TITLE: It Pays To Be Specific
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 03, 2011  3:33 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
While grading last month, one of my colleagues sent me a
note:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
A student handed in the last assembly language assignment.
It was very well done.  Very professional.

One tiny problem: it was in IBM PC assembly, not the IBM
mainframe assembly that I have been teaching.

I guess it's always good to be specific when you order
programming online.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

This was funny and sad at the same time.  Much has been made
in the last couple of months of paper-writing for hire, and
we in CS have been talking about the problem of seeking out
solutions on-line, even custom-written programs, for a while
now.  But we seem to be entering a new world of programming
for hire.  It creates pragmatic challenges for instructors
on top of what is already a challenging enough task.
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