I do believe that JM has snapped.

[mendhak]

I think that's a bad idea. This will lead to the influx of "programming is just a job" people, of which I see many at my work place. The only tendency that homework help will lead to is that they'll keep finding people to help them. Programming is not just about writing code, it's also about thinking and logic and design and everything that (the original) Spock believed in. I don't want more of these people who don't actually like programming in the workplace. They make me uncomfortable. Many of them even have social lives.

[kleinma]

um... ok where is the other part of the conversation that I missed??

EDIT: ahh... first post on second page strikes again

[NickThissen]

I think that's a bad idea. This will lead to the influx of "programming is just a job" people, of which I see many at my work place. The only tendency that homework help will lead to is that they'll keep finding people to help them. Programming is not just about writing code, it's also about thinking and logic and design and everything that (the original) Spock believed in. I don't want more of these people who don't actually like programming in the workplace. They make me uncomfortable. Many of them even have social lives.

Well the idea is that people posting in the homework section are only given hints and tips on how to arrive at their solution, maybe a tiny code sample here and there, but certainly no full examples and solutions. If someone asks how to generate a random number for example, we could point them to the Random class documentation, instead of given the code to do it. Right now, I see loads of people simply replying with the code needed to do something, without any explanation, and I'm pretty certain most people will copy paste that and not look at it twice. If we point them to the right classes and documentation, they get a chance to find out for themselves and learn something.

[techgnome]

How is that any different than what's going on now? There's nothing to stop people from posting the solution in the homework area any more than in the rest of the forums. Actually, what I see happening is that people won't post inthe HW section, knowing that they won't get the answer... they're going to post where they think they will... I've seen a number of C# postings in the VB.NET section, simply because they see the C# forum as dead and think they'll more likely get an answer in VB... then when some one posts something, they reply "well, I was hoping for something in C#" (yeah, you know who you are)...

Having a HW forum wouldn't solve anything.... just create more work for the mods.

Best way to solve this, if it looks like homework, smells like homework or tastes like home work, it probably is... so treat it as such, call the poster out, give them a hint, don't give the code, and let people know that we don't just doll out the code, and that if they at least make an attempt, and come back with SPECIFIC questions/problems, then we'll HELP them work out the solution. If you find some one who just blindly posts the answer w/o so much as an explanation or attempt to provide some guidance, send them a PM and let them know that it's not kosher, and that while not against the rules directly, it does go against the spirit and traditions of VBF to do stuff like that.

-tg