A handwritten programming exam

Well...yes, I am in an exam now, but that's not going to stop me from posting. Don't worry, I have studied what I need to.

For someone who is studying computers, it is actually normal for them to be tested on programming - I mean, most of the times, it is in the course. During my secondary school days, I was taught Visual Basic (that sucks, trust me, don't learn it) which was part of the curriculum for ICT in SPM. In the foundation days, we study C programming, and now in first year degree, it's also C programming. What all these things have in common? Well, they take a written programming exam. Handwritten.

Memes deserve sources too

And most of us does not like it. Like, who the hell writes software with pen and pencil?

To be honest, I hoped that everything about programming allows us to use a computer. It's not because I could cheat - I don't think I need to, anyway - it's because most of the times a text editor just stimulates the mind to code. Even Notepad will do. Meanwhile...looking at pen and paper, things get tricky. Most of the times we code without really planning things (it's either does-not-compile-then-fix or sees-something-wrong-then-fix-before-compile), and it is literally impossible to do that on a piece of paper. Luckily they allowed us to use whatever space provided and only mark the pages with lines and handwritten page numbers on it, so I have a bunch of spare space to do my snippets and see how I should assemble things up. I ended up writing some strange functions and logic that I never tried before (my brain told me that theoretically they will work, but honestly I don't feel like trying to write them out, and I forgot what I have wrote this morning anyway), and some spaghetti, probably. I mean - I still write them on a PC, so it's nothing special to write them on papers anyway...

Someone among my friends said that this is like how people code on the very first computer of the world - using punch cards, punching holes on them, one by one. Well, not far away from that, but the difference is, punching card works, meanwhile handwritten code can't do a thing. It's just not practical enough for most of us.

But hey, let's think the other way round. Alright, I won't lie that I only started to think this way after stumbling upon this and probably this.

Basically like what I said, you are not going to smash random text into the editor, tweak it until it works in a handwritten exam (most of the times it won't work for a coded program in an IDE too, but sometimes it does, ask the programmers if you are unsure about it). You need to plan, and execute your plans correctly. There's no "oh this is a nice addition let's try that" because for most of the times, this is how you set yourself on fire. And obviously, you cannot copy and paste.

If you don't catch it yet, this is how a teacher can evaluate students properly - because the textbook says that you should plan before writing. A developer that I previously worked with also have a glorious wallpaper of "Think twice, code once" on his laptop. Because, well, you aren't going to like the pain of coding things over and over again due to hilarious system designs. Plus, you have to take care of the next developer and not leave a Pacific Ocean of Spaghetti for them. Written exam does that well.

Apart from planning and constructing the logic correctly, you are actually not expected to write something that really compiles - I'm not sure about here, but at least from the links I gave above it seems like that. The full program that I had to write today on that paper worth about 10 marks, and requires 4 features. I guess that you gain marks for every feature correctly implemented, and only deduct minimal marks up to a limit for every syntax error (it was like that in secondary school, so you can happily write a program that does not compile at all but with the correct logic, and still get decent marks for it). You are not going to be tested on things where technology replaced you, you are going to be tested on things that you need to know - syntax is handled by IDEs, programming concept isn't.

Well, I don't feel so bad about handwritten programming exams anymore. Quora is wonderful. Plus, it trains you to have some acceptable handwriting. It's not a must for programmers, but you still need to write things in a readable way. Handwritten documentations are sometimes good, provided you really do documentation.

Now, hold your breath and wait for my rant post on linear algebra exam tomorrow. Probably it's gonna happen, but if it does not, then be glad because things turn out to be good :) I hope so. Good luck to me.

See you next time.

--Lilacse