You know the theme, but you have to

[TheCrimulo]

Yes, trials are TOO easy.
i joined 08-24-2015, 06:50 PM, but there are just A LOT of builders that joined January 2016 and already got builder. Im not saying to derank them. They think School IS an obstacle for getting Builder, but its not, i've been a lot on School, i made 1 Dataloop and 1 CPU that are still there, cleared my plot 4 times, worked with a lot of people, learned and repeated and learned and repeated, passed trial with ICA ALU, with much tension, but now, i see someone who joined literally days ago, is on school for those days and they go for the trial, with all the logic and the structure memorized, and not learnt. It is too much that, i put all my effort of learning, whats a CPU, for example (in school) spending my days on that, made friends, learnt ICA ALU to death, i had to use 5 days to learn it, and someone, the unknown, a 0 reputation guy, as i said, comes and gets builder, incredible *ironic*. In fact, today, one passed without knowing 2s comp, or some logic gates, with a RCA ALU, and its NOT different to the other ones, i've seen one trial of a vertical stackable RCA ALU with ROM for the logic gates, THAT is passable, not the RCA ALU you learn in 15 minutes. So please, we need hardest trials, i dont care the way you find out to avoid the massive joining of unknown builders, that i dont have any problem with him, i just haven't seen his effort. I dont care if the minimum is RCA ALU and it has to be ICA ALU or HEHBVDVERH ALU now, just fix this, because im a little bit worried about that i spent all that time in school, learning ICA ALU to insanity, knowing CPUs, and i wasnt even sure if trialing or not!

I hope theres a way to fix what seems to be wrong,
TheCrimulo

[ddthj]

I also think that trials are a little on the easy side. RCA ALU's I think were generally accepted because students still got to learn exactly how one worked and had to explain its functions in trials, but I have had 2 big problems with the old system:
1: Students were passed without complete probing of their knowledge
2: RCA ALU's are old. Students should at least be taught better ways to make an ALU for the trial, because literally the first step most post-trial users have is to make a cpu, which sucks when they only know how to make a RCA ALU and not even proper registers.

Something probably should be done about this, I have already been teaching students about ICA ALU's pre-trial but again they don't need an ICA to pass a trial.

[Nickster258]

I got into RDF with nothing but a basic RCA adder. I honestly think it is time for people to move on from the RCA ALU to something more modern and functional, but retaining the same logical principle.

[Apuly]

I'm learning how operating systems work for college.
One of the "tools" that we use for this is minix, an operating system which has a kernal that is is only about 4 files big, and fits on about 400 pages of a book.
Of course we could learn everything from the linux kernal, but at this point of time this has become so big and complex that it's hard to understand what is going on for an inexperienced user.

My point in all of this is that we should not increase the complexity of the hardware that we need to learn purely for the sake of it being outdated. It works fine and is a great way of learning people the basics. What is a better solution (in my eyes) is to use these basic components, but also add more basics on top of them. For instance the need to have a fully functional data loop. Yes, still basic, but it does show that you grasp the more complex parts of computer architecture.

What I could also see improve the trial process, and feel free to disagree, is having a minimal required time to build. As in Crimulos example (which I'm not sure actually happened, but for all intensive purposes lets assure that it did) somebody passed in only 15 minutes, while there is an hour available for building. By adding a minimal required time, people who have finished in such a little time will be encouraged/forced to add more complexity to their build, thus improving the complexity of trial builds overall.
Also people who have only achieved an incredibly basic circuit, like just an RCA alu, can be judged based on the fact that it has taken them a lot of time to make these things, thus showing that they don't have enough knowledge to qualify for a plot.


All that or we realise that life is unfair and we move on.

[TheCrimulo]

Ok, life is unfair i surrender
Nope, im not gonna do that (^)
The thing is that is the best adder for learning the basics, everybody started with RCA ALU, who not?! And yes, i agree of adding basics, like a trial i've seen of a Vertical Stackable RCA ALU with ROM for Logic Gates, thats passable, but not the first adder model you learn. About the minimal time to make the trial, its a little bit meh, trialers MUST know basic concepts after even trying to trial, like what is a register, an adder, and some logic gates, just before starting, if they know, dont allow to just make the simplistic RCA ALU, make RCA ALU + ROM for Logic Gates + Registers + Read and a pretty simple dataloop. The minimal time could be 20 minutes, you build an RCA ALU rlly fast, and you only have to build 1 bit, then someone stacks it. Is there a complexity measure that can be applied to circuits? Sth like following standards (Standard = Points that the user must know, like: "Does the user know whats a REG? [Y/N]") and then punctuation from those standards, this must be improved.

[ddthj]

What I meant by my earlier post is that while RCA ALU's are still good for learning the basics, in trial there are a lot of times where the students are not tested on the basics, only by the thing they built.

i still teach RCA ALU's first, for the basics, but now I've started to follow up with an intro to ICA or Registers since students typically are never taught either of them.

[LambdaPI]

I passed within 15 minutes
Lel

I also do believe the standards should be raised. RCA ALUs are Easy to understand, and to get into build i literally spent 1 hour studying the ALU, how it works, and how to build it. Though I passed quickly, I now have 400% more knowledge, and i believe i deserve the builder rank.

Some people, on the other hand, might want [Builder] rank just for the looks, and to brag to their friends, not to actually build something useful (i.e. CPU, other ALUs, etc). These are the people that passed quickly, and just take up plot space.

I believe the standards should be raised to CCA ALU, because it is small, and easy to understand (very similar to ICA, but no quite). Then, people would have to spend a little more time actually studying and understanding the ALU. This would filter out all the lazy people who just take up plots, and leave only the worthy. If you decide not to raise the standards to CCA ALU, then at least make the trials much harder. I even witnessed someone passed without knowing two's compliment.

[Mar_Win]

I have to agree with apuly here.
The complexity of a circuit is not the only thing, which divides a good builder from a student. An example to prove this point are Carry-Save-Adders.

In my opinion the trial should be split in two halves:

One is of course the building part, which tests the building ability of the user. 
Focus here is on "building abilities" and not architecture preferences. 
20 repeaters, which aren't needed or something like a giant ball of yarn could be sorted out here. 
The genius controls the chaos, but there are limits!

The second - and more important - part of the trial would consist of the examiner asking questions concerning the build of the user first, but also basic and more advanced methods.
What I mean by those is for example the background of binary addition, since it is the first step to (2's complement) subtraction and look ahead addition. 
Too often I see people, who only keep in mind how to build circuits, but have absolutely no clue of why it works. 
IMO there is no improvement in sight working with this method.

Beeing able to build stuff and beeing able to build it fast is one side, but it is far more important to understand what's going on inside the circuit you just pasted next to you.
After all this is what the essence of science is - understanding. And that's how we introduce ourselves to all the 2x2 pistondoor builders.


I can't even keep up with counting how often I posted this kind of comment ._.

[CrazyGuy108]

So true. I see student after student building the same thing: RCA ALU. Many normally fail their first or second trial because they don't understand certain concepts, such as the use of FC and 2's complement.

Raising the standard to a lookahead adder like CLE/CCA/CSA would only add another layer of memorization. The properly taught people pass, sure, but the majority of them only know the design and a handful of concepts that apply to it. The next thing I see from them is usually a mass of wires called a control-line CPU (Even I was a victim of this routine when I passed my trial), even on their student plots before a trial, or annoyingly asking around for help on building an actual CPU.

Making the minimum a dataloop, instead of a more advanced adder, would better prepare students for the more intensive projects of Build. All you need to add is an instruction set, pROM, control unit, and PC (All of which should be simple enough if you already know how to build a decent data loop) and you have a decent CPU. The disadvantage is a longer trial period, which, with a small amount of staff actually willing to trial and with the recent flood of visitors/students, will not be favorable.

I kind of have a mixed position on this. Though it would be preferable to have a more advanced ALU as the minimum, there's no 100% stopping this kind of issue.

[Koyarno]

I also want to chime in on things here:

There generally are two aspects people like about redstone logic, building it, and the theory for building and using it. The ones who like to build in general come up with neat compact, faster designs from existing components or even new ones... and the theory minded builders like creating an IS, know concepts from computer science or electrical engineering to make exotic components. Im not sorting people into boxes here. Its just the time you decide something is boring and/or out of your league.

Maybe that student that build a RCA ALU just wants to know more about how cpus do stuff in general and dont feel like building a alu that probably already exists. You cant make a cpu in an hour (i could only built ROM, counter, part of instruction decoder, and inverters for the alu in that timeframe) and if a student has to show it on school you dont know if its really their own creation.

That is why i do not see anything inherently wrong about people building RCA ALU's. I just give them ZERO (0) points for building that alu everyone knows all too well. So thats why the questions are generally harder. If you as a mod aren't asking questions like "do -3 + -1" or "How do control lines !A and FC create XOR?" or "How would you check for two values being equal?" (which says alot about that student's abilities) you should reconsider doing trials.

NO student should pass on 3+5 / 2-5 / 3 AND 6 / what two logic gates does a half adder have? (and not asking what its significance is afterwards) with that alu.

[ddthj]

I was thinking about this again recently after visiting some of the bigger colleges that I might be going to. A big problem with the education system is that it's just a big assembly line to stuff irrelevant information into our heads. I think the school server does things similarly, we have streamlined a process of showing students an ALU and then giving them a trial on how well they know the ALU. I think students that actually want to learn something should be matched with a teacher who can teach them that thing.

When I am online and available for teaching, the first thing I always ask a student is "what do you want to learn."
If they know they want to learn about CPU's, I take them on the usual ALU route, if they say "redstone" or "idk," I teach them the basics, logic gates and binary, and leave them to sit with that information because a lot of times after learning logic gates students are a little more hesitant about moving on to bigger systems.

I like what Koyarno said about the different characters we have on the server and some people focus on some stuff while other people focus on other things. I think that one of the goals on the school server is to identify what a student is best at and work off of that rather than our streamlined ALU factory we have going right now.

[TheCrimulo]

I also ask about what they want to learn, and ask them if they know the basics for making that kind of mechanism (except if is teaching the basics). I try to have a good time and have fun while teaching, me and the student, so they don't see it boring, learning has to be fun and interesting. That's one of the things I've learned from my irl teachers of last year. I make jokes, and maybe some puns, but I don't stop teaching the concept they want to learn. The best option is being nice to the student, do not give up because the student doesn't understand and don't let the student give up. I actively teach on the school server, and usually they say they are not good with redstone, they are stupid, or they can't know many things. What a teacher can do is motivate them, tell them you didn't know that things in the past, tell them he can not because everything is possible, but because someone did too. I've went through many bad times, overall in my actual grade (1st ESO of Spanish Edu. System), the people say I only can study, and not play or have fun, they insult me or try to approach I'm clever to do their homework (I evidently don't help them). But I've learned one thing, don't let anyone take you down, don't let anyone change your way of being, be yourself and fuck anyone that insults you, for any reason. YOU are YOU, don't torture yourself saying you cannot do things because if you want, you can.

One problem of the human being is that we tend to make easy things harder. For example, Cronax3/FabuKiller wanted to learn the basics, I taught him the simplest and better way possible, or A_Master, he wants to build a CPU and I'm helping him, but he puts things that himself doesn't know what are they for, I ask him what is that for, and they tell me he doesn't know. But that is not the problem, anyone can fail, but he got nervous. I told him to calm, and we started using logic. An advice for learning: Don't anticipate the lessons, don't make things harder, things are as is, they have an utility and a meaning. Don't mess yourself. Also, one day someone called me Professor, when was a visitor and wanted someone to promote him, I talked politely to him. I told him that he doesn't need to worry about the tag, he could call me just Crim, because we are there to help without any distinction of the others, anyways, he called me Prof. Crim. I think we, the teachers, don't need to be called that way, we are people like the student, the teacher rank is not different to the builder rank except for some things. The teacher tag is not a privilege, is a way of showing the students you can help them and you are qualified to help them, they will call you before a builder because they now know that you can help him.

No, I'm not Shia BeLouf, or however the name is spelled. But we, the teachers, are here to help students.

I also think, as ddthj says, this is a "streamlined ALU factory we have going right now". Students learn addition logic and RCA ALU, but they should learn more complex concepts, I learned how to make basic control-line CPUs in school. School is not an obstacle, but a resource for learning.

[Sokolav]

I would have to agree even though I am not a builder. When I attempt my trial, not anytime soon. I would like for it to be challenging and difficult to pass, just my opinion.