The “understand it well enough to explain it to a professor” clause is carrying a lot of weight here - if that part is fulfilled, then yeah, you’re actually learning something.
Unless of course, all of the professors are awful at their jobs too. Most of mine were pretty good at asking very pointed questions to figure out what you actually know, and could easily unmask a bullshit artist with a short conversation.
I didn’t say you’d learn nothing, but the second take was not just to explain (when you’d have the code in front of you to look at), but to actually write new code, for a new problem, from scratch.
I don’t think that’s quite accurate.
The “understand it well enough to explain it to a professor” clause is carrying a lot of weight here - if that part is fulfilled, then yeah, you’re actually learning something.
Unless of course, all of the professors are awful at their jobs too. Most of mine were pretty good at asking very pointed questions to figure out what you actually know, and could easily unmask a bullshit artist with a short conversation.
I didn’t say you’d learn nothing, but the second take was not just to explain (when you’d have the code in front of you to look at), but to actually write new code, for a new problem, from scratch.