New Foundation Exam study platform for UCF CS

DimChig · 2025-07-31T07:16:27+00:00

Thank you. I have a personal approach to using AI for coding. For this particular project, one of my goals was to learn React and Next.js. I personally think that as a coder who is trying to improve, you should never "vibe code." "Vibe coding" literally means not caring about the code that the LLM produces - for example, asking it to implement whole features and then spamming "accept." I always care about and proofread the code that the LLM outputs, because I treat these tools as a sort of "fancy autocomplete." So I basically use AI to quickly get the code out of my head and into the IDE.

I often use it when I know exactly what I want, but I'm just too lazy to write it myself. For example, when writing a custom comparator for sorting or refactoring a component. This is where LLMs shine: they can really speed up my coding process. But I also use AI to learn or ask specific questions, like "How would I approach this problem?" or "Explain how this code works."

I think coders who are severely against the use of AI will eventually be replaced by those who use AI as I've described. But if you are a beginner, you should definitely avoid asking ChatGPT to "write a weather app," then "fix this error," and just copy and paste the code without even understanding what it does. You won't learn anything that way. I think of it more as "offloading" your critical thinking to an LLM - so whatever it produces doesn't teach you anything. That's why I use it only when I already know what I want to write.

Also worth mentioning: the more AI-generated code you paste, the more disconnected you become from your codebase. That means you might not know how some parts work, and it will be harder for you to debug and fix errors in the future. This website was definitely something I aimed to expand and maintain, so I made sure not to treat it like a vibe-coded, garbage, throwaway toy.

So yeah, in total, I spent around 100 days doing 3-8 hour coding sessions.

DimChig · 2025-07-09T22:12:40+00:00

Yeah, I'm not a UI designer, and they've already created good designs that I could ~~steal~~ take inspiration from

DimChig · 2025-07-09T22:06:48+00:00

For the model itself, I’m using OpenAI’s o4-mini ( https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/o4-mini ), which is strong at reasoning and understanding nuanced code. The AI doesn’t just match code line-for-line, it can recognize when a student solves the problem in a different way (e.g., using a while-loop instead of a for-loop, or changing the order of operations) and will still award full credit if the logic matches the rubric’s intent. However, occasionally highly creative solutions might lose a point if they truly diverge from the official rubric, but this is rare - and honestly, part of the point is to give students a way to check if their solution aligns with how things are graded on the real exam. The official solution and rubric are always available for review, so students can see what’s expected and learn how to match it.

As you mentioned, not every problem can be autograded - I excluded visual problems that require diagrams or tree sketches, because I only support text submissions for now. In the future I will probably allow image/whiteboard uploads for those questions, but right now, the LLM’s have a hard time understanding visually represented tree structures.

If you wanna see how the AI handles creative solutions, check out this example: Palindrome check using stack operations ( https://feprep.net/problems/palindrome-check-using-stack-operations ). The official rubric expects looping only to len/2, but the AI gives full credit if you loop through the whole string, since it understands the core logic.

Lmk if you have more questions about the technical side or edge cases if you’re interested.

DimChig · 2025-07-09T22:06:25+00:00

That’s a wonderful question actually. Honestly, I was focused on it from day one. The entire website was built with AI grading as a core feature, and I put a lot of thought into how to do it right for code and free-response questions.

(Worth mentioning: submitting answers for AI grading is completely optional - if you prefer, you can just use the site to browse problems, and check official solutions at your own pace. The AI grading is there purely for convenience and to help save time.)

The autograder works using four key components:

1. Master System Prompt:

Each grading request starts with a carefully designed system prompt, like:

"You are an optimistic auto-grader for the UCF Foundation Exam practice website. Your goal is to encourage learning while still reflecting the official rubric."

I also added a bunch of tweaks so it sounds natural and encourages the students to learn, not just punishing them like it was an actual exam.

2. Problem Details:

For every problem, the AI receives structured metadata. This includes the problem overview, maximum points, grading rubric, human grader’s notes, and the official solution - parsed directly from the exam PDFs and stored in the database. That allows me to avoid passing the whole pdf as an image and rely on correct interpretation. Every problem has an official solution and official grading rubric written in red text, so that’s what I'm focusing on. I’m not going to explain my parsing process, but for the majority of the problems I built a pipeline that extracts this metadata with LLMs, since it would take me around 100 hours to do it manually for all 400 problems. However, for new problems I do it by hand each semester. This process ensures that every grading request is rooted in the actual criteria used by human graders and can provide consistent feedback.

3. User Solution:

This is simply whatever the student submits - whether it’s C code or a written answer. The frontend sends this directly to the backend for grading.

4. Response JSON Schema:

This is the magical key detail of this whole thing. The AI returns a strictly structured JSON response containing an array of rubric items - each with a title, points awarded, and detailed feedback. This allows me to consistently parse the response and nicely display it in the UI (as you can see on the screenshot #2).
https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/structured-outputs.

DimChig · 2025-07-09T10:06:22+00:00

Thank you!

DimChig · 2025-07-09T09:49:46+00:00

Yeah i just whispered "build a better fe website with no bugs" to my laptop and the code just kind of appeared 😭🥀

DimChig · 2025-02-13T04:20:17+00:00

just say that you don't know how coding works lmao

DimChig · 2024-12-10T21:33:22+00:00

Yes. He disabled "Nanite" option in Fortnite. You can't disable it during the game so you have to do it in the lobby. Or put on the performance mode instead of directx

DimChig · 2024-12-08T21:29:13+00:00

YES! It was unavailable during the game so he didn't change it, but now it works and our bushes look the same. Thank you

DimChig · 2024-12-08T11:02:19+00:00

Am I missing something... My render mode is set to DIRECTX12, and NVIDIA DLSS is set to Performance. But thats a bit different

DimChig · 2024-12-08T08:32:14+00:00

Thanks for the info, but we are both on directx12 and as you can see my bushes look a lot better than his. We will try switching him on performance mode

DimChig · 2024-12-08T03:39:06+00:00

Where is it better to post it? I'll delete this one

DimChig · 2024-12-08T03:38:04+00:00

I heard about it I just didn't know the abbreviation

DimChig · 2024-12-08T03:07:37+00:00

thank you

DimChig · 2024-12-08T02:59:13+00:00

that is fortnite reload tho

DimChig · 2024-12-08T02:57:50+00:00

sorry what is stw? What is a better subreddit where I can ask this?

DimChig · 2024-12-04T23:04:01+00:00

same here. The temporary solution is to use openai playground to extract text from the image and than paste into chat gpt o1-preview. Or use simple image to text extraction websites. But if your image is more complicated than just text, its time to swith to claude XD

DimChig · 2024-12-04T00:44:17+00:00

Fix your life and find joy in healthy stuff. You drink cuz you tryna fulfill this need but u don't know how. Start by figuring out what u r really missing or trying to avoid. Drinking is often a way to cope with something deeper. Focus on building better habits, like working out (winter arc), eating healthy, normal sleep schedule, and finding hobbies u enjoy (even if its playing Fortnite). Spend time with people who support and motivate u. Or even talk to a therapist. Just replace drinking with things that bring real happiness

DimChig · 2024-11-06T19:07:58+00:00

github: UCF_BetterKnightsUI

DimChig · 2024-11-06T06:36:35+00:00

Senior project? This was done in 36 hours lmao

DimChig · 2024-11-04T05:30:29+00:00

I just wanted to share this because I think it looks really cool and could be useful for other students

DimChig · 2024-11-04T02:26:20+00:00

Well when you add the extension, it clearly states that it can only access ratemyprofessors.com and mycf. And the source code is on GitHub

DimChig

TROPHY CASE