Hacker News Reader

Comment by hayley-patton | Hacker News Reader

My high school computing exam (by government direction - VCE, graduated 2019) was filled with many such

    If a And b Then
      Return True
    Else
      Return False
    End If

programs. Not sure why they were so scared of Return a And b. Apparently they got a new curriculum after I graduated; my teacher was very happy about it but I didn't get to see it myself.

View on HN

Well, the 2019 final exam [0] lacks such questions; it must have been some other year. But the correct data type for an "AccountBalance" variable (section C, question 9) was a float, so I definitely lost marks on that question!

The 2021 final exam (which is the most recent I can find) [1] somehow creates XML records for a SQL database (section C, question 7), and hints at using "data validation" to avoid an SQL injection (section C, question 11.c), which is quite exciting. And the 3.5 gigabit wireless connection (section A, question 13) is definitely not using an ISP-supplied router.

[0] https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/exams/technology/2019/..., answers https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/exams/technology/2019/...

[1] https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/exams/appliedcomp/2021..., answers https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/exams/appliedcomp/2021...

In an intro class using Ada I’ve seen

  case Big_Expression_Here is
    when true   => Do_Something;
    when others => Do_Something_Else;
  end case;

and I found myself wondering whether they realize what this is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com