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It feels funny to think about this next to the outrage over trans kids in school sports. There are probably a dozen kids nationally participating in a sport wit

by xrd 1y ago

It feels funny to think about this next to the outrage over trans kids in school sports. There are probably a dozen kids nationally participating in a sport with other kids who didn't share the same set of chromosomes at birth. That's a tiny slice of the population, but the issue has captured the attention of a huge group of people. I believe the anger, if you distill it a bit, comes from an "unlevel" playing field, right? But, when students use AI, and if there are some students that don't, the playing field is "unlevel" there as well. The students that don't perhaps want to learn a craft rather than take a shortcut to getting a grade. I would wager that the number of students and teachers using AI is now the majority population. I face this dilemma on a daily basis when trying to do my job as a software developer. Let claude take over, and risk losing the only skill I had to differentiate myself in this harsh world? Or, take a chance on being the turtle and trying to win the race against the hare?

skeezyboy 1y ago
> Let claude take over, and risk losing the only skill I had to differentiate myself in this harsh world? the good times are over, it happens. i remember watching that Dall-E come out and feeling sorry for graphic designers, gloating in the knowledge programming was too complex to automate. then they automated it. a human is still required in the loop for vibe coding, as its fairly fuckin useless without guidance, but i can see that changing too
simonw 1y ago
The more time I spend writing code with help from LLMs the less I fear for my job, because I gain an increased understanding of how much depth there is to building software. To get good results out of an LLM you need to determine exactly what the system needs to do and how it should work. That's programming! We just don't have to type all the semicolons ourselves any more.
- xrd 1y ago
  I always feel pretty special when you respond to a comment of mine. Thank you. I agree with you. And, I'm not sure LLMs help me learn high level concepts (yet). They certainly have those concepts inside their training data and you can extract the concepts if you do the work. But, in a lot of domains, and this applies to someone old like me and someome young like my kids, knowing what to ask is the central problem. This applies to what I see my kids doing with AI: I don't think LLMs, right now, encourage them to learn concepts as much as they quickly give them answers. I don't see ChatGPT Study Mode as fulfilling on this, in my limited usage, but I would love to be wrong about that. Its a good direction indeed. Probably this is the new frontier, where the best students are the ones that figure out how to use these tools to learn "deeply" rather than just jumping to the answers. Maybe that is how it has always been?
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  > We just don't have to type all the semicolons ourselves any more. And if we're not having to code in Java then we never had to type all those in the first place! ;)
CompoundEyes 1y ago
I’m drafting policy at work with teammates about how we will handle pull requests with aggressive use of Claude Code. We are currently researching and piloting it. I am going to propose that no one should feel pressure to use any of the generative coding tools if they don't want to.
someuser2345 1y ago
> I believe the anger, if you distill it a bit, comes from an "unlevel" playing field, right? Why is "unlevel" in quotes? When it comes to physical activities, biological males have a huge advantage over biological females; high school boys routinely beat professional adult women's sport teams. > But, when students use AI, and if there are some students that don't, the playing field is "unlevel" there as well. The students that don't perhaps want to learn a craft rather than take a shortcut to getting a grade. I agree that this is a bigger problem than trans kids in sports. I think people are less upset about this because 1. It's a more recent development 2. They think that the kids using AI are actually putting themselves at a disadvantage, albeit one that will only become apparent after they graduate.

by xrd 1y ago

skeezyboy 1y ago

> Let claude take over, and risk losing the only skill I had to differentiate myself in this harsh world? the good times are over, it happens. i remember watching that Dall-E come out and feeling sorry for graphic designers, gloating in the knowledge programming was too complex to automate. then they automated it. a human is still required in the loop for vibe coding, as its fairly fuckin useless without guidance, but i can see that changing too

simonw 1y ago

The more time I spend writing code with help from LLMs the less I fear for my job, because I gain an increased understanding of how much depth there is to building software. To get good results out of an LLM you need to determine exactly what the system needs to do and how it should work. That's programming! We just don't have to type all the semicolons ourselves any more.

xrd 1y ago
I always feel pretty special when you respond to a comment of mine. Thank you. I agree with you. And, I'm not sure LLMs help me learn high level concepts (yet). They certainly have those concepts inside their training data and you can extract the concepts if you do the work. But, in a lot of domains, and this applies to someone old like me and someome young like my kids, knowing what to ask is the central problem. This applies to what I see my kids doing with AI: I don't think LLMs, right now, encourage them to learn concepts as much as they quickly give them answers. I don't see ChatGPT Study Mode as fulfilling on this, in my limited usage, but I would love to be wrong about that. Its a good direction indeed. Probably this is the new frontier, where the best students are the ones that figure out how to use these tools to learn "deeply" rather than just jumping to the answers. Maybe that is how it has always been?
insane_dreamer 1y ago
> We just don't have to type all the semicolons ourselves any more. And if we're not having to code in Java then we never had to type all those in the first place! ;)

CompoundEyes 1y ago

I’m drafting policy at work with teammates about how we will handle pull requests with aggressive use of Claude Code. We are currently researching and piloting it. I am going to propose that no one should feel pressure to use any of the generative coding tools if they don't want to.

someuser2345 1y ago

> I believe the anger, if you distill it a bit, comes from an "unlevel" playing field, right? Why is "unlevel" in quotes? When it comes to physical activities, biological males have a huge advantage over biological females; high school boys routinely beat professional adult women's sport teams. > But, when students use AI, and if there are some students that don't, the playing field is "unlevel" there as well. The students that don't perhaps want to learn a craft rather than take a shortcut to getting a grade. I agree that this is a bigger problem than trans kids in sports. I think people are less upset about this because 1. It's a more recent development 2. They think that the kids using AI are actually putting themselves at a disadvantage, albeit one that will only become apparent after they graduate.