Secure Coding mailing list archives
Re: [ot] Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault?
From: Pete Shanahan <petesh () indigo ie>
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 22:00:23 +0100
Julie JCH Ryan, D.Sc. wrote: This is a little off topic, but I'm wondering if anyone would like to comment. I'll bite, but as I'm not American, you'll have to take my comments with a grain of salt. Firstly, chastise your student for using the word factoid, it's a fact, a factoid is untrue. I know this is pedantic, but the harassment I got from my compiler lecturer about the differences between brackets, braces and parentheses kind of stuck to me. [ eats, shoots, and leaves ] The supposition that students have lost their edge is because they do not enter programming competitions is a poor argument - probably over 20 of the universities listed in the 76 entries on this year's competition were American, which seems to be a reasonable percentage, considering that significantly less than that are of western European origin, I'd say that you've got good odds. I am aware that this is just throwing some arbitrary statistics at the posting for this year's results. [ lies, damned lies and statistics ] The challenge is not in the programming, it's in the problem solving, and the fact that less American students are winning it should be addressed by questioning the motivations of those attending, I know for a fact that if I was offered the opportunity to go to China to attend a programming competition I would leap at the chance, knowing full well that I would probably not place very well, but I'd have a damned fun time there. [ the junket argument ] I think that the duration of the challenge is fair, and as this is a pseudo exam-like system, the unavailability of the internet is only fair. Being made to 'memorize' things is not the issue, the students are expected to have a good grounding in all the topics that are likely to turn up in the competition, and that by having a team you are expecting that they should be capable of at least doing some forward research into the likely topics so that they don't get caught short. Real world programming is for the most part boring - I can count on one hand the times I've used really interesting algorithms in my work; and I've been working in what would be for a software engineer a really interesting field. Having a programming competition that emphasizes mathematical style problems makes it a fun challenge, without the 'math type' problems, then what would we expect to see? I for one would lament the loss of a true challenge. As for the 'have the US programmers lost their lead?' I'd have to say yes, they have, but that's only because they're now a smaller piece of a much larger pie. -- Pete +353 (87) 412 9576 [M] | +353 (1) 235 4027 [H] Boston, n.: Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
Current thread:
- Re: Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault?, (continued)
- Re: Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Michael Silk (Apr 14)
- Re: Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Dave Paris (Apr 14)
- Re: Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Damir Rajnovic (Apr 11)
- RE: Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Yousef Syed (Apr 11)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Dave Paris (Apr 07)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Michael Silk (Apr 07)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? ljknews (Apr 07)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Julie JCH Ryan, D.Sc. (Apr 08)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Crispin Cowan (Apr 08)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? George Capehart (Apr 19)
- Re: [ot] Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Pete Shanahan (Apr 10)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? secureCoding2dave (Apr 07)
- RE: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Yousef Syed (Apr 10)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Michael Silk (Apr 06)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Jeff Williams (Apr 06)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Michael Silk (Apr 06)
- Re: Application Insecurity --- Who is at Fault? Michael Silk (Apr 06)