Comment by bradley13

Comment by bradley13 a day ago

The author is already an experienced programmer. Let me toss in an anecdote about the next generation of programmers. Vibe coding: also called playing pinball with the AI, hoping something useful comes out.

I taught a lecture in my first-semester programming course yesterday. This is in a program for older students, mostly working while going back to school. Each time, a few students are selected to present their code for an exercise that I pick randomly from those they were assigned.

This guy had fancy slides showing his code, but he was basically just reading the code off the page. So I ask him: “hey, that method you call, what exactly does it do?”.

Um…

So I ask "Ok, the result from that method is assigned to a variable. What kind of variable is it?" Note that this is Java, the data type is explicitly declared, so the answer is sitting there on his slide.

Um…

So I tear into him. You got this from ChatGPT. That’s fine, if you need the help, but you need to understand what you get. Otherwise you’ll never get a job in IT.

His answer: “I already have a job in IT.”

Fsck. There is your vibe coder. You really do not want them working on anything that you care about.

walleeee a day ago

This is one of the biggest dangers imo. While I agree with the OP about the deflation of joy in experienced programmers, the related but more consequential effect seems to be dissuading people from learning. A generational threat to collective competence and a disservice to students and teachers everywhere

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z_open a day ago

Does your course not have exams or in-lab assignments? Should sort itself out. Honestly, I'm all for homework fading away as professors can't figure out how to prevent people from using AI. It used to be the case that certain kids could get away with not doing much because they were popular enough to get people to let them copy their assignments (at least for certain subjects). Eventually the system will realize they can't detect AI and everything has to be in-person.

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bradley13 a day ago

Sure, this guy is likely to fail the course. The point is: he is already working in the field. I don't know his exact job, but if it involves programming, or even scripting, he is faking his way with AI, not understanding what he's doing. That is frightening.

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- cesarb a day ago
  
  > I don't know his exact job, but if it involves programming, or even scripting, he is faking his way with AI, not understanding what he's doing. That is frightening.
  That could be considered malpractice. I know our profession currently doesn't have professional standards, but it's just a side effect of it being very new and not yet solidified; it won't be long until some duty of care becomes required, and we're already starting to see some movement in that direction, with things like the EU CRA.
  
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