Is AI an Excuse for Not Learning To Code? (acm.org) 133
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Y Combinator founder Paul Graham last week took to Twitter to lament those who use AI or other excuses for not learning to code. "A generation ago some people were saying there was no point in learning to program because all the programming jobs would be outsourced to India," Graham wrote. "Now they're saying you don't need to because AI will do it all. If you don't want to learn to program, you can always find a reason."
BloomTech Coding Bootcamp CEO Austen Allred this week doubled-down on Graham's tweet, offering his own history of excuses people have made for not learning to code... Allred's tweet reads:
"Don't learn to code. Soon GUIs will do it all for you." — 1985
"Don't learn to code. Soon that will all be done offshore for pennies." — 2003
"Don't learn to code. Soon nocode tools will do it all for you." — 2015
"Don't learn to code. Soon AI will do it all for you." — 2023
Among the many retweeting Allred's cautionary message was Code.org, the tech-backed nonprofit that aims to make computer science a high school graduation requirement by 2030, whose CEO also replied to Graham with a reassuring tweet suggesting people's days of being able to avoid learning to code will soon be over. "Now that 27 states require that every school must teach computer science, and 7 states require a CS course to graduate high school," explained Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, "the argument is basically behind us. Computer science won."
On a related note, this month in Communications of the ACM, a CS professor shared their own contrary opinion about the possibility of a professional programmer using AI assistants to do a better job.
"It doesn't work." I would love to have an assistant who keeps me in check, alerting me to pitfalls and correcting me when I err. A effective pair-programmer. But that is not what I get. Instead, I have the equivalent of a cocky graduate student, smart and widely read, also polite and quick to apologize, but thoroughly, invariably, sloppy and unreliable. I have little use for such supposed help...
Fascinating as they are, AI assistants are not works of logic; they are works of words. Large language models: smooth talkers (like the ones who got all the dates in high school). They have become incredibly good at producing text that looks right. For many applications that is enough. Not for programming.
BloomTech Coding Bootcamp CEO Austen Allred this week doubled-down on Graham's tweet, offering his own history of excuses people have made for not learning to code... Allred's tweet reads:
"Don't learn to code. Soon GUIs will do it all for you." — 1985
"Don't learn to code. Soon that will all be done offshore for pennies." — 2003
"Don't learn to code. Soon nocode tools will do it all for you." — 2015
"Don't learn to code. Soon AI will do it all for you." — 2023
Among the many retweeting Allred's cautionary message was Code.org, the tech-backed nonprofit that aims to make computer science a high school graduation requirement by 2030, whose CEO also replied to Graham with a reassuring tweet suggesting people's days of being able to avoid learning to code will soon be over. "Now that 27 states require that every school must teach computer science, and 7 states require a CS course to graduate high school," explained Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, "the argument is basically behind us. Computer science won."
On a related note, this month in Communications of the ACM, a CS professor shared their own contrary opinion about the possibility of a professional programmer using AI assistants to do a better job.
"It doesn't work." I would love to have an assistant who keeps me in check, alerting me to pitfalls and correcting me when I err. A effective pair-programmer. But that is not what I get. Instead, I have the equivalent of a cocky graduate student, smart and widely read, also polite and quick to apologize, but thoroughly, invariably, sloppy and unreliable. I have little use for such supposed help...
Fascinating as they are, AI assistants are not works of logic; they are works of words. Large language models: smooth talkers (like the ones who got all the dates in high school). They have become incredibly good at producing text that looks right. For many applications that is enough. Not for programming.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is all.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
I can't agree more. Can't mod point you because I said the same myself.
If we educate our young people to rely on large language model datasets, rather than teaching them the core basics, society is screwed. AI is just a tool for educated people to use, not a solution
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Society will not be screwed. There have always been geeks who learned to code because they wanted to, not because the school pushed it on them. Their numbers have not shrunk.
And intelligent adults can learn to code even if they didn't learn it in school.
If there is a shortage of coders, demand will go up, pushing salaries up, creating incentive for people to learn the trade.
Of course, it would be better to teach kids to code. But the world won't end if we don't.
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That is all.
This ^
Yes (Score:2)
If you want an excuse to not learn to code, anything works. Leaves more jobs for those who like to code. (That may be a problem too, but that problem will exist in a very large number of fields.)
No Arithmetic or Writing either? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: No. (Score:2)
How about we wait for, oh, I don't know, the second or third generation LLMs before drawing such sweeping conclusions?
These threads always sound like a bunch of hipsters sitting around complaining that their talking dogs can't even pass the LSAT or the MCAT. Give it time.
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The end-of-programming as we know it goes back before the first citation given in 1985. Anyone remember The Last One from 1981, the last program you'll ever need because it generates anything you want for you?
Arguably, things like 1952's Autocode also fit the bill, although it'd be barely recognisable today.
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We also take math... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to take math courses, but calculators and computer programs do all that work for us as adults. You don't always learn things for the immediately obvious use.
Learning to program teaches you to approach projects of all kinds with a certain mindset - breaking it down into manageable pieces that have to fit into the overall plan. It's teaching you logical problem analysis. I don't care if AI makes programming irrelevant at all levels tomorrow, I'd still want my kids to learn to write a basic (not necessarily BASIC!) program.
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We make high school kids suffer through a bunch of subjects that probably aren't going to be applicable to them later in life, yes. Coding should be something every student is at least exposed to the fundamentals of, certainly, but the decision to continue down that career path should ultimately rest with the individual. Of course, I personally felt that same way about athletics, but public schools ram that crap down your throat too despite the fact that the vast majority of students will never be profess
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The thing is, PE really is important for everyone, but the way it's taught isn't appropriate for most people.
I also think that programming is really important for everyone, but most people don't need the approach that is optimal for professionals. (I think that professionals should learn at least one assembly language.) For most people, something like a developed form of Scratch should suffice, or perhaps they should learn Squeak. And maybe everyone should start that way, and then decide if they want to
Re: We also take math... (Score:2)
Physical education is a human health issue. If you're not doing a regular rou5of light exercise for a 30 minutes a few times a week then you failed to take away anything valuable from your elementary to high school PE class.
For younger students PE offers a way to teach social skills such as how to work together, especially to some personality types that don't take to being forced to sit inactive at a lecture for hours.
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Here's hoping AI makes calculus obsolete, at least.
Re:We also take math... (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it help quickly whip up side projects, and take care some of the more mundane boring work? Yes.
From what I've seen, LLM's like ChatGPT create at least as much work as they save. I routinely see it spew out broken code on many iterations of the same request. Quite frankly, it really, really sucks at generating working code; much less good working code.
I would not be the least bit surprised to find it outputting complete copies of GPL code (a lot of what it trained on is GPL code), all the while claiming otherwise.
Even for small side projects, it's a legal (and functional) disaster in the making.
Re: We also take math... (Score:2)
Noticed this as well with some of the devs I know in-person.
The novelty and appeal of AI-generated code went away pretty quickly when we all realized that the time saved from making code led to more time spent doing glorified code reviews.
Nocode takes the cake (Score:2)
RPA is fucking awful. Before I started software development in earnest, I was doing work with that, and it was a pain in the ass. Not only could I do the same stuff in regular scripting languages much faster, but it didn't need all of that other shit with it, and I didn't need to hunt for things inside of endless menus.
AI will be directly responsible for (Score:2)
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It will definitely do that. But it will not because they do not learn to code anymore.
Don't learn code because.... (Score:3)
Some fuckwit billionaire just bought your company and is making you work 16hrs to get a cutesy loading animation to work right after laying off your entire department.
Coding is by definition a continuum (Score:2)
Assembly/Compiled code/scripts ...
Various language innovations
Reusing your own old code that you don't remember what it is exactly
Libraries
Copy and pasting
AI fits into this, it's one more layer of abstraction, one more layer of "tooling," one more shortcut with it's own benefits and dangers.
So don't, please (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone doesn't want to learn, then they shouldn't. There are already way too many incompetent, unmotivated, uninterested programmers out there.
Find a career you like, one you are actually good at. Programming isn't for everyone...
Re: So don't, please (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
The valid "excuse" - and really, why is it an excuse? Is there an excuse for not becoming a gymnast, or a photorealistic painter? - is that you don't have the bent for it.
I'd say 9 out of 10 might as well not bother and 1 out of 100 can be really, really good (and that leaves room for a smaller fraction of "great").
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Indeed. Now, if this were about learning to read or doing basic math, then yes, you would need a valid excuse to not learn it and not knowing it would still screw you over. But coding is a specialized engineering skill, not something an educated person needs to know.
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Computers have become such an essential part of daily life and programming has such broad applicability that it only makes sense to teach basic programming the same way we teach other basic skills. We used to understand this. In the 80's we had BASIC program listings in just about everything for kids from textbooks to story books.
Programming isn't a difficult skill to learn. Young children can, and very often do, teach themselves. Any child of normal intelligence can learn how to write computer programs
Re: So don't, please (Score:4, Insightful)
I said "9 of 10 might as well not bother" but in NO WAY am I opposed to everyone learning or trying coding. It's a wonderful thing, and good for stretching one's brain.
But I think there definitely IS a bent for it. And that affects whether you'll be any good at it. You can learn and have a greater understanding, in the same way that you could learn carpentry and understand it and be someone whom I'd on no account hire.
For UX pros (and I am one, who writes in Python, JavaScript, C, for fun) I think exposure to coding is a matter of learning the material of one's craft (in the way that a sculptor needs to "know" stone).
So yes, by all means, try out coding. But there are people who will get it, and people who will not.
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I said "9 of 10 might as well not bother" but in NO WAY am I opposed to everyone learning or trying coding
I'm glad for that. There are a lot of programmers here that are adamantly opposed to other people learning how to program.
I'm not sure what you mean by "9 of 10 might as well not bother". If you mean that 90% of people aren't capable, I would very strongly disagree. If you mean that there are some people who won't enjoy it and won't bother to put those skills to productive use, then my only quibble would be with the percentage. Though that's true of any subject.
But I think there definitely IS a bent for it. And that affects whether you'll be any good at it.
Any ordinary person can learn how to write
Re: So don't, please (Score:4, Insightful)
Well where I come down is this: there are skills, and there is talent. Skills can be taught, talent mainly encouraged.
Me and guitar, f.e.: I've been taught the skills to play, as anyone can, but I haven't really shown the talent to take off and fly. Yes, I can play a few songs to entertain, but there's a difference that few ever master that makes a really good player.
It's true that anyone can be taught skills. But something more is required for true, deep competence.
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It's true that anyone can be taught skills.
That's my point
But something more is required for true, deep competence.
That something is called effort. Most people don't know what it means to put real effort into something, so they excuse their own failings as a lack of talent.
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You use kitchen knifes, right? Do you think everybody should learn blacksmithing?
Also, "coding" is not engineering. To claim such a thing is an insult to actual engineers. You wouldn't call a checkout clerk a mathematician, would you?
So that is why you think coding is easy. You have no idea what it actually is. In actual reality, coding is engineering.
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You use kitchen knifes, right? Do you think everybody should learn blacksmithing?
Can blacksmithing benefit the average person in both their personal and professional life? Programming absolutely can, which is why so many working professionals pick up that skill.
So that is why you think coding is easy. You have no idea what it actually is. In actual reality, coding is engineering.
If you think "coding" is anything like engineering, you don't understand the first thing about engineering, as any actual engineer who can program will be happy to tell you.
This is pretty funny. There are quite a few people trying to distinguish "programming" from "software engineering" as though that had any meaning. The most
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I am not an engineer. I have worked with engineers and have friends who are engineers (EEs and MEs). What they do and what programmers do isn't even remotely comparable. I liken a programmer calling themselves an "engineer" to stolen valor. It diminished the work and accomplishments of actual engineers.
I have also done work that some people here would to liken to engineering, writing software where guarantees had to be made about things like memory use, execution time, and tolerance. I've also done very
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You use kitchen knifes, right? Do you think everybody should learn blacksmithing?
Can blacksmithing benefit the average person in both their personal and professional life? Programming absolutely can, which is why so many working professionals pick up that skill.
That is just a claim. Got any citation for it? Because I do not see it at all. The only people I see needing coding skills are IT professionals, and not even all of them need or have those. And when I look at the people in my circle of friends that are not IT experts, I find none at all that would need any coding. Also remember I am talking not about some simplistic scripting here, like a 2 liner excel macro or the like. I am talking about writing Software, as the story does.
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Got any citation for it? Because I do not see it at all.
Sure [nature.com], I [acm.org] can [biospace.com] do [kqed.org] a [medium.com] quick [bestcolleges.com] search [rasmussen.edu].
It's hard to think of an industry where being able to program isn't beneficial. From task automation to data analysis, the applications are seemingly limitless. Scientists often learn programming to make data analysis easier. Engineering applications should be obvious. Physicians can benefit as well, as you can see from some of those links. Even the average office drone can boost their productivity, and we have those in just about every industry. There are a few specific
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Programming isn't a difficult skill to learn. Young children can, and very often do, teach themselves. Any child of normal intelligence can learn how to write computer programs. Working professionals often learn how just to make it easier to do their jobs.
I find it strange that so many programmers are opposed to other people learning how to program. I suspect this is because they know that programming isn't difficult to learn and they're afraid that people won't think they're special if that skill is seen as something anyone can learn.
Doing it well - efficiently, smartly, in a way that is helpful to your customers or clients, isn't easy to learn. And not many people have the aptitude for it.
Sure, 10 print "Hello" 20 goto 10 is easy.
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Is that goalpost on roller skates? We're talking about learning to program here, which is absolutely easy to learn.
"Doing it well" after it 'clicks' is purely a matter of effort and experience, just like any other skill. As for that nonsense about "aptitude", programming is a learned skill, not an innate ability!
Sure, 10 print "Hello" 20 goto 10 is easy.
You've confused several things, I suspect purposefully. If you're not going to even attempt honest discussion, I'm going to consider this a concession.
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Is that goalpost on roller skates? We're talking about learning to program here, which is absolutely easy to learn.
"Doing it well" after it 'clicks' is purely a matter of effort and experience, just like any other skill. As for that nonsense about "aptitude", programming is a learned skill, not an innate ability!
Sure, 10 print "Hello" 20 goto 10 is easy.
You've confused several things, I suspect purposefully. If you're not going to even attempt honest discussion, I'm going to consider this a concession.
Yeah, if you are going to deny even the existence of aptitude, then I would agree that there is not much to discuss.
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You're right, the question as stated here has some nasty assumptions, like working with code is hard or undesirable. I learned to code because I was and will always be fascinated by computers. If that's not your motivation, well, there are plenty of other fields of study you can pursue. We don't want you.
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Indeed. Or rather, programming is for only few people. I mean, I know competent MA and PhD level Mathematicians that cannot really do it. Coding is a specialized engineering skill than needs specific talents for you to ever be good at it. And do not even try to make it a career without being pretty good at it. Your salary will syck, your job may go away at any time without warning and you will be treated like crap.
Now, if you are competent, have the right talents, find it rewarding, can communicate with peo
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Indeed. Or rather, programming is for only few people. I mean, I know competent MA and PhD level Mathematicians that cannot really do it.
I've seen mathematicians that claim they can't program as well, but they're operating under the mistaken belief that professionals would see countless flaws and would have produced code of higher quality. Being educated people, they are aware that even though they can write programs, there is a lot about programming that they don't know. Given the trash I've seen "professionals" produce, I'd say they are dramatically underestimating their ability.
This idea that programming takes a "special mind" is silly
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Also, programming is not engineering.
Depends on what you are "programming".
I hardly remember any programming that was not engineering.
someone tweets something stupid (Score:2)
Gee, what a surprise! But if 'not learning to code' prevents more stupid ideas like Twitter, that would be a real feature.
Twitter and 'learn to code' are two sides of the same -limited attention span- that characterizes much of modern society. We can't have a real conversation about complex issues, all we can do is yell soundbites back and forth. That's particularly true in politics, but also in business and even software development. We can't conceive and develop large complex systems; we have to bre
Re: someone tweets something stupid (Score:2)
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You won't learn either the technical or the social skills from 6 weeks "learn to code" or from these other "shouting headlines" social media sites. Now my experience with liberal arts (I started as a double major, history & math) didn't bring forward much in the analysis or design realm, but I guess it helped my writing skills.
No (Score:2)
No.
I'm 40 years in this industry.
If you're making excuses (Score:2)
If you already don't see coding as something you enjoy enough to make it your 9-to-5, you probably shouldn't bother proceeding down that career path in the first place. I understand programming well enough to have written a few of my own applications, and I've hacked up a few decompiled Android apps as a hobby, but there's no way I'd be able to stand 40+ hours of staring at code that some boss wants me to work on.
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The assumption you're making is that learning a skill is pointless if you're not going to make a career out of it. That's absurd. There are lots of skills you have that you'll never use professionally, and skills that aren't essential for your career yet still benefit you in your profession.
Programming has such broad applicability that it will benefit anyone who learns how. Professionals in other fields often pick up programming to make their jobs easier. Given how easy it is to learn, there is absolu
There must be a psychoanalysis course (Score:2)
designed specifically to find out what your AI is doing.
Coding assistant (Score:2)
If an AI Chatbot can answer my questions about a coding problem and also help me to understand why that answer works, then I will use that service. Otherwise I write my own code.
Way back when (Score:4, Insightful)
Cobol was the excuse to not have to learn to code. You just write English sentences to describe the business logic and the computer does the rest.
Graphical languages like labview and plc ladders were also a popular excuse in the more techy corners of the world too. And I think I've spent more mental energy in my career trying to figure out ways of getting those things to do stuff that takes all of 100 lines of C than I might have saved myself in avoiding boilerplate using those things.
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The point of Ladder and PLCs is for end-user self support. I've bumped into way too many machines using complex PLC controls but with no access to the code.
Ladder is for complementing the equipment wiring diagrams it is supplementing. IOW, it is for electricians to use and reference. If they aren't the ones reading and/or writing the diagrams then it's a bad choice from the outset.
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BTW, Ladder is not in any way new. It goes right back to the days of relays - older than electronics even.
Re: Way back when (Score:2)
Yeah maybe that's the way it started. But you can do a lot with ladder logic that you can't do with physical wiring.
You can have flipflops, edge events, all the stuff you can do with a procedural programming language, except that what takes a few lines of code in a procedural language takes more than a few ladder rungs and fills up the whole screen.
And you know, the point of using a plc instead of physical relays and wiring is that you can take advantage of a programmable computer to do smart things like de
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The main point is it's drawn up as a wiring diagram for electricians to read and change as requested by the machine owner. Whether it be for fault finding or feature requests.
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Cobol was the excuse to not have to learn to code. You just write English sentences to describe the business logic and the computer does the rest.
That is complete nonsense.
COBOL is not written in english sentences and never was.
You should read some COBOL code once, or at least the Wikipedia article.
AI is a joke (Score:3)
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Well, ChatAI is a joke for pretty much anything. except simplistic search that goes a tiny bit beyond just keywords.
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Well, ChatAI is a joke for pretty much anything.
That's what more and more people are finally starting to realize.
except simplistic search that goes a tiny bit beyond just keywords.
This I'm not so sure about. I'm guessing you have something specific in mind?
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except simplistic search that goes a tiny bit beyond just keywords.
This I'm not so sure about. I'm guessing you have something specific in mind?
Not really. Some of my students had better success finding info with ChatGPT than with plain search. As plain search is pretty much maximally dumbed down these days, it seems plausible that ChatAI may do a bit better. But I may be wrong on that.
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That makes sense. My problem with using something like ChatGPT for search is that you can't trust the output. You know that as well as I do.
As for your student's experience, I'm guessing that "better success" means that they found reading a short answer to a direct question a lot easier than skimming through a bunch of articles hoping to find what they need.
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No idea. They did say that ChatGPT was useless to actually solve the exercise, which was a simple, generic firewall setting with NAT on Linux.
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Whatever it was, at least they found out that it can be useless in practice. Better to learn that now than when it really matters.
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short answer to a direct question a lot easier than skimming through a bunch of articles hoping to find what they need.
No, he most likely meant: search does no longer work.
You get different results for the same search, regarding on which country you are in, which browser you are using, your browsing history and which search links you actually followed and if you are logged in or not into google or any other social network.
I used to be pretty good in searching, regardless what I was looking for. But now I ge
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No, he most likely meant: search does no longer work.
Obviously not. Learn how to read.
Yes please (Score:4, Funny)
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Programming is a skill. Another poster here called it an art. Professional artists don't worry about kids learning how to draw. Why are so many professional programmers terrified by kids learning how to program?
I don't want to learn to code! (Score:2)
It's not very smart.. (Score:4, Insightful)
To rely on a massive pile of code you can't read or understand to be sure it is even right.
Nope (Score:2)
There is no excuse needed for not learning to code. Coding is a specialist skill and what you need is a good reason to learn it, not the other way round. You do not need an excuse to not learn brain surgery or how to build a house either, do you?
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Not many people need to perform brain surgery or build a whole house. However, everyone can benefit from being able to write computer programs.
Learning to program is easy and the benefits are immense. If you can benefit from using a computer, you can benefit from being able to program a computer.
Why are you so against people learning?
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I am against giving people just about enough knowledge to make them dangerous, but not enough to make them skillful. And no, learning to code is _not_ easy. Anybody that thinks that is part of the problem and you certainly are.
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no, learning to code is _not_ easy.
Nonsense. As evidence, I'll offer the countless millions of prepubescent children that have taught themselves over the last 40+ years.
I've said before that the learning curve is steep, but also very short. It "clicks" for most people in just a few days.
Anybody that thinks that is part of the problem
What "problem" would that be? It seems to me that most of the problems in software today come from misguided 'professionals' chasing fads, not from inexperienced beginners.
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no, learning to code is _not_ easy.
Nonsense. As evidence, I'll offer the countless millions of prepubescent children that have taught themselves over the last 40+ years.
I've said before that the learning curve is steep, but also very short. It "clicks" for most people in just a few days.
You obviously have never done code reviews and never looked at what makes so much modern software crappy, insecure, unreliable and unmaintainable. You may also have missed that this whole story is not about some simplistic scripting ability, but about writing actual production software.
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Go! goalpost, go!
Did you forget that we're talking about learning how to program? No, that can't be right. You're just trying to pretend that we're talking about something else because you've lost the argument.
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Also, nobody is against people learning
There are quite a few here.
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However, everyone can benefit from being able to write computer programs.
Only if they WANT to learn it. Not i they are forced against their will to learn it in school.
Because it only adds another BAD GRADE for no damn good reason into their grading papers.
I know hundreds of people who (would) have no benefit at all from knowing "how to program" - what ever that means in our time.
Most people are overwhelmed doing the most simplest things in Excel ... I doubt anyone of those would be happy to be forced "to le
Code code lines of code (Score:2)
All the tools, AI, ever-more concise syntax,etc. that the "tool people" obsess over counts for very little. AI can churn out all the lines of code you want. Understanding a complex problem and creating an effective, reliable, appropriate, and economical solution is a whole other set of skills that most "coders" barely ever seem to acquire.
Link to the tweek (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/paulg/stat... [twitter.com]
The link the the post is bad.
It merely assists, and that's good (Score:2)
"GitHub has said that in files where it's enabled, Copilot is responsible for upward of 40% of the written code. Engineers who spoke with Insider said it had already proved a major boon for productivity."
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Nobody needs an excuse... (Score:2)
Yes (Score:2)
Nobody learns logarithm tables by heart anymore nor uses slide-rules.
We have a watch for that.
Don't learn to code (Score:2)
You suck at coding.
Software development and productivity (Score:2)
I find it fascinating how software development manages to simply absorb productivity increases, by making the solution to the problem harder and harder. It seems like a problem that used to be solved in 1k lines of assembler in the 1970s, now is solved in 10k lines of "high-level" language code. Web applications are a particular example at this.
What's actually even more sad is that programmers still have to code "CRUD" endpoints even though that problem was already solved in 1995 "Delphi". There you could e
Don't learn to code (Score:2)
why ? (Score:2)
Why is there so much nonsense floating around about coding?
The last hype was teaching EVERYONE how to code. Now it's "AI will code for you". Both of these show complete ignorance to how the whole thing works.
Too many business clowns playing "make a wish" again? Or is it summer break already and newspapers dig out whatever they can find to fill headlines?
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Why is there so much nonsense floating around about coding?
Software developers cost much more than business owners would like them to cost. That creates friction: developers are picky and the rest is crabby about it all.
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CEOs cost a lot more than devs and there doesn't seem to be a problem paying them.
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The best reason... (Score:2)
Of course not (Score:2)
Of course it's no excuse for not learning to code.
That said - it has its uses.
But that is not what I get. Instead, I have the equivalent of a cocky graduate student, smart and widely read, also polite and quick to apologize, but thoroughly, invariably, sloppy and unreliable. I have little use for such supposed help...
Oh, I have some uses for it. Converting, say, lots of ancient php pages from using mysql to mysqli. On a lark, I pasted my prompt and sections of this stuff, and it's really quite good at it. I can easily see if it did it right, and it saves plenty of time.
Much as you might assign such a task to the cocky graduate student, eh? ;)
So yeah, it only works because I'm using it in small targeted ways, and I know what I'm doing. But i
Reminder: (Score:2)
A code generator (or, in this instance, a code-generating AI) will always produce code which is buggier than the generator.
Didn't we say this... (Score:2)
About JavaScript and Front-End development?
Generation vs. Validation (Score:2)
At best, these AI systems can generate code but not validate it. However, validation is already the harder part of programming. Making the easy part easier has limited benefits. Eventually you just have a backlog of unvalidated code.
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine what we could do with a Beowulf cluster of unfunny, repetitive jokes, you insensitive clod!