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IT education and computer science (at least part of it) will need a stronger focus on software engineering and software architecture skills to teach developers

by ako 1y ago

IT education and computer science (at least part of it) will need a stronger focus on software engineering and software architecture skills to teach developers how to be in control of an AI dev tool.

renegade-otter 1y ago
The fastest way is via struggle. Learn to do it yourself first. Understand WHY it does not work. What's good code? What's bad code? What are conventions? There are no shortcuts - you are not an accountant just because you have a calculator.
- ako 1y ago
  With that mindset you don't have to go to school, you could learn everything through struggle... Ideally it's a bit of both, you need theory and experience to succeed.
  - globular-toast 1y ago
    And talent.
nosianu 1y ago
Brains are not computers and we don't learn by being given abstract rules. We also don't learn nearly as well from class room teaching as we do from doing things IRL for a real purpose - the brain always knows the difference and that the (real, non-artificially created) stakes are low in a teaching environment. That's also the huge difference between AI and brains: AI does not work on the real world but on our communication (and even that is limited to text, missing all the nuance or face to face communication includes). The brain works based on sensor data from the real world. The communication method, language, is a very limited add-on on top of how the brain really works. We don't think in language, to do even some abstract language based thinking, e.g. when doing formal math, requires a lot of concentration and effort and still uses a lot of "under the hood" intuition. That is why even with years of learning the same curriculum we still need to make a significant effort for every single concrete example to "get everyone on the same page", creating compatible internal models under the hood. Everybody's own internal model of even simple things are slightly different, depending on what brain they brought to learning and what exactly they learned, where even things like social classroom interactions went into how the connections were formed. Only based on a huge amount of effort can we then use language to communicate in the abstract, and even then, when we leave the central corridor of ideas people will start arguing forever about definitions. No matter how the written text is the same, the internal model is different for every person. As someone who took neuroscience, I found this surprisingly well written: "The brain doesn't like to abstract unless you make it" http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_brain_doesnt_like_to_abstract_unless_you_make_it/ http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_bra... > This resource, prepared by members of the University of London Centre for Educational Neuroscience (CEN), gives a brief overview of how the brain works for a general audience. It is based on the most recent research. It aims to give a gist of the brain’s principles of function, covering the brain’s evolutionary origin, how it develops, and how it copes in the modern world. The best way to learn is to do things IRL that matter. School is a compromise and not really all that great. People motivated by actual need often can learn things that take years in school with middling results significantly faster and with better and deeper results.
- ako 1y ago
  And that is the best thing about AI, it allows you to do and try so much more in the limited time you have. If you have an idea, build it with AI, test it, see where it breaks. AI is going to be a big boost for education, because it allows for so much more experimentation and hands-on.
  - Archer6621 1y ago
    By using AI, you learn how to use AI, not necessarily how to build architecturally sound and maintainable software, so being able to do much more in a limited amount of time will not necessarily make you a more knowledgeable programmer, or at least that knowledge will most likely only be surface-level pattern recognition. It still needs to be combined with hands-on building your own thing, to truly understand the nuts and bolts of such projects.
    - lukan 1y ago
      If you end up with a working project where you understand all the moving parts, I think AI is great for learning and the ultimate proof whether the learning was succesful if whether you can actually build (and ship) things. So human teachers are good to have as well, but I remember they were of limited use for me when I was learning programming without AI. So many concepts they tried to teach me without having understood themself first. AI would have likely helped me to get better answers instead of, "because that is how you do it" when asking why to do something in a certain way. So obviously I would have prefered competent teachers all the time and also now competent teachers with unlimited time instead of faulty AIs for the students, but in reality human time is limited and humans are flawed as well. So I don't see the doomsday expectations for the new generation of programmers. The ultimate goal, building something that works to the spec, did not change and horrible unmaintainable code was also shipped 20 years ago.
    - thunky 1y ago
      > By using AI, you learn how to use AI, not necessarily how to build architecturally sound and maintainable software > will not necessarily make you a more knowledgeable programmer I think we'd better start separating "building software" from programming, because the act of programming is going to continue to get less and less valuable. I would argue that programming has been very overvalued for a while even before AI. And the industry believes it's own hype with a healthy dose of elitism mixed in. But now AI is removing the facade and it's showing that the idea and the architecture is actually the important part, not the coding if it.
remram 1y ago
Unfortunately education everywhere is getting really hurt by access to AI, both from students who are enabled to not their homework, and by teacher review/feedback being replaced by chatbots.
plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
In Germany, software engineer is a trade you go to trade school for three years while working in a company in parallel. I don't think that IT education and computer science in universities should have a stronger focus on SE as universities are basically a trade school for being a researcher.
- detaro 1y ago
  While that path exists, the vast majority of developers don't go through that path.
  - plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
    Yes, but it is more of a cultural thing than anything else. Studying computer science to be a software developer* is like studying mechanical engineering to be a machine operator. * except if you are developing complicated algorithms or do numeric stuff. However, I believe that the majority of developers will never be in such a situation.
    - detaro 1y ago
      A software degree or a CS degree with a more applied focus will teach you way better than the trade schools will. It'd be nice if that weren't the case, but from all I've seen it is. So you end up in that weird spot where it would work very well for someone with a strong focus on self-learning and a company investing into their side of the training, but at that point you could almost skip the formal part completely and just start directly, assuming you have some self-taught base. Or work part-time will studying on the side, and get the more useful degree that way. Plenty places will hire promising first-year uni students.

by ako 1y ago

IT education and computer science (at least part of it) will need a stronger focus on software engineering and software architecture skills to teach developers how to be in control of an AI dev tool.

renegade-otter 1y ago

The fastest way is via struggle. Learn to do it yourself first. Understand WHY it does not work. What's good code? What's bad code? What are conventions? There are no shortcuts - you are not an accountant just because you have a calculator.

ako 1y ago
With that mindset you don't have to go to school, you could learn everything through struggle... Ideally it's a bit of both, you need theory and experience to succeed.
- globular-toast 1y ago
  And talent.

nosianu 1y ago

Brains are not computers and we don't learn by being given abstract rules. We also don't learn nearly as well from class room teaching as we do from doing things IRL for a real purpose - the brain always knows the difference and that the (real, non-artificially created) stakes are low in a teaching environment. That's also the huge difference between AI and brains: AI does not work on the real world but on our communication (and even that is limited to text, missing all the nuance or face to face communication includes). The brain works based on sensor data from the real world. The communication method, language, is a very limited add-on on top of how the brain really works. We don't think in language, to do even some abstract language based thinking, e.g. when doing formal math, requires a lot of concentration and effort and still uses a lot of "under the hood" intuition. That is why even with years of learning the same curriculum we still need to make a significant effort for every single concrete example to "get everyone on the same page", creating compatible internal models under the hood. Everybody's own internal model of even simple things are slightly different, depending on what brain they brought to learning and what exactly they learned, where even things like social classroom interactions went into how the connections were formed. Only based on a huge amount of effort can we then use language to communicate in the abstract, and even then, when we leave the central corridor of ideas people will start arguing forever about definitions. No matter how the written text is the same, the internal model is different for every person. As someone who took neuroscience, I found this surprisingly well written: "The brain doesn't like to abstract unless you make it" http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_brain_doesnt_like_to_abstract_unless_you_make_it/ http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_bra... > This resource, prepared by members of the University of London Centre for Educational Neuroscience (CEN), gives a brief overview of how the brain works for a general audience. It is based on the most recent research. It aims to give a gist of the brain’s principles of function, covering the brain’s evolutionary origin, how it develops, and how it copes in the modern world. The best way to learn is to do things IRL that matter. School is a compromise and not really all that great. People motivated by actual need often can learn things that take years in school with middling results significantly faster and with better and deeper results.

ako 1y ago
And that is the best thing about AI, it allows you to do and try so much more in the limited time you have. If you have an idea, build it with AI, test it, see where it breaks. AI is going to be a big boost for education, because it allows for so much more experimentation and hands-on.
- Archer6621 1y ago
  By using AI, you learn how to use AI, not necessarily how to build architecturally sound and maintainable software, so being able to do much more in a limited amount of time will not necessarily make you a more knowledgeable programmer, or at least that knowledge will most likely only be surface-level pattern recognition. It still needs to be combined with hands-on building your own thing, to truly understand the nuts and bolts of such projects.
  - lukan 1y ago
    If you end up with a working project where you understand all the moving parts, I think AI is great for learning and the ultimate proof whether the learning was succesful if whether you can actually build (and ship) things. So human teachers are good to have as well, but I remember they were of limited use for me when I was learning programming without AI. So many concepts they tried to teach me without having understood themself first. AI would have likely helped me to get better answers instead of, "because that is how you do it" when asking why to do something in a certain way. So obviously I would have prefered competent teachers all the time and also now competent teachers with unlimited time instead of faulty AIs for the students, but in reality human time is limited and humans are flawed as well. So I don't see the doomsday expectations for the new generation of programmers. The ultimate goal, building something that works to the spec, did not change and horrible unmaintainable code was also shipped 20 years ago.
  - thunky 1y ago
    > By using AI, you learn how to use AI, not necessarily how to build architecturally sound and maintainable software > will not necessarily make you a more knowledgeable programmer I think we'd better start separating "building software" from programming, because the act of programming is going to continue to get less and less valuable. I would argue that programming has been very overvalued for a while even before AI. And the industry believes it's own hype with a healthy dose of elitism mixed in. But now AI is removing the facade and it's showing that the idea and the architecture is actually the important part, not the coding if it.

remram 1y ago

Unfortunately education everywhere is getting really hurt by access to AI, both from students who are enabled to not their homework, and by teacher review/feedback being replaced by chatbots.

plastic-enjoyer 1y ago

In Germany, software engineer is a trade you go to trade school for three years while working in a company in parallel. I don't think that IT education and computer science in universities should have a stronger focus on SE as universities are basically a trade school for being a researcher.

detaro 1y ago
While that path exists, the vast majority of developers don't go through that path.
- plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
  Yes, but it is more of a cultural thing than anything else. Studying computer science to be a software developer* is like studying mechanical engineering to be a machine operator. * except if you are developing complicated algorithms or do numeric stuff. However, I believe that the majority of developers will never be in such a situation.
  - detaro 1y ago
    A software degree or a CS degree with a more applied focus will teach you way better than the trade schools will. It'd be nice if that weren't the case, but from all I've seen it is. So you end up in that weird spot where it would work very well for someone with a strong focus on self-learning and a company investing into their side of the training, but at that point you could almost skip the formal part completely and just start directly, assuming you have some self-taught base. Or work part-time will studying on the side, and get the more useful degree that way. Plenty places will hire promising first-year uni students.