This is an interesting article and worth reading, not because it advances the field to any great degree but because it so vividly illustrates the dangers of working in a vacuum. The story is simple: a Stanford business professor, Paul Romer, developed a tool that assigns and grades student work. Nothing unusual here, though the article makes it sound as though Romer had discovered fire. But thoughout this intervew what emerges most clearly is a lack of awareness of other work in the field. For example, Romer asserts that "Nobody is actually building a business around providing high-quality software for teaching." Where has he been for the last five years? His knowledge of open source (he spends much of the article defending his for-profit model) is equally suspect. "For the most part open-source software is usable by geeks, but it isn't very user friendly for others." Maybe he saw a command line processor once. I don't know.
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