zlacker

>>jstrie+(OP)
> As a result, solutions using strings are disallowed on problem sets and quizzes until they are taught. However, the few students who have prior Python programming experience may be tempted to find digit length without loops using a variant of the following (for our purposes) invalid solution.

Wow. this is one of the reasons I hated school. No programmatic reason what given for why a string solution couldnt be used, only an arbitrary reason. Here students may have knowledge from self teaching or whatever, but they are unallowed to use that knowledge because "reasons".

To any teacher that thinks its a good idea to punish students for thinking outside the box: shame on you. All youre going to end up doing is crushing enthusiasm and/or creating drones. Please dont.

>>svnpen+Jm
There is also the issue that they may not know that the thing isn't "taught" yet because they don't know its a "thing".

I once got points taken off for using a recursive function as part of my solution. I didn't know the language before, nor did I have much experience with recursive functions as a formal concept.

I didn't even know at that time that recursive functions were a special thing that had to be taught to me.