Iliano Spills All, Denies Ties to CIA!
On November 7th, README secured an interview with one of CMU's most famed figures: Dr. Illiano Cervesato, the professor for Principles of Imperative Computing. Reproduced below are some of the most intriguing, incriminating, and downright intransient questions and answers we got from this unprecedented collaboration. Your class is infamous for its strictness on academic integrity, do you think– [Iliano: Infamous?] –infamous, yeah [both chuckle] that's the word they used. Do you think that students are more likely to cheat in 122, or just more likely to get caught? Maybe both? They are more likely to cheat because it's typically freshman and some sophomores, and they don't know better basically. I think you get a lot fewer people who get caught cheating in upper division classes but just, that's the way it is. And, we do due diligence to try to catch people and I'm not sure how much due diligence other classes do. [reads next question, laughs] It's going to be a funny one now I guess. Some people have called you the Lebron James of imperative computing. How do you feel about that? That's a new one, okay. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Definitely a good thing A good thing, well okay, I guess I should feel good about it, yes? Do you have any projects that you work on in your free time, purely for fun? Making 122 even harder and meaner and yeah, that. How do you afford paying $2000 every semester for a single banana to be grown, harvested, and shipped all the way here to Pittsburgh? Oh, that's really hard, that's killing me, and we need to find a better thing. So, we've been studying this amortized analysis thing for like years, still trying to figure it out. We tell that to students, 500 people every semester are trying to help us. They are not really succeeding, but we'll crack that nut eventually. But not now. If a zombie apocalypse were to occur at CMU, what building would you go to? Well I would go home. What if you were trapped on campus? There's walls around campus to contain it. There is one place on campus that can withstand anything. Anything. That's Wean Hall. That's the answer I get from everyone, yeah. Yes. You probably know that there is a plaque at the entrance of Wean Hall that says that it got some big award from the Concrete Manufacturers of America or some association like that. This one just says, do you have any weaknesses? Of course not. [Both chuckle] [Iliano is serious] Would you ever throw water balloons at your students? That's messy. I've thrown other things–at TAs more than students. I've thrown pens, I've thrown erasers probably, water balloons never come up. But I'll think about it. If you had to hit– –no, no no no no, I did. I did. I did. [Interviewer: You did?] So, I remember that a few years ago we had a water balloon fight with a bunch of faculty and a bunch of students, and we destroyed each other. We were completely soaked by the end, and I had a great time. If you had to hit as many students as possible with a limited number of water balloons, what is the most efficient algorithm to hit N students with 1 water balloon? [Author was given an AIV for trying to print this answer] Despite the existence of office hours, EdStem, and many other resources, several students still pass 15-122. How do you plan on rectifying this? I don't know what to tell you, maybe that's my weakness. What would you say is the hardest part of teaching 122? Have you learned anything from it? Oh yeah, I've been learning other things all the time. What is the hardest part? Hmm. Maybe the hardest part is that you think you understand your students, then every semester, they behave differently in ways that are different from every previous semester. And you need to readjust things all the time. That's interesting. Do you have any examples of that? Examples? Uh, it's typically things that are not clear to them. So um, let me see if I can come up with an example from the top of my head this time. There have been several things like that in this semester but nothing's coming up. But, things that they find confusing. Somehow, every semester there is a new thing that never bothered anyone in the past and suddenly you get a group of 10, 20, 30 that tells you "I have no idea what that means and I'm making all these mistakes, and please explain this to me it's so confusing." That's interesting, yeah. According to our sources, you collaborate with US intelligence agencies to catch students who cheat. Can you explain how this fruitful relationship between the CS department and the FBI began? You mean CIA, right? Both. This is…this is completely false information, there is no substance to these allegations. Even if somebody has observed anything that was manufactured by the other agencies, or something. Okay okay, I'll make sure to write an entire article dispelling the rumors. Yeah yeah, please dispel these completely unfounded, misleading, partially incorrect rumors. Why is it that they've been putting toothpicks in sandwiches for as long as I can remember, but when I put a razor blade in a candy bar everyone goes crazy? … Must have something to do with like, physiology of the mouth of average people, I'm not sure. I am not sure. Someone should do a PhD thesis on that. I think that's all the questions I had. Do you have anything you'd like to say to the CMU population? Umm, carry on.