Re: Please any one suggest me some project ideas

From: Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/06/04 

Date: 6 Feb 2004 13:09:45 -0800

mschaef@fnord.io.com (MSCHAEF.COM) wrote in message news:<8qudncNHCrGCVoLdRVn-gw@io.com>...
> In article <f5dda427.0401301813.162a6f08@posting.google.com>,
> Edward G. Nilges <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> ...
> >(2) Write a program that will compare two or more source files
> >PROPERLY. Windiff, the Windows program that highlights differences in
> >a GUI is a joke,
>
> I wholeheartedly disagree. Windiff is one of the most useful development
> tools that I regularly.
>
> >since it manages to preserve the illusion that a
> >program is a series of punched cards.
>
> Which is largely a correct "illusion" unless you're continually
> reformatting your program.
>
> >The program's output should be a minimal set of sensible instructions
> >for converting one file to another phrased in terms of syntax.
> >Therefore it should create the parse trees for the compared programs
> >and emit the changes by a tree comparision.
>
> Georgia Tech did something like this to detect cheaters in
> programming assignments. It's called cheatfinder, and works by
> doing a more intelligent compare of two programs' structure. It
> flags programs that match more than a pre-determined level.

I find the idea of such a program reprehensible, since it might be
used in a false accusation, and if the instructor does his job
(emphasizing good style), his students' programming style might well
converge leading to false positives.

In fact, the whole thing sounds like something from Georgia, in which
the Bush-inspired assumption is that (1) students will have no joy in
learning and (2) the whole purpose of education is constant testing
with the constant expectation of cheating.

Anhedonic teachers, who struggled through graduate school hating the
work, are the ones who expect cheating and don't even "see" the
student who doesn't cheat because he wants not to get rich but to
LEARN.

Many programming shops in fact demand that the programmers have a
uniform style, such that you cannot tell who's the author. In school,
the students might well be taught to conform to this expectation and
wouldn't this give cheatfinder false positives?
>
> It's not quite a diff, but it's the same general idea.
>
> > For example, it might say
> >"change the damn identifier in the third statement of the procedure
> >named FooBar from a to b".
>
> If I had a diff program that produced output like that, it'd be borderline
> useless. Windiff (and command line diff) are so useful primarily because
> they (show the code) that's changed, rather than producing an
> elaborate description of the change. I'd rather interpret the results of a
> diff output record myself.
>
I agree that it's often faster just to use windiff. The problem is in
code (for example, in 250 stored procedures I recently had to convert)
where the change is so systematic that windiff just gives up, and
shows a mass insert and delete.

The tree approach could be insensitive to consistent identifier
changes and might be useful in communicating changes to offshore
programmers by email.
> -Mike

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