Reply to Message

But I'm judging them based on their product. Still same bad practices, and a total lack of cope with real world development practices.

Give them a 7 day assignment , then on day six put your someone important hat on and change the assignment.

Or have them start some thing non -trivial. Iterate the design but after it's been handed over to another student. Do collaborative designs.

They'll learn more about real world development from stuff like this, than they ever will from figuring out what a five line snippet's O notation is.