🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Feb22....@athena.mit.edu> j...@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
>that I think that students who would copy source code from other
>students' accounts without permission and without telling them, and then
>turn in that source code as their own work, are one of the lowest form
>of scum of the earth, and deserve to be expelled.  Quickly and without mercy.

Probably the only lower form is the scum that steals the code.  I started
school when programs were submitted on punched cards.  The output was returned
several hours later to a bin, one for each class.  Near assignment deadlines,
these vultures would wait at the output bins pretending to look for their
output, but they took the first output that had the correct answers.  They then
would replace the job card with their own and submit it as their job.  Not only
did they get a program they didn't write, but the good programmers lost all
their work.  Grrrrrr.  After the first time this happened to me, I took all my
blank cards and punched my initials in the last two columns of the sequence
field.  I told the professor what I had done.  The second assignment after
that, an assignment was turn in with "KD" in the last two columns of every card
except the job card.  Caught the vile creature.  An appropriate example was
made of this student.  But, would you believe, my final program for that course
also was stolen!  I guess the second student skipped the class when the capture
of the first student was announced and the method was explained so others could
protect themselves.  Then similar miscreants took to copying the stolen decks
and hitting the skip key before the sequence field.  Such activity at the
keypunch (whether done manually or semi-automatically with a drum-card) was
fairly obvious and a good TA could spot the characteristic sound across the
room.  Such low lifes were not smart enough to create a plug-board for the tab
machine reproducing punch which would have done the job much faster and with
much less chance of getting caught.  (We did look for plug-boards programmed to
reproduce everything except the sequence field.)