6 ms·

I’ve had a project I’ve been doing for ~6 months learning python through Copilot+ChatGPT. It feels like any other project that accrues technical debt, but that

I’ve had a project I’ve been doing for ~6 months learning python through Copilot+ChatGPT. It feels like any other project that accrues technical debt, but that debt is just a lot weirder. It was rough at first, but refactoring has gotten a lot better recently with bigger context sizes.

gtirloni 2y ago
If you need Copilot to code in Python, have you really learned Python?
- raincole 2y ago
  Does it really matter though? It sounds awfully like when a school teacher said you're not going to have an calculator in your pocket.
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    This feels kind of like saying “why do I need to learn how to budget? The calculator will just do it for me.”
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    For a senior-level professional? Yes, it does matter. I wouldn't be comfortable with an accountant who couldn't do practical arithmetic in their head, or a surveyor who didn't have a fluent grasp of trigonometry and the ratios or function values for common angles. Of course -- I don't care about the people working for them as a bookkeeper or assistent. They can be button monkeys as much as their boss lets them, but I also wouldn't expect those folk to reach very high in their career. Not everyone's going to, and a disinterest in and lack of technical fluency is a darn good predictor. Your teacher was giving good advice about building skills and internalizing knowledge, because those are what contribute to mastery of a craft; maybe you were just being too pedantic or cynical to hear it?
    - wruza 2y ago
      I think this advice is backwards, as is the problem. I’d trust an accountant’s mind or a builder’s eye if I knew that they are acting from experience. But you don’t wanna trust someone who believes in-their-head is superior or reliable and makes you good. The core idea is no, calculating in your head doesn’t turn you into a pro. Being a pro makes calculating in your head safe enough to rely on until you get to your desk and double-check. That said, I was an integrator half my life and seen some accountants, big and small. Everyone used a calculator, it’s right next to their mouse and there’s another one elsewhere. And no one ever tried to talk about numbers afk, except for ballparks. Most of the times they suggest to go and query a db together. I find it very professional.
      - grobgambit 2y ago
        I just trust my accountant will use excel and what they are doing isn't rocket science. I have no interest interacting with someone who is going to get into how great the slide ruler is and how kids these days need to learn the slide ruler. When I was younger I thought this type of person was highly admirable but now older and wiser I see how full of shit they are.
  - elicksaur 2y ago
    AI is not replacing the same function as a calculator does when solving a math problem. Using AI to “help” learn to program is replacing the person’s effort thinking through the problems fully and is ultimately going to stunt their learning.
  - tivert 2y ago
    >> If you need Copilot to code in Python, have you really learned Python? > Does it really matter though? It sounds awfully like when a school teacher said you're not going to have an calculator in your pocket. Yes. A younger me had teachers say that to me, and that younger me thought they were wrong. But it turns out they were right, and younger me was wrong. Calculator dependence created a ceiling built from "educational debt" that many years later severely limited my mathematical ability. The problem is focusing too much on getting the "answer," and losing sight of building the abilities that allow you to get there with your own mind. Eventually the need to manipulate your automated crutch turns into a bottleneck.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      It’s also kind of annoying to intuitively get to the correct answer and have everyone claim they can’t distinguish between that and you using a calculator. I wonder if that would be an issue if nobody had any.
    - golergka 2y ago
      > Calculator dependence created a ceiling built from "educational debt" that many years later severely limited my mathematical ability. Can you explain how your problems with arithmetic affected your ability to reason and prove things? I struggle to see how the two are connected.
      - tivert 2y ago
        Isn't it obvious? If you can't do arithmetic without a calculator, it makes it hard to do algebraic manipulation. (Un)luckly a calculator that could do that arrived in my lap just in time. Then you get to calculus, and it was the same story. I eked by with a lot of furious typing, but the mental workload of that made it untenable towards the end and I wasn't really gaining much anyway because of that. It would have been far better if I'd just hadn't been allowed to use a calculator from the start. It didn't affect my ability to reason and prove things, just as long those things don't strongly require the knowledge and skills I should have gotten from the calculator shaped gap in my education. I lack a lot of the background knowledge and/or familiarity and comfort with many skills that I should have.
  - shadowfacts 2y ago
    Yes, it does matter. While there are plenty of situations where it's foolish to forbid calculators, that's not universally true. Forbidding calculators and requiring students to do mental math for absolutely everything is unnecessary. But requiring students to solve integrals by hand when they're learning about integrals? Entirely reasonable. If your goal when teaching coding is to teach the mechanical process of writing code: sure, go ahead and use LLMs for that process. But if your goal is to develop a deeper understanding of how to code, then LLMs can very easily obscure that. The end goal is not always just the answer.
    - KronisLV 2y ago
      > But requiring students to solve integrals by hand when they're learning about integrals? Entirely reasonable. I remember having to write code on a piece of paper in university. Curiously, this lead to a lot of other students not really learning or caring about indentations and attempting to make code formatted in a generally readable way once they actually got access to IDEs and such. They'd write it much like you would regular text on a piece of paper and would get absolutely stumped with unbalanced brackets whenever some nested structure would be needed. Not only that, but somehow a lot of them didn't quite get around to using the various refactoring features of the tools, since they treated them like editors for writing text. Did it help me memorize the basic constructs of the languages in question? Absolutely not, at least in the long term, since nowadays I have to jump between a lot of different languages and none of the syntax quite sticks, rather a more high level approach to problem solving. LLMs just make that easier for me, letting me offload more work around language constructs and boilerplate, albeit requiring occasional intervention. Maybe my memory just sucks.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    And have you ever stood in a store where your clerk needs the register to calculate what 200 - 50 ct is? It’s embarrassing!
  - kragen 2y ago
    yeah, at the moment anyway, because if you don't know what the syntax means, you can't tell when the code means something you don't want. that means you can't tell which copilot suggestions to accept and which ones to reject, and you can't debug your code; asking gpt-4 what's wrong with it only goes so far imagine if the calculator in your pocket gave you subtly wrong answers most of the time
  - int_19h 2y ago
    A calculator is fine so long as you understand what the operations actually represent. Remembering the multiplication table is not important, but understanding what multiplication actually does is. The problem with AI-assisted coding is that, applied uncritically, it circumvents this understanding. And without it, you won't even be able to judge whether the code that CoPilot etc spit out is correct for the task.
- ramones13 2y ago
  I don’t need 90% of my IDE features. For me personally, it’s a fantastic way to learn. I could definitely see people just using it and not actually learning, but to each their own.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  If you need Copilot to code in Python do your really know how to program?
  - Kostchei 2y ago
    This is my new capability- I am not a coder or a programmer and I can get things built, in my own time, at my own speed, solo. Would it be better code if someone with 3 years of university and 5 years of coding practice did it? Yes, very probably, but the gap seems to be narrowing. Humorously I don't know enough about good code to tell you whether what I build with llms is good code. Sometime I build a function that feels magical, other times it seems like a fragile mess. But I don't know. Do I know "javascript" or "python" or the theory of good coding practice? No, not currently. But I am building things. Things that I have personal, very specific requirements for. Where I don't have to liaise or berate someone else. Where I don't have to pay someone else. Where I don't share the recognition (if there is any ever) of the thing, I and only I have produced- (with chatGPT, Gemini and most recently llama3). Folks have been feeling superior for 70 years and earning a good living because they spoke the intermediary language of compute engines. What makes them actually special NOW is computer science, the theory- the languages, we have very cheap (and in the case of open source local models free) translators for those now. And they can teach you some computer science as well, but that is still time and practice. I'm the muggle. The blunt. And I'm loving this glowy lantern, this psi-rig.
    - solarengineer 2y ago
      One of the lessons that one learns as a programmer is to be able to write code that one can later read back and understand. This includes code written by others as well as code written by oneself. When it comes to production quality code that should capture complex and/or business-critical functionality, you do want an experienced person to have architected the solution and to have written the code and for that code to have been tested and reviewed. The risk right now is of many IT companies trying to win bids by throwing inexperienced devs at complex problems and committing to lower prices and timelines by procuring a USD 20 per month Github Co-Pilot subscription. You individually may enjoy being able to put together solutions as a non-programmer. Good for you. I myself recently used ChatGPT to understand how to write a web-app using Rust and I was able to get things working with some trial and error so I understand your feeling of liberation and of accomplishment. Many of us on this discussion thread work in teams and on projects where the code is written for professional reasons and for business outcomes. The discussion is therefore focused on the reliability of and the readability of AI-assisted coding.
- antupis 2y ago
  If you need Google to code in Python, have you really learned Python?
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Good one, however, like Google making memory worse, copilot seems to erode knowledge of programming quite quickly. Last week I was with a colleague at my house; when I hired him during covid he knew these things just fine, but after not having to type in a list comprehension for around 2 years now, when my Starlink was down for a bit, he couldn’t for the life of him create one; he asked Claude opus on his phone instead.
  - Aerbil313 2y ago
    For real. I have the same experience. I'm 19, freelance developer writing Python among other things. Except I never learned Python syntax, and maybe never will.
antfarm 2y ago
Learning to be a good programmer is as much about learning how to avoid technical dept as it is about learning to use a programming language. It may take a while until an AI assistant will be able to help with that.

gtirloni 2y ago

If you need Copilot to code in Python, have you really learned Python?

raincole 2y ago
Does it really matter though? It sounds awfully like when a school teacher said you're not going to have an calculator in your pocket.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  This feels kind of like saying “why do I need to learn how to budget? The calculator will just do it for me.”
- swatcoder 2y ago
  For a senior-level professional? Yes, it does matter. I wouldn't be comfortable with an accountant who couldn't do practical arithmetic in their head, or a surveyor who didn't have a fluent grasp of trigonometry and the ratios or function values for common angles. Of course -- I don't care about the people working for them as a bookkeeper or assistent. They can be button monkeys as much as their boss lets them, but I also wouldn't expect those folk to reach very high in their career. Not everyone's going to, and a disinterest in and lack of technical fluency is a darn good predictor. Your teacher was giving good advice about building skills and internalizing knowledge, because those are what contribute to mastery of a craft; maybe you were just being too pedantic or cynical to hear it?
  - wruza 2y ago
    I think this advice is backwards, as is the problem. I’d trust an accountant’s mind or a builder’s eye if I knew that they are acting from experience. But you don’t wanna trust someone who believes in-their-head is superior or reliable and makes you good. The core idea is no, calculating in your head doesn’t turn you into a pro. Being a pro makes calculating in your head safe enough to rely on until you get to your desk and double-check. That said, I was an integrator half my life and seen some accountants, big and small. Everyone used a calculator, it’s right next to their mouse and there’s another one elsewhere. And no one ever tried to talk about numbers afk, except for ballparks. Most of the times they suggest to go and query a db together. I find it very professional.
    - grobgambit 2y ago
      I just trust my accountant will use excel and what they are doing isn't rocket science. I have no interest interacting with someone who is going to get into how great the slide ruler is and how kids these days need to learn the slide ruler. When I was younger I thought this type of person was highly admirable but now older and wiser I see how full of shit they are.
- elicksaur 2y ago
  AI is not replacing the same function as a calculator does when solving a math problem. Using AI to “help” learn to program is replacing the person’s effort thinking through the problems fully and is ultimately going to stunt their learning.
- tivert 2y ago
  >> If you need Copilot to code in Python, have you really learned Python? > Does it really matter though? It sounds awfully like when a school teacher said you're not going to have an calculator in your pocket. Yes. A younger me had teachers say that to me, and that younger me thought they were wrong. But it turns out they were right, and younger me was wrong. Calculator dependence created a ceiling built from "educational debt" that many years later severely limited my mathematical ability. The problem is focusing too much on getting the "answer," and losing sight of building the abilities that allow you to get there with your own mind. Eventually the need to manipulate your automated crutch turns into a bottleneck.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    It’s also kind of annoying to intuitively get to the correct answer and have everyone claim they can’t distinguish between that and you using a calculator. I wonder if that would be an issue if nobody had any.
  - golergka 2y ago
    > Calculator dependence created a ceiling built from "educational debt" that many years later severely limited my mathematical ability. Can you explain how your problems with arithmetic affected your ability to reason and prove things? I struggle to see how the two are connected.
    - tivert 2y ago
      Isn't it obvious? If you can't do arithmetic without a calculator, it makes it hard to do algebraic manipulation. (Un)luckly a calculator that could do that arrived in my lap just in time. Then you get to calculus, and it was the same story. I eked by with a lot of furious typing, but the mental workload of that made it untenable towards the end and I wasn't really gaining much anyway because of that. It would have been far better if I'd just hadn't been allowed to use a calculator from the start. It didn't affect my ability to reason and prove things, just as long those things don't strongly require the knowledge and skills I should have gotten from the calculator shaped gap in my education. I lack a lot of the background knowledge and/or familiarity and comfort with many skills that I should have.
- shadowfacts 2y ago
  Yes, it does matter. While there are plenty of situations where it's foolish to forbid calculators, that's not universally true. Forbidding calculators and requiring students to do mental math for absolutely everything is unnecessary. But requiring students to solve integrals by hand when they're learning about integrals? Entirely reasonable. If your goal when teaching coding is to teach the mechanical process of writing code: sure, go ahead and use LLMs for that process. But if your goal is to develop a deeper understanding of how to code, then LLMs can very easily obscure that. The end goal is not always just the answer.
  - KronisLV 2y ago
    > But requiring students to solve integrals by hand when they're learning about integrals? Entirely reasonable. I remember having to write code on a piece of paper in university. Curiously, this lead to a lot of other students not really learning or caring about indentations and attempting to make code formatted in a generally readable way once they actually got access to IDEs and such. They'd write it much like you would regular text on a piece of paper and would get absolutely stumped with unbalanced brackets whenever some nested structure would be needed. Not only that, but somehow a lot of them didn't quite get around to using the various refactoring features of the tools, since they treated them like editors for writing text. Did it help me memorize the basic constructs of the languages in question? Absolutely not, at least in the long term, since nowadays I have to jump between a lot of different languages and none of the syntax quite sticks, rather a more high level approach to problem solving. LLMs just make that easier for me, letting me offload more work around language constructs and boilerplate, albeit requiring occasional intervention. Maybe my memory just sucks.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  And have you ever stood in a store where your clerk needs the register to calculate what 200 - 50 ct is? It’s embarrassing!
- kragen 2y ago
  yeah, at the moment anyway, because if you don't know what the syntax means, you can't tell when the code means something you don't want. that means you can't tell which copilot suggestions to accept and which ones to reject, and you can't debug your code; asking gpt-4 what's wrong with it only goes so far imagine if the calculator in your pocket gave you subtly wrong answers most of the time
- int_19h 2y ago
  A calculator is fine so long as you understand what the operations actually represent. Remembering the multiplication table is not important, but understanding what multiplication actually does is. The problem with AI-assisted coding is that, applied uncritically, it circumvents this understanding. And without it, you won't even be able to judge whether the code that CoPilot etc spit out is correct for the task.
ramones13 2y ago
I don’t need 90% of my IDE features. For me personally, it’s a fantastic way to learn. I could definitely see people just using it and not actually learning, but to each their own.
SoftTalker 2y ago
If you need Copilot to code in Python do your really know how to program?
- Kostchei 2y ago
  This is my new capability- I am not a coder or a programmer and I can get things built, in my own time, at my own speed, solo. Would it be better code if someone with 3 years of university and 5 years of coding practice did it? Yes, very probably, but the gap seems to be narrowing. Humorously I don't know enough about good code to tell you whether what I build with llms is good code. Sometime I build a function that feels magical, other times it seems like a fragile mess. But I don't know. Do I know "javascript" or "python" or the theory of good coding practice? No, not currently. But I am building things. Things that I have personal, very specific requirements for. Where I don't have to liaise or berate someone else. Where I don't have to pay someone else. Where I don't share the recognition (if there is any ever) of the thing, I and only I have produced- (with chatGPT, Gemini and most recently llama3). Folks have been feeling superior for 70 years and earning a good living because they spoke the intermediary language of compute engines. What makes them actually special NOW is computer science, the theory- the languages, we have very cheap (and in the case of open source local models free) translators for those now. And they can teach you some computer science as well, but that is still time and practice. I'm the muggle. The blunt. And I'm loving this glowy lantern, this psi-rig.
  - solarengineer 2y ago
    One of the lessons that one learns as a programmer is to be able to write code that one can later read back and understand. This includes code written by others as well as code written by oneself. When it comes to production quality code that should capture complex and/or business-critical functionality, you do want an experienced person to have architected the solution and to have written the code and for that code to have been tested and reviewed. The risk right now is of many IT companies trying to win bids by throwing inexperienced devs at complex problems and committing to lower prices and timelines by procuring a USD 20 per month Github Co-Pilot subscription. You individually may enjoy being able to put together solutions as a non-programmer. Good for you. I myself recently used ChatGPT to understand how to write a web-app using Rust and I was able to get things working with some trial and error so I understand your feeling of liberation and of accomplishment. Many of us on this discussion thread work in teams and on projects where the code is written for professional reasons and for business outcomes. The discussion is therefore focused on the reliability of and the readability of AI-assisted coding.
antupis 2y ago
If you need Google to code in Python, have you really learned Python?
anonzzzies 2y ago
Good one, however, like Google making memory worse, copilot seems to erode knowledge of programming quite quickly. Last week I was with a colleague at my house; when I hired him during covid he knew these things just fine, but after not having to type in a list comprehension for around 2 years now, when my Starlink was down for a bit, he couldn’t for the life of him create one; he asked Claude opus on his phone instead.
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  For real. I have the same experience. I'm 19, freelance developer writing Python among other things. Except I never learned Python syntax, and maybe never will.

antfarm 2y ago

Learning to be a good programmer is as much about learning how to avoid technical dept as it is about learning to use a programming language. It may take a while until an AI assistant will be able to help with that.