I’m not sure why the non technical teacher is getting flak, as much as I hate to admit it, they were just following rules and avoiding future headaches.
Assuming they were super technical and didn’t disqualify the students, what would happen when other competitors call foul for using GitHub? Now this makes the approver look bad, but also could have unintended consequences in the competition.
Me, I would have told the kids to use Gitlab or one of the other non explicitly mentioned repositories, because sometimes, as silly as rules can be, need to be followed literally.
It would be like having a creative writing competition that includes the rule:
"You must not use AI generated text tools such as: ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Microsoft Word, Notepad, Google Docs".
The problem with their rule is that half the tools are actually templating tools, the other is a set of vital tools to any sort of development. Whoever wrote that rule clearly knows next to nothing about what tools are actually used to build websites.
I don’t disagree with you at all, and your examples only exemplify my point. Someone, somewhere, has to make a decision or the rules need to be changed.
If the competition rules explicitly stated your example above and someone submitted a docx file or link to a google docs, they shouldn’t be allowed. You could argue you used eMacs or vi instead of notepad (as long as you don’t publicly state otherwise). However, it should be pointed out how stupid this rule is and have it changed.
Let’s use a real world example of this- if you apply to a job that only accepts docx resumes, what recourse do you have if they don’t take pdf? You can either not apply, or play by this specific “competition” rules, even if they were made by someone who is nontechnical.
How about the teacher have some curiosity, hear what they're saying, figure out the thing you don't understand, and suggest changes to the rulebook?
> Me, I would have told the kids to use Gitlab or one of the other non explicitly mentioned repositories, because sometimes, as silly as rules can be, need to be followed literally.
After they were already disqualified? The teacher doesn't even seem to know what git is if they thought this was actual grounds for disqualification.
Assuming the teacher was a reasonable person, I would have expectations that they would tell the children to make changes before denying them. There were many paths the teacher could have chose to teach (and learn!) that they chose not to, and resulted in their reasoning by exercising ignorance and disqualification of these students.
You really don't know why the person enforcing the most extreme interpretation of a rule without any interest in hearing why they might have made a mistake in order to disqualify a group of passionate young people from a competition they clearly worked hard for would get flak? Honestly, reading the replies to this post I'm relieved and surprised that you all didn't choose to go into Law Enforcement.
There are no reasonable people in law enforcement, they’re there to enforce the rules. Sometimes, you have to deal with unreasonable people and unreasonable rules, even if they’re wrong.
One of my close friends became a cop because he enjoyed helping people, resolving disputes, and building a rapport and sense of community. He thought that the job of a police officer was to protect and serve the community.
I may or may not work for a large credit bureau in the US, and I had a legitimate need to run nmap from my laptop to scan a server. 30 minutes later, I get pinged by security asking about it, which I gave an explanation, which they followed up with asking if I sought permission to use the tool (no, why would I?). They made me remove nmap, because that’s what hackers use. A month later, I get an email from someone else letting me know the situation was resolved. The point being, I ran one scan which involved no less than 7 people and wasted a month of time.
I’ve written my resume in LaTeX for the last decade. I can version control it in git, I can easily keep track of what resumes go where with tags, and I have a Jenkins pipeline that automatically compiles my resume and pushes it to another repo.
Assuming they were super technical and didn’t disqualify the students, what would happen when other competitors call foul for using GitHub? Now this makes the approver look bad, but also could have unintended consequences in the competition.
Me, I would have told the kids to use Gitlab or one of the other non explicitly mentioned repositories, because sometimes, as silly as rules can be, need to be followed literally.