On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 05:06:50PM -0700, Ethan Furman wrote:
On 09/19/2016 04:38 PM, אלעזר wrote:
I was talking specifically about advanced courses, in which an assignment is "implement a side-channel attack using data" and you can use whatever library you like.
Am I misunderstanding, or did you just say you want this new functionality in order to implement attacks on people's computers?
I'm pretty sure you misinterpreted Elazar. He was talking about an advanced programming course where the course allows the students to use any library they like. The "side-channel attack" part just happened to be an example (I think a particularly poorly thought out example, but nevermind). The idea is that the student writes: from __pip__ import somepackage in their script, and the examiner merely needs to run their script in order to have somepackage automatically installed. (I really, really, REALLY hope that the examiner runs their code in a sandbox.) I'm not sure how this reconciles with Elazar's earlier use-case that this feature is for the benefit of *beginners*. Presumably the examiner of an advanced programming course should be able to cope with installing a package. I would expect that for such an advanced course, being able to deal with external dependencies should be part of the assignment: "If your lecturer cannot work out what dependencies are needed by your project, because you haven't documented it or provided an installer, then you will fail the assignment." -- Steve