Dear MakeCode Arcade Developers,
High School Computer Science Teachers would like to have a File History Feature like Replit File History (Replit File History) so we can verify projects were created by our students without copying and pasting code elsewhere which could be potential plagiarism.
Sincerely,
High School Teachers who teach CS
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Pretty sure you can do that with the undo and redo buttons altho not the same as what you show becus shuch a thing is probably hard to make and takes a long time/high understanding of the subject.
What you can do is to create a library that does that (extensions)
(sorry for the very very late reply)
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Taking code from someone else is a common practice in the programming industry, but it is important to do so responsibly and ethically. Here are a few things to consider:
- Open Source: Open source software encourages sharing and collaboration. You can freely use code from open source projects, but be aware of their licenses and guidelines.
- Attribute the Code: Give credit to the original author or project by including comments or documentation that clearly state the source of the code.
- Check Permissions: Ensure you have the necessary permissions to use the code. Different licenses may have different requirements.
- Avoid Plagiarism: Do not copy code without permission or proper attribution. Respect intellectual property rights.
- Understand the Code: Take the time to learn from the code and modify it to fit your needs, rather than blindly copying it.
(thoes are 5 things to consider when talking code from someone else, why did i choose these 5 things? will there almost all traits of
GitHub (https://github.com/)
Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com/)
and even
Microsoft Docs (https://docs.microsoft.com/))
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MakeCode Arcade extensions can not change the editor in such a dramatic way. Plus I believe this feature is in beta!
???
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AI generated much?
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no but i have seen some that change the look of makecode like
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no, found it on the internet,
also heard something like that in a video,
i also do it (sometimes)
(how do you think i learnt how to code? from “how to code tutorials”? no… i learnt for other people’s code… XD)
number 2 i just took that right out of something… somewhere… well you can surly find it if you do the same research as me. idk where i found it and i don’t want to look for it rn (at the time im righting this im in the school bus so i cant really try to find it either)
back to number 2, i added it thinking it sounded good but now that i read it i realize that i only really give credit to (someone (idk who i don’t have internet rn)) in https://makecode.com/_JUfMEf6bTXd6
(if you find that i wasn’t allowed to copy what i copied well just tell my ill delete all instances of it (witch is here and in my project)) (if i forgot to mention something please tell me)
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were way off topic too
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Nope these are all built in features.
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That extension just turned a built-in function into a block, nothing special
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Before reading - this is just my opinion and this post turns into a bit of a rant about the flaws of the school system in general. The purpose of this is to share information about MakeCode and my opinions on the best ways to educate people - to prepare them for real life. This post is in NO WAY intended to criticize the hard work teachers put into their curriculums and teaching, seriously, you teachers deserve respect, but instead to take a critical look at the current course of action for this situation and by extension school in general, to attempt to understand - from the my perspective, as someone who has taken a variety of classes from several curriculums and who knows somewhat what classes have helped me learn the most - what I think are issues that need changing and my opinions on how these issues should be fixed.
First of all, @RMCcorgis there is GitHub integration which allows you to save and go back to previous iterations of a program - but it does not autosave. I don’t think a feature as described will be as useful as you think. Algorithms and libraries (called extensions in MakeCode) are a huge time-saver when coding complex projects, and also are usually more optimized than coding it yourself.
I do support not entirely copying someone else’s code, especially if they don’t want you to, but if it’s an algorithm or something that makes coding your project easier, I entirely support that. It is not like you will code every aspect of a program manually in real life. A good project, in my opinion, is one that allows the user to accomplish something that is not entirely linear and can be accomplished in several different ways (as long as the result is the same). In my opinion, coding is figuring out how to get the desired result, putting bits and pieces (found by the community) together to make a product. In fact, MakeCode has many built-in libraries and algorithms, like trigonometry functions, tilemaps, drawing lines/polygons to images, and sprites along with their movement, interactions, and flags. You must know how a function/library works before using it in a project because otherwise you would not know that you needed it or what arguments to give it.
Now it you’re telling someone to make a specific algorithm by themselves, that’s different. I don’t know why you would do this because the algorithm already exists, and you won’t need to create many algorithms in real life scenarios. But if you, for some reason, still want to do this, I guess this could be a good reason to have this function.
Now, if you’re talking about preventing people from using GPT, the best way to fix this is to have them make more complicated or longer pieces of code. GPT has a character limit and even if someone gets it to spit out what they want, odds are it will have bugs and still have to be for together by the user, requiring a similar amount of effort. But if you really insist that GPT can make perfect code and allows users to instantly cheat with no effort, this function as you described it will STILL not do anything. People could either manually recreate the AI generated code (not copy/pasting but still taking other code). They could also probably get by with the excuse “I made this code on another computer and had to copy/paste it,” and there would be no proof either way.
Overall, this is not going to be an effectiveerhod for “cheat” or “plagiarism” detection, but if you still want a function like this a similar feature to what you described is being worked on by the MakeCode Team, called time machine. It will allow the user to go to previous iterations of a project, saved frequently. I don’t think this will work through share links or images, only attached to a user’s Google or Microsoft account, depending on which is used. In other words I don’t think this history will be sharable so you would have to probably access the user’s account, which would be a security/privacy issue.
I did not expect this post to be so long when I started writing it, but if you got to the end, thanks for reading! I just wanted to tell you my thoughts on classes involving programming. I think that school (classes involving programming included) should help to prepare you for real life, instead of just being school work that can at most prepare you for the next year of school!
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huh cool, i didn’t know that
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