Only better is better

I found myself improvising a turn of phrase this semester that I quite like. I was trying to explain to my CS222 students that it doesn't matter how many user stories they complete but rather that they complete well the ones they attempt. That is,

More is not better. Only better is better.

This feels countercultural in formal education, where students sense that they get more points for more work. The popularity of AI-assisted programming actually gives me a good hook here to explain my meaning: generative AI can output more, so clearly that's not what we need students to be able to do. What we humans need to do is double down on understanding what "better" means.

I found this pithy phrase useful in my game programming class as well. As I wrote about earlier, I have provided students with a style guide that they are expected to follow. To enforce this, the grading scheme requires one to follow the style guide in order to earn higher than a D grade. In plain English, to violate the formal style guide is to do poor work. I fear many of my students haven't caught the meaning of this, and I suspect it is because of the institutional collapsing of "F" and "D," the systemic failure to account for successful but poor quality work.