https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-illiterate-programmers
Relevant quote
Every time we let AI solve a problem we could’ve solved ourselves, we’re trading long-term understanding for short-term productivity. We’re optimizing for today’s commit at the cost of tomorrow’s ability.
Hey that sounds exactly like what the last company I worked at did for every single project 🙃
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.
"Every time we use a lever to lift a stone, we're trading long term strength for short term productivity. We're optimizing for today's pyramid at the cost of tomorrow's ability."
Precisely. If you train by lifting stones you can still use the lever later, but you'll be able to lift even heavier things by using both your new strength AND the leaver's mechanical advantage.
By analogy, if you're using LLMs to do the easy bits in order to spend more time with harder problems fuckin a. But the idea you can just replace actual coding work with copy paste is a shitty one. Again by analogy with rock lifting: now you have noodle arms and can't lift shit if your lever breaks or doesn't fit under a particular rock or whatever.
If you don't understand how a lever works, then it's a problem. Should we let any person with an AI design and operate a nuclear power plant?
This guy's solution to becoming crappier over time is "I'll drink every day, but abstain one day a week".
I'm not convinced that "that ship has sailed" as he puts it.
Not even. Every time someone lets AI run wild on a problem, they're trading all trust I ever had in them for complete garbage that they're not even personally invested enough in to defend it when I criticize their absolute shit code. Don't submit it for review if you haven't reviewed it yourself, Darren.
If it's the first course where they use Java, then one could easily learn it in 21 hours, with time for a full night's sleep. Unless there's no code completion and you have to write imports by hand. Then, you're fucked.
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 undergrad program had us write Java code by hand for some beginning assignments and exams. The TAs would then type whatever we wrote into Eclipse and see if it ran. They usually graded pretty leniently, though.
My first programming course (in Java) had a pen and paper exam. Minus points if you missed a bracket. :/
Haha same. God that was such a shit show. My hand writing is terrible lmao
deserved to fail
Probably promoted to middle management instead
He might be overqualified
Yeah fake. No way you can get 90%+ using chatGPT without understanding code. LLMs barf out so much nonsense when it comes to code. You have to correct it frequently to make it spit out working code.
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.
generate code, memorize how it works, explain it to profs like I know my shit.
ChatGPT was just his magic feather all along.
Dumbo reference
The bullshit is that anon wouldn't be fsked at all.
If anon actually used ChatGPT to generate some code, memorize it, understand it well enough to explain it to a professor, and get a 90%, congratulations, that's called "studying".
Professors hate this one weird trick called "studying"
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
Why would you sign up to college to willfully learn nothing
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.
Yeah that's object oriented programming and interfaces. It's shit to teach people without a practical example but it's a completely passable way to do OOP in industry, you start by writing interfaces to structure your program and fill in the implementation later.
Now, is it a good practice? Probably not, imo software design is impossible to get right without iteration, but people still use this method... good to understand why it sucks
A lot of kids fresh out of highschool are pressured into going to college right away. Its the societal norm for some fucking reason.
Give these kids a break and let them go when they're really ready. Personally I sat around for a year and a half before I felt like "fuck, this is boring lets go learn something now". If i had gone to college straight from highschool I would've flunked out and just wasted all that money for nothing.
To get the peice of paper that lets you access a living wage
This person is LARPing as a CS major on 4chan
It's not possible to write functional code without understanding it, even with ChatGPT's help.
I don't think you can memorize how code works enough to explain it and not learn codding.
It's super easy to learn how algorithms and what not work without knowing the syntax of a language. I can tell you how a binary search tree works, but I have no clue how to code it in Java because I've never used Java.
And similarly, i could read code in a language I dont know, understand what it does and how it works even if I don't know the syntax well enough to write it myself
I'm a full stack polyglot and tbh I couldn't program in some languages without reference docs / LLM even though I ship production code in those language all the time. Memorizing all of the function and method names and all of the syntax/design pattern stuff is pretty hard especially when it's not really needed in contemporary dev.
Bro just sneak to the bathroom and use chatgpt on your phone like everyone else does
Brainless GPT coding is becoming a new norm on uni.
Even if I get the code via Chat GPT I try to understand what it does. How you gonna maintain these hundreds of lines if you dont know how does it work?
Not to mention, you won't cheat out your way on recruitment meeting.
Open the browser in one VM. Open chatgpt in another VM.
Any competent modern IDE or compiler will help you find syntax mistakes. Knowing the concepts is way more important.
He should be grateful. I hear programming interviews are pretty similar, as in the employer provides the code, and will pretty much watch you work it in some cases. Rather be embarrassed now than interview time. I'm honestly impressed he went the entire time memorizing the code enough to be able to explain it, and picked up nada.
Now imagine how it'll feel in interviews
run it in a vm
Unless they're being physically watched or had their phone sequestered away, they could just pull it up on a phone browser and type it out into the computer. But if they want to be a programmer they really should learn how to code.
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