zlacker

At the bottom of the article they mention that this was discouraged because they hadn't covered strings in the course yet

>>bittum+(OP)
And more importantly, because it sidesteps the interesting pedagogy around edge cases and testing that the instructor is interested in.

>>MrJohz+l
The correct solution here is to give credit for the problem to acknowledge genuine clever problem solving, and then offer extra credit for doing it the pedagogical way.

>>vsnf+M
There is no correct solution here. A classroom is not a test environment.

The goal is to learn, and the point of the exercises is to teach a specific concept. If a student finds a different way around the problem, that may show that they're already proficient in other skills, but they haven't necessarily learned the concept being taught in this class yet. A good instructor would probably acknowledge the solution, but add extra boundaries to the task to get the student to explore the problem in a way that lets them encounter the testing difficulties discussed here.

It's like smuggling a calculator into a class about mental maths strategies: you'll probably do very well in the final test, but you won't have learned anything!