Chauncy iFAQ


	iFAQ: inFrequently Asked Questions

Why "infrequently"?

	Because we just announced this service so how could there be FREQUENTLY asked questions yet? But this is a nice format to tuck in odds and ends of information so we thought we'd stick it in. Maybe someday there will be frequently asked questions and we can have a real FAQ.

What's in it for the instructor?

	Chauncy enforces correctness, so you don't have to eyeball code or use your own ad hoc test scripts. Instead, you can concentrate on evaluating design, style and documentation.

What's in it for the student?

	You may not be aware of this, but many students think that their code is correct if it compiles and passes one test. (Just kidding-- of course you know that!) With Chauncy, students learn that there's more to delivering correctness than just a single test run, and they learn to view correctness with the importance it deserves.

Sounds good but who has time to learn some new format for specifying homework assignments?

	Certainly not us. But there is nothing to learn here really. Initially, you send us a couple of assignments. We'll get them all set up for you. After that, you'll use a very simple web interface to modify them or to make additional ones.

Hasn't this already been done?

	Absolutely. There maybe something new under the sun somewhere, but this isn't it. Automated homework program checkers go back to the 1980s and possibly earlier. There have been lots of papers at SIGCSEs, CCSCs on various homegrown checkers. (We had one in the mid 1990s ourselves.) The earliest ones I know about were done by the late (and much missed) Peter Isaacson and his colleague Terry Scott of Northern Colorado and by Ken Reek at Rochester. And lots of schools have similar systems running locally.

If this has already been done, why Chauncy?

	As far as we know, most of these systems were built chiefly as academic projects. As such, they may suffer from a certain ad hoc character, complexity of interface, lack of support and insufficient distribution. Chauncy essential runs on top of CodeLab so it "inherits" a lot of the benefits of a commercial-quality system. But hey-- if you have access to a local equivalent, use that!

Who is doing this?

	That would be me, David Arnow, and my partner Gerald Weiss. We're CS professors at Brooklyn College and founders and principals of Turing's Craft, Inc. We're not all that interesting but if you're curious: arnow, weiss, and turing's craft.

Why are you doing this?

	Two reasons. First of all, because we can-- we have the infrastructure all set up and we don't think that the additional server load will cost us much and it just seems like "a good thing to do". Second, we thought this might spark interest in CodeLab, which is a commercial product from our company, Turing's Craft. But this is not an overt "ad" for CodeLab so we're not going to extoll it to the skies here (which is what we normally do when we have the attention of other CS profs).

What's the difference between this and CodeLab?

	Chauncy is a free service for automatically checking the correctness of student homework programs. CodeLab is a commercial product from Turing's Craft that provides hundreds of little programming exercises for learners. Chauncy is chiefly a faculty support system, CodeLab is chiefly a learning tool.