8 ms·

> if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run That's a very limited, and dismissive view. If you

by tgv 4y ago

> if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run That's a very limited, and dismissive view. If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. That will very quickly erode the value of your institute's certification, and with it, that of the other students. Otherwise, why not give everyone an MSc in CS? "It'll only hurt themselves in the long run". > coding clever for-loops to perform algorithmic magic A for loop for searching or summation is not algorithmic magic. > maybe we should be measuring based on something else No, why? Students have to understand the fundamentals. What those fundamentals are depends on the expertise. Once you've shown mastery, you can use more advanced tools. Teaching has always been like this, and for a good reason.

geraldwhen 4y ago
Most people I meet with CS degrees cannot code. Not anything. Some can’t declare variables or get a file to compile.
- gentleman11 4y ago
  Your actual problem is that you are stressing people out so badly that they cannot think, then asking things of them while expecting them to fail
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    I let people use their own computers, own IDEs, own programming language, own testing framework. A CS degree is worth nothing. A masters is worth even less.
  - xigoi 4y ago
    If you forget the basics of your favorite programming language under stress, you might not be suited for a programming job.
hedora 4y ago
I've interviewed lots of new grads, and also observed my own classmates. Most institutions have been granting CS diplomas to people that cannot code for decades. Those people tend not to find long-lasting programming jobs.
- Karellen 4y ago
  Computer science is to programming what materials science is to construction. It produces really interesting new building blocks that actual practitioners can put to amazing uses. But research scientists aren't necessarily great engineers, and engineers aren't necessarily great research scientists. That's OK though, it's why we have separate disciplines.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I mean, it's more like "woodworker" vs "carpenter." We don't ask people framing houses to plane their own wood. Most practitioners in our industry don't apply much fundamental CS knowledge. After graduating most CS grads seem to forget foundational CS stuff anyways. I never got a CS degree. So I trained myself. While working and also a lot of a year when I was unemployed during the .com crash. Which only made me more frustrated to find that most jobs are just "you nail these two boards together" and most programmers are clueless about things like what the "relation" in "relational DBMS" means.
    - gerdesj 4y ago
      Your woodworker analogy needs a bit of work 8) In construction - in the UK - there are first and second fix "chippies". First fix do the big stuff and second fix do everything after the plaster is dry(ish). There are also cabinet makers and furniture makers, turners and several more wood related trades. Here, woodworker is a synonym for carpenter and carpenter is rarely used as a job title. Generally a specialisation is used. I happen to own an IT firm and I prefer to see engineering qualifications on CVs (resumes). I'm a rather shabby Civ. Eng myself! I graduated just before the shit hit the fan in the UK in 1991 - recession, >10% unemployment (in Devon and Cornwall) etc. Can't recall what inflation was up to at the time but I think it was worse than now. ... So I ended up in IT
puffoflogic 4y ago
> If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. Many would argue that this is already happening. Moreover, we have no plan to stop it, so it's no good saying that we should not lose progress toward that goal.
cpuguy83 4y ago
I don't think copilot is to the point where this is true. Copilot mostly helps write boiler plate. It can also do a good job with adding correct comments to that boiler plate. It's a tool that saves time and repetition. It's not a tool that's writing algorithms or solving problems for you.
jrumbut 4y ago
A lot of CS education is limited by students' ability to code. If everyone was great at coding after a year or two, you could do a lot more algorithm analysis,theory, engineering principles, mathematics and other sciences, etc.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. That will very quickly erode the value of your institute's certification, and with it, that of the other students. Very true. Like it or not, the reputation of educational institutions plays a significant role in candidate selection processes at many companies. If a company brings in 10 graduates from a local college and discovers that 7/10 of them can’t actually write basic code, they’re going to become more hesitant to bring in other graduates from that college. Meanwhile, someone who has Stanford or Harvard on their resume is virtually guaranteed an interview. Reputation matters far more than I ever thought it would.
- nemothekid 4y ago
  >Meanwhile, someone who has Stanford or Harvard on their resume is virtually guaranteed an interview. The funny thing is though - the CS programs at Stanford or Harvard are more research based than anything and hardly teach students to code. You are forced to take maybe 1 or 2 "learn to code" courses and everything else is just math/theory or assumes you can code anyways. And that shouldn't be a surprise; it doesn't take 4 years to learn to code; there are plenty of 15 year olds who can pass leetcode style interviews. Everything else you learn is far more valuable (although it's not a given that you will get a chance to apply it).
  - robocat 4y ago
    > there are plenty of 15 year olds who can pass leetcode style interviews Are you sure?
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      Given the month of preparation that normal candidates do? Sure. That’s basically what they do every time they have to take a test about a subject that doesn’t interest them.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
"you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code" The diploma is not issued after only the 101 course.
- varjag 4y ago
  So people who couldn't find a max value in an array will somehow excel at advanced concepts later?
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    You seem to have missed the point of this thread. The problem an earlier comment expressed is that the student will sabotage themselves. What else did you think that means besides exactly what you just said? They sail through the beginning and splat in the middle, because they didn't have to learn anything in the beginning. My comment is reponding to one that says the problem is that students get diplomas witbout learning. I am saying that diplomas and certs are not a problem, not that there is no problem. The problem is what the earlier comment said in the first place. Actually I'm not even sure that's a problem either in the long term, but it is the immediate problem. It may just be during a transition period while schools have not yet adapted to reality and are still worried about calculators in math classes. But at this moment, it's a problem.
nightpool 4y ago
I'll be honest: has anyone here ever looked at a resume with an MSc in CS and said "Yep, I bet this person knows how to write code well"? Surely there are some research level jobs where a PhD in CS is necessary, but for most coding jobs, an MSc is just 2 years of missed experience where you're learning bad habits and antipatterns by never having your code used by other people in any strenuous way. Certainly there are a lot of pros and cons to getting a BA in CS. But "learning how to write code" is not the major advantage of a university education, nor should it be.
- RHSeeger 4y ago
  > has anyone here ever looked at a resume with an MSc in CS and said "Yep, I bet this person knows how to write code well" A Masters in CS doesn't tell me the person knows how to code well, but it does tell me that they are _more likely_ to - Have had experience with a wider variety of algorithms, data structures, and general coding concepts - Have written code to perform more complex things - Written code for someone "outside of a classroom" Certainly the last two are more directly accomplished by actually being in the workforce. However, an educational environment is a far better source for the first one. Now, I'm not saying having a Masters is necessarily _better_ for a developer but - Given two developers with no work experience, one with a Masters and one with a Bachelors; I would generally assume the one with the Masters is a better developer. - Given two developers with a similar amount of work experience, one with a Masters and one with a Bachelors; I would generally assume the one with the Masters is a better developer. - Given two developers, one with a Masters and no work experience, one with a Bachelors a couple years of work experience; I wouldn't make any assumptions about their skill (they're certainly different, but I wouldn't assume one is a better developer than the other). The same logic holds true for me when people try to convince me that a degree in CSci offers no benefit at all, and that it's better to just self study and start working. There's nothing you can learn during a degree that _can't_ be learned by self study; but there's a lot of things that are much more likely to be learned in an academic environment.
- herval 4y ago
  Depends on the school and depends on the person. The same way many companies in the US assume any grad from MIT is a good engineer, there are companies who look at resumes w/ an MSc and bump them up. From personal experience, MScs are particularly well-regarded in Brazil, for instance.
throwaway675309 4y ago
While it would likely be prohibitively expensive, I really wish there was an independent board that would certify software engineering as a certification and required an oral defense in the same style as a PhD. I recognize that it's kind of gatekeeping but it feels like more and more diploma mills are just hanging out degrees, not to mention all the coding camps out there.
- j-bos 4y ago
  As someone who has excelled in non credentialled industries and seen enough credentialed proffessionals coast by, I much prefer that companies do their diligence in hiring and firing, rather than ousourcing it to central regulatory body destined to ossify.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  That's how it works in italy. The bad side is that to be an engineer you have to pay a yearly fee as well :D
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Being an actual engineer (software) is different to just being a software engineer, and the former is very commonly highly regulated.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Being an actual engineer myself, I discovered that an official Professional Engineer license has little correlation with competence.
      - bigDinosaur 4y ago
        I don't really doubt that, and that's why I'm glad software in general places much less emphasis on licensing than other industries.
    - LtWorf 4y ago
Gigachad 4y ago
Just raise the bar, rather than getting students to reverse an array, get them to do something more complex that is difficult even with the use of modern AI tools. We currently hand out degrees to people who couldn't write a program in raw assembly but it doesn't matter anymore. The world has moved on from that being a required skill.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Seriously. Take an rfc, change some of the clauses, and make them implement it.
  - vxNsr 4y ago
    I’ve used copilot to turn an rfc into code. It wasn’t perfect the code did need to be changed a bit but it was surprisingly close. And I ended only rewriting 4-5 lines that were totally wrong and 3-4 just for clarity. Out of like 40 lines of generated code.
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      Great. If an undergrad can find and rewrite those 10% of lines that are wrong, this is exactly what I care about to be an effective programmer. Especially since a good chunk of programming is reading code by former programmer (including self()) and interpreting and debugging. If they can use copilot with confidence to be more productive in getting to that point even more bonus points if I were a manager.
      - vxNsr 4y ago
        tbf I dropped out of a CE degree (and college) because I couldn't pass discrete math so I might not be the best logic programmer... I doubt I could pass leetcode interviews, I mostly work on the fringes of software dev.
        throwawaymaths 4y ago
cosmojg 4y ago
Tools of abstraction like Copilot raise the threshold for what can be considered "fundamentals." Yes, knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide is important. However, now that calculators exist, we can teach people to do so much more than simple arithmetic. So, too, with Copilot.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  > Tools of abstraction Isn't it a bit leaky to be called that?
sanedigital 4y ago
> If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. I've given a couple hundred technical interviews over the last 10 years. This has been the case for a long, long time—even from fancy colleges.
robertlagrant 4y ago
This is why CS and coding are barely related. Software engineering experience can be gained at a code school, or by working on open source projects, if you already know some coding from one of the many free online resources.

by tgv 4y ago

geraldwhen 4y ago

Most people I meet with CS degrees cannot code. Not anything. Some can’t declare variables or get a file to compile.

gentleman11 4y ago
Your actual problem is that you are stressing people out so badly that they cannot think, then asking things of them while expecting them to fail
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  I let people use their own computers, own IDEs, own programming language, own testing framework. A CS degree is worth nothing. A masters is worth even less.
- xigoi 4y ago
  If you forget the basics of your favorite programming language under stress, you might not be suited for a programming job.

hedora 4y ago

I've interviewed lots of new grads, and also observed my own classmates. Most institutions have been granting CS diplomas to people that cannot code for decades. Those people tend not to find long-lasting programming jobs.

Karellen 4y ago
Computer science is to programming what materials science is to construction. It produces really interesting new building blocks that actual practitioners can put to amazing uses. But research scientists aren't necessarily great engineers, and engineers aren't necessarily great research scientists. That's OK though, it's why we have separate disciplines.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I mean, it's more like "woodworker" vs "carpenter." We don't ask people framing houses to plane their own wood. Most practitioners in our industry don't apply much fundamental CS knowledge. After graduating most CS grads seem to forget foundational CS stuff anyways. I never got a CS degree. So I trained myself. While working and also a lot of a year when I was unemployed during the .com crash. Which only made me more frustrated to find that most jobs are just "you nail these two boards together" and most programmers are clueless about things like what the "relation" in "relational DBMS" means.
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    Your woodworker analogy needs a bit of work 8) In construction - in the UK - there are first and second fix "chippies". First fix do the big stuff and second fix do everything after the plaster is dry(ish). There are also cabinet makers and furniture makers, turners and several more wood related trades. Here, woodworker is a synonym for carpenter and carpenter is rarely used as a job title. Generally a specialisation is used. I happen to own an IT firm and I prefer to see engineering qualifications on CVs (resumes). I'm a rather shabby Civ. Eng myself! I graduated just before the shit hit the fan in the UK in 1991 - recession, >10% unemployment (in Devon and Cornwall) etc. Can't recall what inflation was up to at the time but I think it was worse than now. ... So I ended up in IT

puffoflogic 4y ago

> If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. Many would argue that this is already happening. Moreover, we have no plan to stop it, so it's no good saying that we should not lose progress toward that goal.

cpuguy83 4y ago

I don't think copilot is to the point where this is true. Copilot mostly helps write boiler plate. It can also do a good job with adding correct comments to that boiler plate. It's a tool that saves time and repetition. It's not a tool that's writing algorithms or solving problems for you.

jrumbut 4y ago

A lot of CS education is limited by students' ability to code. If everyone was great at coding after a year or two, you could do a lot more algorithm analysis,theory, engineering principles, mathematics and other sciences, etc.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. That will very quickly erode the value of your institute's certification, and with it, that of the other students. Very true. Like it or not, the reputation of educational institutions plays a significant role in candidate selection processes at many companies. If a company brings in 10 graduates from a local college and discovers that 7/10 of them can’t actually write basic code, they’re going to become more hesitant to bring in other graduates from that college. Meanwhile, someone who has Stanford or Harvard on their resume is virtually guaranteed an interview. Reputation matters far more than I ever thought it would.

nemothekid 4y ago
>Meanwhile, someone who has Stanford or Harvard on their resume is virtually guaranteed an interview. The funny thing is though - the CS programs at Stanford or Harvard are more research based than anything and hardly teach students to code. You are forced to take maybe 1 or 2 "learn to code" courses and everything else is just math/theory or assumes you can code anyways. And that shouldn't be a surprise; it doesn't take 4 years to learn to code; there are plenty of 15 year olds who can pass leetcode style interviews. Everything else you learn is far more valuable (although it's not a given that you will get a chance to apply it).
- robocat 4y ago
  > there are plenty of 15 year olds who can pass leetcode style interviews Are you sure?
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Given the month of preparation that normal candidates do? Sure. That’s basically what they do every time they have to take a test about a subject that doesn’t interest them.

Brian_K_White 4y ago

"you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code" The diploma is not issued after only the 101 course.

varjag 4y ago
So people who couldn't find a max value in an array will somehow excel at advanced concepts later?
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  You seem to have missed the point of this thread. The problem an earlier comment expressed is that the student will sabotage themselves. What else did you think that means besides exactly what you just said? They sail through the beginning and splat in the middle, because they didn't have to learn anything in the beginning. My comment is reponding to one that says the problem is that students get diplomas witbout learning. I am saying that diplomas and certs are not a problem, not that there is no problem. The problem is what the earlier comment said in the first place. Actually I'm not even sure that's a problem either in the long term, but it is the immediate problem. It may just be during a transition period while schools have not yet adapted to reality and are still worried about calculators in math classes. But at this moment, it's a problem.

nightpool 4y ago

I'll be honest: has anyone here ever looked at a resume with an MSc in CS and said "Yep, I bet this person knows how to write code well"? Surely there are some research level jobs where a PhD in CS is necessary, but for most coding jobs, an MSc is just 2 years of missed experience where you're learning bad habits and antipatterns by never having your code used by other people in any strenuous way. Certainly there are a lot of pros and cons to getting a BA in CS. But "learning how to write code" is not the major advantage of a university education, nor should it be.

RHSeeger 4y ago
> has anyone here ever looked at a resume with an MSc in CS and said "Yep, I bet this person knows how to write code well" A Masters in CS doesn't tell me the person knows how to code well, but it does tell me that they are _more likely_ to - Have had experience with a wider variety of algorithms, data structures, and general coding concepts - Have written code to perform more complex things - Written code for someone "outside of a classroom" Certainly the last two are more directly accomplished by actually being in the workforce. However, an educational environment is a far better source for the first one. Now, I'm not saying having a Masters is necessarily _better_ for a developer but - Given two developers with no work experience, one with a Masters and one with a Bachelors; I would generally assume the one with the Masters is a better developer. - Given two developers with a similar amount of work experience, one with a Masters and one with a Bachelors; I would generally assume the one with the Masters is a better developer. - Given two developers, one with a Masters and no work experience, one with a Bachelors a couple years of work experience; I wouldn't make any assumptions about their skill (they're certainly different, but I wouldn't assume one is a better developer than the other). The same logic holds true for me when people try to convince me that a degree in CSci offers no benefit at all, and that it's better to just self study and start working. There's nothing you can learn during a degree that _can't_ be learned by self study; but there's a lot of things that are much more likely to be learned in an academic environment.
herval 4y ago
Depends on the school and depends on the person. The same way many companies in the US assume any grad from MIT is a good engineer, there are companies who look at resumes w/ an MSc and bump them up. From personal experience, MScs are particularly well-regarded in Brazil, for instance.

throwaway675309 4y ago

While it would likely be prohibitively expensive, I really wish there was an independent board that would certify software engineering as a certification and required an oral defense in the same style as a PhD. I recognize that it's kind of gatekeeping but it feels like more and more diploma mills are just hanging out degrees, not to mention all the coding camps out there.

j-bos 4y ago
As someone who has excelled in non credentialled industries and seen enough credentialed proffessionals coast by, I much prefer that companies do their diligence in hiring and firing, rather than ousourcing it to central regulatory body destined to ossify.
LtWorf 4y ago
That's how it works in italy. The bad side is that to be an engineer you have to pay a yearly fee as well :D
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Being an actual engineer (software) is different to just being a software engineer, and the former is very commonly highly regulated.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Being an actual engineer myself, I discovered that an official Professional Engineer license has little correlation with competence.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      I don't really doubt that, and that's why I'm glad software in general places much less emphasis on licensing than other industries.
  - LtWorf 4y ago

Gigachad 4y ago

Just raise the bar, rather than getting students to reverse an array, get them to do something more complex that is difficult even with the use of modern AI tools. We currently hand out degrees to people who couldn't write a program in raw assembly but it doesn't matter anymore. The world has moved on from that being a required skill.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
Seriously. Take an rfc, change some of the clauses, and make them implement it.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  I’ve used copilot to turn an rfc into code. It wasn’t perfect the code did need to be changed a bit but it was surprisingly close. And I ended only rewriting 4-5 lines that were totally wrong and 3-4 just for clarity. Out of like 40 lines of generated code.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Great. If an undergrad can find and rewrite those 10% of lines that are wrong, this is exactly what I care about to be an effective programmer. Especially since a good chunk of programming is reading code by former programmer (including self()) and interpreting and debugging. If they can use copilot with confidence to be more productive in getting to that point even more bonus points if I were a manager.
    - vxNsr 4y ago
      tbf I dropped out of a CE degree (and college) because I couldn't pass discrete math so I might not be the best logic programmer... I doubt I could pass leetcode interviews, I mostly work on the fringes of software dev.
      - throwawaymaths 4y ago

cosmojg 4y ago

Tools of abstraction like Copilot raise the threshold for what can be considered "fundamentals." Yes, knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide is important. However, now that calculators exist, we can teach people to do so much more than simple arithmetic. So, too, with Copilot.

tbrownaw 4y ago
> Tools of abstraction Isn't it a bit leaky to be called that?

sanedigital 4y ago

> If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. I've given a couple hundred technical interviews over the last 10 years. This has been the case for a long, long time—even from fancy colleges.

robertlagrant 4y ago

This is why CS and coding are barely related. Software engineering experience can be gained at a code school, or by working on open source projects, if you already know some coding from one of the many free online resources.