Without changes of this kind, the signal conveyed by grades and transcripts becomes increasingly meaningless. Students lose incentives to study, and some even choose less relevant courses simply because they offer better grade differentiation. This should worry every university and every student.

For programming-heavy courses, this likely means moving away from both take-home and pen-and-paper exams toward project-based assessment with rigorous oral exams. These are meaningfully hard and practical and best replicate real-world challenges. While costly, it is the only solution I see.

With all this in mind, the real challenge then becomes not to choose between theory and pragmatics but rather to have a proper integration of the two in a way that is clearly robust EVEN with the latest technological advancements.

Yet, that raises another question: does it still make any sense to emphasize manual derivations, such as regression proofs for example, when in practice a single line of code produces the exact same result? Certainly not every informatics or CS student is going to become a software engineer.

This made me think more carefully about the underlying issue—not just what could be done to fix it, but why it often isn’t. One straightforward solution is a return to pen-and-paper exams. That is how it has been done previously, and it seemed to work more or less fine.

In practice, most submissions were the same code, with some minor differences in commentary depending on how much effort people put into editing what Claude or ChatGPT produced. It irritated me quite a bit because of the obvious unfairness with regard to input and output for the students.

Last semester I took a Data Structures and Algorithms course where the final exam was take-home. Around 80% of students got an A. The performance gap between someone who understood the material deeply and someone who barely did was essentially zero.

Also, might need to mention how poor Bellingham was today. I don’t know what was up with him, he looked like he was struggling with everything. You could see his lack of usual presence with how much Real struggled to tie a few passes together in the later parts of the game.

Too many players of Real Madrid couldn’t deal with their nerves in front of the goal in the late parts, rushing with decisions. Overall an amazing first half and still a good second half. The heat probably got to the players, which affected the intensity of the second half.

Raphinha exploited the left-side space created by the heavy focus on Yamal. We saw an amazing Vinicius today, don’t know exactly why he got subbed off. Mbappe was obviously physically not ready to participate in the game but still created quite a bit after entering the pitch.

This is where I see an untapped potential. These breakdance and wrestling-style mechanics are barely trained in football. Offensively and defensively, this feels like a blind spot that needs to be explored.

But I think Maradona is the best example from what I have seen. He had an unusually advantageous body frame for this kind of play: anchoring with his arms, dropping under contact—often initiating it himself—rotating, and still passing or shooting. His comfort in controlled imbalance was exceptional.

Some players intuitively mastered this: Messi, Iniesta, and Busquets. Low center of gravity, arm framing, and torso rotation while off balance. I've also started noticing it more in Bellingham's defensive actions—not full slide tackles, but low-angled body positions to cut spaces and redirect play.

After just 8 months of proper focus on my health, I have been incomparably more energetic, productive, and satisfied with my day-to-day life than about 95% of my friends. Doing multiple demanding tasks a day feels like child's play, and the day seems to have 30 hours in it!

Quite often, especially during the peak hours, it is longer than that, with all the passengers being extremely tense and continuously having arguments with one another or the driver. This single change in my day-to-day life really causes so much extra stress that it is almost laughable.

Usually if you are not travelling from one spot in the city center to another, if you miss the bus, the next best option is in 20 minutes at least. Once the bus arrives, you have to hope it has enough space for you to even squeeze in and stand. Later you have to be ready to handle an hour of it.

In Oslo, having to get from one point to another is never a big deal; it never feels stressful and is usually a pleasant experience that lasts quite a short time. It is easy to travel to multiple destinations extremely efficiently throughout the day. In Yerevan, on the other hand, it is pure chaos.