Coping with Copilot

I'm going to answer these individually because the answers are all different.

> a) everything Copilot is currently capable of can be found in libraries,

The vast majority, perhaps not 100%.

> b) learning how to do those things oneself is a waste of time

It's a waste of time if the pupil doesn't actually want to do it. If they do want to do it, there's probably quite a bit of value to be had. It's personal value for the student, not as a field.

Sort of like how I got quite a bit of value out of reading the old ITS documentation I found on github once, but I don't think I'd recommend it as part of the standard CS curriculum.

> c) it does not matter if people entering industry as software developers cannot do that themselves.

Correct. Assuming cannot means "without googling".

> My point is that even if this is the case for a majority of such people, we still need the people who make all the library contents that are beyond Coplilot's capabilities, and we both seem to agree that its capabilities are limited.

Sure, but that's a relatively small number of people. My point is that if using these tasks to measure aptitude is causing you problems because copilot exists, it's perfectly fine to just use something else.

> The thing is, a world in which a lot of people can be productive software developers, without even being capable of writing the sort of algorithms Copilot is capable of, is highly dependent on the people who design and write the libraries that implement not only those algorithms, but also a great deal else that is beyond Copilot's capabilities. The industry may not need everyone to be able to do that, but then it is entirely dependent on those who can.

Fair, but that's already the situation we're in with programming languages. We're entirely dependent on those as a field, and the vast majority of practitioners wouldn't be able to create a compiler or be anywhere near competent in language design. I would put the large frameworks (e.g. spring) in the same category.

These trivial algorithms become like the opcodes for a particular processor. Someone has to know them, but basically everybody not working on a compiler can ignore it (unless it particularly tickles your fancy).

I do have one small issue with your wording, however. Specifically the use of the word "capable" in this bit:

> without even being capable of writing the sort of algorithms Copilot is capable of

The people going into the field definitely need to be capable of implementing these sorts of algorithms. You're going to fail at so much of software if you aren't capable of something that trivial. It just doesn't need to be taught. These algorithms can be looked up if they're ever required. The ones that come up frequently will be naturally memorized and the others won't. This is a field where you have to learn new things, often without any sort of available expert in the subject, likely this will happen with an entire language or how to use a particular library.

I'm comfortable with copilot the same way I am comfortable with a calculator. Sure, if you have to, you should be able to do a logarithm with a slide rule, but I'm ok with not teaching university students how to use a slide rule. And if a professor assigned a bunch of homework under the assumption that students were going to use a sliderule, and the students all used calculators, I'd tell them to just drop that particular lesson.

And it’s at best questionable whether copilot is derivative of the code it is trained on.

> techniques inspired by genetic programming with domain-specific knowledge to effectively undermine plagiarism detectors.

My creaky memory of CS Theory makes me suspect that, ultimately, Mr. Turing's halting problem may make resistance to cheating futile. [1] It's interesting that the paper is in OOPSLA, I used to follow the work from it more, especially when I listened to IEEE's Software Engineering Radio.

Thanks for your work in this area and your reply. DieHard and DieHarder are funny, creative names for fault tolerant memory managers. It's also nice to see a fellow humorist. At least we can rest assured that cheaters get what they deserve, like my classmate at Columbia. [2]

Regards.

[1] > He, for one, welcomes our new AI overlords.

Yes, let's suggest a Borg-like partnership with them. I'd be willing to drive "self-driving-car" tow truck--if they haven't invented a self-driving one yet.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32532896