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Cheating has always been a problem. Maybe some of these bootcamp students will skate by, I'm sure some will even land jobs, but they'll get weeded out eventual

by jmuguy 3y ago

Cheating has always been a problem. Maybe some of these bootcamp students will skate by, I'm sure some will even land jobs, but they'll get weeded out eventually. In the end they're just hurting themselves. I don't know what kind of idiot cheats their way through curriculum that they will need in order to literally do the job they hope to be paid for.

jf22 3y ago
GenAI isn't just about cheating though, it's replacing the need to even learn the skills people are testing for. Edit: I didn't mean replacing all programming skills as some commenters suggest.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  I struggle to believe that. I've found Copilot / ChatGPT really useful, especially for doing support investigation tasks (chopping and filtering logs mainly). Not once has it just output a perfect answer - it's required me to know what it's trying to do in order to tweak it to my needs. Not having the skills in the first place would leave me with a confused half solution.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  I challenge anyone in this forum to create a sizeable production-ready application and maintain it using a language/database/platform they have no idea about by simply asking LLMs to build it. I'm pretty sure anyone will spend enough time banging their heads against a wall trying to fix bugs they have zero understanding about or properly learning the technologies (which they should have done in the first place). LLMs are great when you're fairly knowledgeable about the topic. You can ask it to automate stuff and you can spot the errors and fix them. Hopefully it automates enough and makes fewer errors than the time it'd take for you to code from scratch. They currently can make programmers more productive if used right. Now allow a junior to enter the field and never learning some skill because the LLM does it all? Not even close.
  - d0mine 3y ago
    The same can be said about google and more specifically about stackoverflow: you can't just mindlessly copy-paste. It is a tool that can be useful both for a beginner and more experienced developers.
lesuorac 3y ago
I don't think ascribing cheating to this is the correct term. It's a bit akin to how calculators were cheating but yet in the real world everybody is fine (and probably expects) you to do math using a calculator. I don't think Kroger would be happy if the clerks starts adding up your shopping cart by pen and paper. Would people call VFX cheaters since they aren't hand drawing each frame? Using a tool (AI) to do a job (Websites?) is fine. The problem of course is that the students are only learning that specific tool so the second a problem occurs that isn't easily solved with that tool they're a fish out of water. This is a weakness of the boot camp not the student per-say; although obviously somebody that can use ChatGPT + < any other skill > will be a more productive employee than somebody that can _just_ use ChatGPT. If your boot camp could be done solely using the plus button of a calculator; people would think it's not worth it. Now if your boot camp can be solved by ChatGPT is it really worth it?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  They are there to learn the topic at hand, not to delegate it to someone else whether that be chatgpt or a tutor they pay to take the uni exam for them with their student id. If a job is fine with hiring a delegator thats great for both parties but some jobs need domain experts too who can sniff bullshit from the ai output even if they do use it day to day.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jmuguy 3y ago
  That's an over simplification. If students are using chatgpt to generate code that they themselves don't understand, and then submitting that whole cloth as their work, they're cheating - full stop. They're not using chatgpt as a tool in this case, any more than searching stack overflow and copying answers without understanding them is a tool. The calculator comparison is interesting - calculators can't be wrong. And if they can be, we're kind of screwed. Like NASA screwed when someone mixed up imperial and metric measurements. ChatGPT can and will be wrong because it doesn't actually know what its giving back to you. Until its code can be 100% correct, which I don't think is possible, it cannot be used as a simple tool that any one can use to generate code without actually knowing how the code it generates works. So yes - ultimately these students are cheating. Maybe it feels to them like they've just found a shortcut to being a developer, they haven't.

by jmuguy 3y ago

jf22 3y ago

GenAI isn't just about cheating though, it's replacing the need to even learn the skills people are testing for. Edit: I didn't mean replacing all programming skills as some commenters suggest.

VBprogrammer 3y ago
I struggle to believe that. I've found Copilot / ChatGPT really useful, especially for doing support investigation tasks (chopping and filtering logs mainly). Not once has it just output a perfect answer - it's required me to know what it's trying to do in order to tweak it to my needs. Not having the skills in the first place would leave me with a confused half solution.
gtirloni 3y ago
I challenge anyone in this forum to create a sizeable production-ready application and maintain it using a language/database/platform they have no idea about by simply asking LLMs to build it. I'm pretty sure anyone will spend enough time banging their heads against a wall trying to fix bugs they have zero understanding about or properly learning the technologies (which they should have done in the first place). LLMs are great when you're fairly knowledgeable about the topic. You can ask it to automate stuff and you can spot the errors and fix them. Hopefully it automates enough and makes fewer errors than the time it'd take for you to code from scratch. They currently can make programmers more productive if used right. Now allow a junior to enter the field and never learning some skill because the LLM does it all? Not even close.
- d0mine 3y ago
  The same can be said about google and more specifically about stackoverflow: you can't just mindlessly copy-paste. It is a tool that can be useful both for a beginner and more experienced developers.

lesuorac 3y ago

I don't think ascribing cheating to this is the correct term. It's a bit akin to how calculators were cheating but yet in the real world everybody is fine (and probably expects) you to do math using a calculator. I don't think Kroger would be happy if the clerks starts adding up your shopping cart by pen and paper. Would people call VFX cheaters since they aren't hand drawing each frame? Using a tool (AI) to do a job (Websites?) is fine. The problem of course is that the students are only learning that specific tool so the second a problem occurs that isn't easily solved with that tool they're a fish out of water. This is a weakness of the boot camp not the student per-say; although obviously somebody that can use ChatGPT + < any other skill > will be a more productive employee than somebody that can _just_ use ChatGPT. If your boot camp could be done solely using the plus button of a calculator; people would think it's not worth it. Now if your boot camp can be solved by ChatGPT is it really worth it?

kjkjadksj 3y ago
They are there to learn the topic at hand, not to delegate it to someone else whether that be chatgpt or a tutor they pay to take the uni exam for them with their student id. If a job is fine with hiring a delegator thats great for both parties but some jobs need domain experts too who can sniff bullshit from the ai output even if they do use it day to day.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jmuguy 3y ago
That's an over simplification. If students are using chatgpt to generate code that they themselves don't understand, and then submitting that whole cloth as their work, they're cheating - full stop. They're not using chatgpt as a tool in this case, any more than searching stack overflow and copying answers without understanding them is a tool. The calculator comparison is interesting - calculators can't be wrong. And if they can be, we're kind of screwed. Like NASA screwed when someone mixed up imperial and metric measurements. ChatGPT can and will be wrong because it doesn't actually know what its giving back to you. Until its code can be 100% correct, which I don't think is possible, it cannot be used as a simple tool that any one can use to generate code without actually knowing how the code it generates works. So yes - ultimately these students are cheating. Maybe it feels to them like they've just found a shortcut to being a developer, they haven't.