this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It relies on critical thinking (meaning thinking about your own thinking), basically, and most students aren't very good at that.

[–] Couldbealeotard 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This doesn't rely on critical thinking. It just relies on understanding what ".length" does, which would've been previously covered in the lessons.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Well, both. If you rushed through without recalling that length has specific meaning relative to strings, even though you do know that, that's a critical thinking failure. But yeah, not knowing strings could do it too.

[–] Couldbealeotard 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you didn't know the answer, it's a critical thinking exercise? Not at all.

Answering this question relies completely on understanding programming. A correct answer cannot be reached without an understanding of programming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

A correct answer cannot be reached without an understanding of programming.

Yes. It does not follow, though, that knowledge of programming always leads to a correct answer. Since you seem like someone who might appreciate a formal logical description, you are affirming the consequent here.

Again, without sufficient critical thinking one might just miss the detail that "Monday" is a string and not a custom unit-of-time object, inheriting from Day.

[–] Couldbealeotard 1 points 9 months ago

But you can only mistake it as a custom object of you understand how coding works. I'm not saying an understanding will prevent you from being wrong, I'm saying having critical thinking will not reach the answer if you don't have an understanding.