4 ms·

Could you just use another teaching language? Does copilot work as well with e.g. Racket, Raku or Pascal, which all seem like decent CS101 languages to me?

by shakow 4y ago

dragonwriter 4y ago
If it doesn't now, it will quickly if that solution is adopted.
SoftTalker 4y ago
Students don't like learning languages that they are not going to use professionally. They want to learn Python, Javascript, maybe Java or C#. This is another clear indicator that most students today see college as a higher class trade school, not as a place of higher learning.
- hirihoto 4y ago
  Difficult to fault students for not wanting to be able to pay off the massive debt they're forced to buy into just to get entry level career jobs. College may have been a place of higher learning at some time before the last thirty years but I doubt it. Javascript may be the only one of those four worth teaching as it has different patterns and different ways of solving the same problem.
infinityio 4y ago
To quote the article: > Here’s an approach that’ll work for sure: use some, let’s call them alternative, programming languages that Copilot doesn’t really know. (...) Sadly, I have news: Copilot’s love for programming languages knows no bounds! Racket! Haskell! ML! (...) Copilot is a ravenous beast: if any code in any language found its way into a GitHub repo, it’s already swallowed it up and is hungry for more, nom nom nom. Not sure how true this is in practice - I only used Copilot once, with Python - but if it is that might invalidate this concept
emeryberger 4y ago
Hi all - article author here. A reader of my article sent me this note, pointing me to some relevant hot-off-the-presses work (reproduced with permission): ----- A group recently evaluated the performance of Codex (and another model) on 18 programming languages: https://nuprl.github.io/MultiPL-E/ https://nuprl.github.io/MultiPL-E/ The high-order bits are: 1. The latest and greatest Codex is now twice as good on its own benchmark suite than the original version published a year ago. 2. It's just as good on Python as it is on JS, Scala, C++, Swift, TypeScript... and other languages are not too far behind. It's not bad at bash of all things. Paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.08227 https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.08227
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Could you just use another teaching language? Does copilot work as well with e.g. Racket, Raku or Pascal, which all seem like decent CS101 languages to me?

by shakow 4y ago

Could you just use another teaching language? Does copilot work as well with e.g. Racket, Raku or Pascal, which all seem like decent CS101 languages to me?

dragonwriter 4y ago

If it doesn't now, it will quickly if that solution is adopted.

SoftTalker 4y ago

Students don't like learning languages that they are not going to use professionally. They want to learn Python, Javascript, maybe Java or C#. This is another clear indicator that most students today see college as a higher class trade school, not as a place of higher learning.

hirihoto 4y ago
Difficult to fault students for not wanting to be able to pay off the massive debt they're forced to buy into just to get entry level career jobs. College may have been a place of higher learning at some time before the last thirty years but I doubt it. Javascript may be the only one of those four worth teaching as it has different patterns and different ways of solving the same problem.

infinityio 4y ago

To quote the article: > Here’s an approach that’ll work for sure: use some, let’s call them alternative, programming languages that Copilot doesn’t really know. (...) Sadly, I have news: Copilot’s love for programming languages knows no bounds! Racket! Haskell! ML! (...) Copilot is a ravenous beast: if any code in any language found its way into a GitHub repo, it’s already swallowed it up and is hungry for more, nom nom nom. Not sure how true this is in practice - I only used Copilot once, with Python - but if it is that might invalidate this concept

emeryberger 4y ago

Hi all - article author here. A reader of my article sent me this note, pointing me to some relevant hot-off-the-presses work (reproduced with permission): ----- A group recently evaluated the performance of Codex (and another model) on 18 programming languages: https://nuprl.github.io/MultiPL-E/ https://nuprl.github.io/MultiPL-E/ The high-order bits are: 1. The latest and greatest Codex is now twice as good on its own benchmark suite than the original version published a year ago. 2. It's just as good on Python as it is on JS, Scala, C++, Swift, TypeScript... and other languages are not too far behind. It's not bad at bash of all things. Paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.08227 https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.08227

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]