Greentext

Professors hate this one weird trick called "studying"

I don't think that's true. That's like saying that watching hours of guitar YouTube is enough to learn to play. You need to practice too, and learn from mistakes.

Yeah, if you memorized the code and it's functionality well enough to explain it in a way that successfully bullshit someone who can sight-read it... You know how that code works. You might need a linter, but you know how that code works and can probably at least fumble your way through a shitty 0.5v of it

1. Ask ChatGPT for a solution.
2. Try to run the solution. It doesn't work.
3. Post the solution online as something you wrote all on your own, and ask people what's wrong with it.
4. Copy-paste the fixed-by-actual-human solution from the replies.

If we're talking about freshman CS 101, where every assignment is the same year-over-year and it's all machine graded, yes, 90% is definitely possible because an LLM can essentially act as a database of all problems and all solutions. A grad student TA can probably see through his "explanations", but they're probably tired from their endless stack of work, so why bother?

If we're talking about a 400 level CS class, this kid's screwed and even someone who's mastered the fundamentals will struggle through advanced algorithms and reconciling math ideas with hands-on-keyboard software.

Two words: partial credit.

I like the sentiment of the article; however this quote really rubs me the wrong way:

I’m not suggesting we abandon AI tools—that ship has sailed.

Why would that ship have sailed? No one is forcing you to use an LLM. If, as the article supposes, using an LLM is detrimental, and it's possible to start having days where you don't use an LLM, then what's stopping you from increasing the frequency of those days until you're not using an LLM at all?

I personally don't interact with any LLMs, neither at work or at home, and I don't have any issue getting work done. Yeah there was a decently long ramp-up period — maybe about 6 months — when I started on ny current project at work where it was more learning than doing; but now I feel like I know the codebase well enough to approach any problem I come up against. I've even debugged USB driver stuff, and, while it took a lot of research and reading USB specs, I was able to figure it out without any input from an LLM.

Maybe it's just because I've never bought into the hype; I just don't see how people have such a high respect for LLMs. I'm of the opinion that using an LLM has potential only as a truly last resort — and even then will likely not be useful.

Hey that sounds exactly like what the last company I worked at did for every single project 🙃

Probably promoted to middle management instead

If there's no code completion, I can tell you even people who's been doing coding as a job for years aren't going to write it correctly from memory. Because we're not being paid to memorize this shit, we're being paid to solve problems optimally.

My first programming course (in Java) had a pen and paper exam. Minus points if you missed a bracket. :/

If you go through years of education, learn nothing, and all you get is a piece of paper, then you've just wasted thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars on a worthless document. You can go down to FedEx and print yourself a diploma on nice paper for a couple of bucks.

If you don't actually learn anything at college, you're quite literally robbing yourself.

My Java classes at uni:

Here's a piece of code that does nothing. Make it do nothing, but in compliance with this design pattern.

When I say it did nothing, I mean it had literally empty function bodies.