk about your solution, but would you mind editing your post to remove the solution from the forum?

[tansaku]

Sure, removed.  Apologies.  I had assumed that exercises in the slides were fair game for sharing the solution.  This does seem to be one of the troubles with online classes, the inability to have a public discussion about one's solutions.

We have the same trouble in the software engineering MOOC on edX that I administrate.  For learning people need to be able to discuss their solutions, but also learning can be hampered if people look at other people's solutions prematurely.

It seems a shame we can't trust individuals not to act in a fashion that maximizes their own learning.  I often think about having some sort of random problem generator that would mean that everyone would get a random set of problems to work on.  In our software engineering MOOC the students are learning ruby, so I fantasize about a simple ruby problem generator that would make random ruby questions.  That might be even easier to do here with the assembly language instructions.

The bigger solution I have for the software engineering MOOC is have everyone work on projects which are each unique of themselves.  Anyways - I got some helpful feedback from another user based on having posted my solution here.  Perhaps there should be a special section of the forum where solutions are allowed to be posted?

[Jeff George]

I'd like to echo Dr. Joseph's suggestion that there be some place that we can find and discuss solutions for the practice exercises presented in the text and lectures. More than once, I've finished reading a chapter and lecture, and found myself not knowing where to start. Math text books have been providing solutions to practice exercises in an appendix for decades, without undermining the instructional effectiveness of the course. I'm certainly not suggesting posting solutions to the actual projects, but I see much more potential benefit than harm in allowing self-learners working in isolation - often at strange hours of the night - to access and discuss solutions to practice problems. These problems can then function as both worked examples to emulate, and self-testing opportunities. As it is, there seems little point in working the practice exercises in the lectures, since I have no timely way to know if my solutions are correct, nearly correct, or way off base.

No one else is going to offer solutions to the practice exercises. If I need to see some worked examples, and they aren't available here, I'm forced to resort to Google...which leads only to complete solutions of the actual projects, which prior users have posted on GitHub or similar websites. I'd much rather be able to see solutions to the practice exercises than to have to look at those.

The only weakness I've sensed in this course is a paucity of worked examples. Examining and analyzing worked examples is one of the most effective strategies employed by self-learners. It's how almost everyone who's taught themselves to code did so. But the policy of not showing solutions to practice exercises cuts off this strategy at the knees. In the long run, I'd respectfully ask the course administrators to reconsider the policy of withholding solutions to practice exercises.

[ybakos]

It's definitely a valid argument, and I can't say I disagree.

With the half the course now available on Coursera, let's see what Schocken and Nisan suggest.

[Jeff George]

Wow, thanks for that considerate response. As I was posting my message, I was fearful that I was going to seen as making unnecessary waves - which was certainly not my intention.

I was aware that the first half of this course is being offered later this spring through Coursera, and I'd love to have been able to participate. I'd much rather be going through this process as part of a cohort, rather than hacking through the jungle on my own. Unfortunately, my window of opportunity to do this work is NOW, not in April and May, so that run on Coursera wasn't an option for me. I have the month of March to complete this course; I'm fortunate to be able to work on it almost full time, but my window closes in four weeks. The downside to this schedule is that when I hit a wall in the course, I'm dead in the water on my main work for the month until I can scrounge up some direction to get myself going again. Practice problems with solutions would really help me get moving again; practice problems without solutions don't help me much at all. It's the same as if there were no test scripts for the Hardware Simulator - I would be able to attempt to design the chips, but I'd have no way to tell if I'd gotten it right.

Hopefully Dr. Schocken and Dr. Nisan will eventually agree that the benefit of allowing access to solutions to the practice exercises far outweighs any accompanying cost, especially for learners who are serious about learning the material - and people like me have no other motivation to take the course, since we are getting no college or professional credit for it.

Thanks again for your kind response, and your help throughout these forums.