Week 1 Discussion — Exactly What You Wrote, Not What You Meant — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A friend follows your recipe card to the letter and pours in the whole carton of milk, because the card never said how much. Computers are that friend every time, and this week you started writing instructions exact enough for one, then checking them by running them.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Describe a real time a set of instructions was followed exactly and still went wrong: a recipe, directions, a form, an app, or a program. Find the step that was ambiguous, rewrite it as an exact step two strangers would carry out the same way, and decide who should carry more of the blame when literal instructions fail, the person who wrote them or the person (or machine) who followed them.

Option B: When you type Print with a capital P, Python does not quietly fix it to print; it stops and names a NameError on the last line of its error message. Should programming tools fix small slips like that for you, or should they stop and report them? Take a position, use this week's ideas (an algorithm, a program, a trace, and reading an error message from its last line), and say what someone who values convenience differently from you would argue.

There is no single right answer. People who agree on every fact about how a computer runs code still disagree about where responsibility sits and how much a tool should guess, because those questions rest on judgment as well as on the facts. Pick the option you actually care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, describe the instructions, name the ambiguous step, rewrite it as an exact step, and say who should carry more of the blame and why; for Option B, say whether a tool should fix small slips or stop and report them, and give a reason or an example.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (algorithm, program, trace, error message, SyntaxError, NameError) correctly.
• State the strongest case for a view you do not hold, in one or two sentences.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point to a step in their example that is still ambiguous, offer a sharper rewrite, or make the strongest fair case for the side they did not take. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. My building's parking instructions said "park in the back lot after six," and a delivery driver parked behind the wrong building, because two buildings share the lot. The ambiguous step is "the back lot." An exact version would be "park in the lot directly behind Building C, in a space marked Visitor." I think the writer carries more of the blame: a follower can only do what the words say. Someone could argue the driver should have asked, and that is fair when asking is possible, but a computer cannot ask.

Notice how it names the exact ambiguous step, rewrites it, takes a position, and states a fair case for the other side. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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