I think you might have misread – Apos said the teacher did not want them to discuss the logic of the program, not of programming in general.
Absolutely. I would hope that my students discuss the course material and try to help each other with understanding of general course concepts.
However, the issue here is whether students are actually discussing solutions (which involves the logic therein) of a specific program to be turned in for a grade.
I would advise telling her this, while at the same time making it clear that you did not discuss actual logic of the program (assuming this is the case).
I would also venture to guess that the primary factor here, assuming that you did not collaborate on solutions, was the bit about one person’s name appearing at the top of the other’s paper, due to the printing from .NET. (Also, are you required to do programming specifically with .NET – i.e. is this part of what the class is about? Or was that a personal choice of development environment? Just curious).
Now you have me extremely curious about the entire assignment, and about your specific case. From your description of “unneccessary functions”, it sounds like the assignment specification may have been flawed. Or, if indeed there were specific functions that were required (and you left them out), there may have been a reason for them that you do not see yet.
Apos and rayray – since you’re both here on the boards… would you be willing to let an independent party (i.e. me) take a look at your code submissions, along with the teacher’s assignment specifications? I’m faculty in CS at Florida State, and I teach mostly programming courses. I’d be glad to give you my opinion of the situation, based on your actual code and your story – and perhaps any further suggestions that arise from it. If interested, drop me an e-mail at:
rmyers@garnet.acns.fsu.edu
(and put SDMB in the title, since that address gets mostly spam).
I’ve seen countless cases involving issues of cheating – anywhere from students copying each other’s code, to stolen tests, to cases where one student obtained a copy of another’s code without knowledge or permission (there have been cases of students lurking by the front desk in public computer labs and grabbing other people’s printouts), to a student posting a link to my assignment specs on a site called rentacoder.com and trying to buy a solution. I’ve probably seen it all.