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Coping with Copilot

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Re: Coping with Copilot

#121

Post by bcrosby95 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #82
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #71

While it is true code pilot is quite amazing and can produce some very decent snippets, if the exercice you give is specific enought (using a special database schema, file format, or API), with objectives that are not common (ask the user specific questions, and draw conclusions out of it or react to events), then it cannot produce a fully working program. I use code pilot regularly now, and it does speed up my work,…

As I moved as well, I experienced three different Canadian universities' Computer Science Program. There was only one professor and course that I still remember 20 years later: CS408, Software Engineering, Professor Wortman, UofToronto. Class project was in four phases, cumulative (basic functionality for the application in phase 1, progressively additional functionality in other phases, frequently strongly interacti…

My software engineering teacher did something similar. We had a giant group project that had to be worked on by the whole class. He split the class into 5 groups of 5, and we divided the work by group, and groups had to work together to integrate with each other.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#122

Post by t_mann »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #89

I understand the problem here and I sympathize with professors in these circumstances. Learning the fundamentals will remain important. But as others have pointed out: if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run. One thing tho is that things like Copilot put the lie to the hypothesis (propagated mostly by the Google-style job interview) that intensely codi…

Leetcode interviews have maybe just become an example for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law - as long as people aren't aware, it's a great signal, but after people catch onto it, it becomes a measure of something else

Re: Coping with Copilot

#123

Post by cmrdporcupine »

thefourthchime wrote: post #99
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #89

I understand the problem here and I sympathize with professors in these circumstances. Learning the fundamentals will remain important. But as others have pointed out: if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run. One thing tho is that things like Copilot put the lie to the hypothesis (propagated mostly by the Google-style job interview) that intensely codi…

I've been writing code for nearly as long and man, you have to try it. It's more like autocomplete on roids than something that generates Fibonacci methods automagically.

I will try it at some point, but I have... feelings... about its abuse of open source licenses software as a learning set.

Also I work in Rust these days, and use CLion. Not sure if it would be much help in that environment.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#125

Post by croes »

spcebar wrote: post #11

Cheating is getting easier by the day, but the bottom line is that if the student is cheating, they're probably not absorbing the coursework (or if they are cheating and absorbing the coursework, there might be something wrong with the coursework). The most effective policy might not be to try and mechanically prevent cheating, but to explain that, this is information that you're going to need if you actually want to…

At the end if the it is to get a job. And cheating students often get better grades as most other students who don't cheat.

They may lose in the long run, but the non cheaters aren't even allowed to run

Re: Coping with Copilot

#126

Post by tgv »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #89

I understand the problem here and I sympathize with professors in these circumstances. Learning the fundamentals will remain important. But as others have pointed out: if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run. One thing tho is that things like Copilot put the lie to the hypothesis (propagated mostly by the Google-style job interview) that intensely codi…

> if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run

That's a very limited, and dismissive view. If you allow students to use copilot, you're handing out certificates or diplomas to people who can't code. That will very quickly erode the value of your institute's certification, and with it, that of the other students. Otherwise, why not give everyone an MSc in CS? "It'll only hurt themselves in the long run".

> coding clever for-loops to perform algorithmic magic

A for loop for searching or summation is not algorithmic magic.

> maybe we should be measuring based on something else

No, why? Students have to understand the fundamentals. What those fundamentals are depends on the expertise. Once you've shown mastery, you can use more advanced tools. Teaching has always been like this, and for a good reason.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#127

Post by [deleted] »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #4

Just add a requirement where the student has to explain how the code works. To be honest there should be a class called language model querying because for simple tasks it does well but eventually you will have to debug the output (not just copilot but GPT3 and dall-e).

[deleted]

Re: Coping with Copilot

#128

Post by glacials »

ALittleLight wrote: post #111
thefourthchime wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been writing code for nearly as long and man, you have to try it. It's more like autocomplete on roids than something that generates Fibonacci methods automagically.

I've used Copilot for a little while. I'm away from my computer at the moment but I'm very confident it would generate Fibonacci methods.

I don’t think they mean that it can’t, just that the better way to think about the advantages it gives an experienced engineer is more along the lines of “autocomplete v2”, i.e. a keystroke-saver.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#129

Post by x86x87 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #89

I understand the problem here and I sympathize with professors in these circumstances. Learning the fundamentals will remain important. But as others have pointed out: if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run. One thing tho is that things like Copilot put the lie to the hypothesis (propagated mostly by the Google-style job interview) that intensely codi…

The grind you have to go through in a "google style" interview has nothing to do with the actual work you normally do. It's done to show 1) you will do large amounts of boring work without questioning the need for it 2) you got the fundamentals and you know what's there / when using something you can grok what's going on under the covers. Nobody needs to implement a sorting algorithm until they do - the risk of NIH and reinventing the wheel is high. When you do you need to have a good understanding of why

Re: Coping with Copilot

#130

Post by [deleted] »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #89

I understand the problem here and I sympathize with professors in these circumstances. Learning the fundamentals will remain important. But as others have pointed out: if students are unwilling to learn, or are taking shortcuts, it will ultimately hurt them in the long run. One thing tho is that things like Copilot put the lie to the hypothesis (propagated mostly by the Google-style job interview) that intensely codi…

[deleted]
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