[LINK] Re: Is the share market headed toward a ‘SaaS-pocalypse’

[David]

On Monday, 23 February 2026 10:41:53 AEDT Tom Worthington wrote:
> On 2/23/26 08:59, Roger Clarke wrote:
>> ... Investors, and execs in business and govt, are on a bandwagon. ...
> 
> At least some of the computer professionals will be cautious. I am helping with the Software Construction course at ANU. Students have been told that they can use AI for their assessed work. But they have to provide the prompts they used and will only receive marks for their own work, not what the AI does. Also if it is not clear who did what, the student can be given an oral quiz and that be their mark.

Interesting...  I worked part-time delivering the Software Engineering course at UTS for 9 years, and we used TurnItIn to detect cheating & copying from other students or the 'net.  Those responsible for suspect "deliverables" were then also subject to an intensive oral grilling.

This worked pretty well at the time.  But that was well before AI became an issue, and the course followed a traditional "waterfall" design & development methodology for group work.  However it seems TurnItIn has been keeping up with the times and now also looks for AI-related cheating, not quite as difficult I would think judging by some of the AI results I've seen; A Certain Party inherited a book of crossword-puzzles not long ago which was obviously, and sometimes laughably, the product of an LLM request.

Some students clearly enrolled with the idea they'd complete the subject by lazily slouching at a cafe table, flipping open their laptop screen, and sipping coffee while the code emerged!  I think I could spend a whole afternoon discussing the social aspects of a subject as dry as Software Engineering ...(:-)

(Just before I left, the Department attempted to modernise the course around "agile" methodology.  But IMO successful use of the agile development model requires very skilled & experienced team leaders who thoroughly understand waterfall methods.  I strongly recommended the User Requirements deliverable be retained as the first submission, at least.  There's a story there, too...)

_DavidL_