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Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

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Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#91

Post by andai »

I recently saw this video about how to use AI to enhance your learning instead of letting it do the work for you.[0]

"Get AI to force you to think, ask lots of questions, and test you."

It was based on this advice from Oxford University.[1]

I've been wondering how the same ideas could be tailored to programming specifically, which is more "active" than the conceptual learning these prompts focus on.

Some of the suggested prompts:

> Act as a Socratic tutor and help me understand X. Ask me questions to guide my understanding.

> Give me a multi-level explanation of X. First at the level of a child, then a high school student, and then an academic explanation.

> Can you explain X using everyday analogies and provide some real life examples?

> Create a set of practice questions about X, ranging from basic to advanced.

Ask AI to summarize a text in bullet points, but only after you've summarized it yourself. Otherwise you fail to develop that skill (or you start to lose it).

---

Notice that most of these increase the amount of work the student has to do! And they increase the energy level from passive (reading) to active (coming up with answers to questions).

I've been wondering how the same principles could be integrated into an AI-assisted programming workflow. i.e. advice similar to the above, but specifically tailored for programming, which isn't just about conceptual understanding but also an "activity".

Maybe before having AI generate the code for you, the AI could ask you for what you think it should be, and give you feedback on that?

That sounds good, but I think in practice the current setup (magical code autocomplete, and now complete auto-programmers) is way too convenient/frictionless, so I'm not sure how a "human-in-the-loop" approach could compete for the average person, who isn't unusually serious about developing or maintaining their own cognitive abilities.

Any ideas?

---

[0] Oxford Researchers Discovered How to Use AI To Learn Like A Genius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPLPpz6dD3A

[1] Use of generative AI tools to support learning - Oxford University

https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/ai-st...

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#92

Post by jstummbillig »

usrbinbash wrote: post #81
motorest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. I am from the generation whose only options on the table were RTFM and/or read the source code. Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. Apparently SO is not a problem anymore, but chatbot…

> Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. No, it wasn't. What such comments were directed at, and with good reason, where 'SO-"Coders"', aka. people when faced with any problem, just googled a vague description of it, copypasted the code from the highest scoring SO answer into their project, and called it a day. SO is a valueable resource. AI Systems are a valueable resource.…

But skill will be needed. It's everything that is still necessary between nothing and (good) software existing. It will just rapidly be something that we are not used to, and the rate of change will be challenging, specially for those with specialized, hard earned skills and knowledge that become irrelevant.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#93

Post by stuaxo »

Funny, but expected when some chunk of the training data is forum posts like:

"Give me the code for"

"Do it yourself, this is homework for you to learn".

Prompt engineering is learning enough about a project to sound like an expert, them you will he closer to useful answers.

Alternatively - maybe if trying to get it to solve a homework like question, thus type of answer is more likely.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#94

Post by stavros »

solumunus wrote: post #58
cm2187 wrote: post #21

It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. Not even just about coding, about any other knowledge.

Please elaborate on what you think the issues will be? Why read documentation when you can simply ask questions and get better contextualised answers faster? Whatever edge issues manifest they will be eclipsed by greater productivity.

Because back in my day, we convinced ourselves that the effort was the goal, not the result.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#95

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #91

I recently saw this video about how to use AI to enhance your learning instead of letting it do the work for you.[0] "Get AI to force you to think, ask lots of questions, and test you." It was based on this advice from Oxford University.[1] I've been wondering how the same ideas could be tailored to programming specifically, which is more "active" than the conceptual learning these prompts focus on. Some of the sugge…

I think with programming, the same basic tension exists as with the smarter AI-enhanced approaches to conceptual learning: effectiveness is a function of effort, and the whole reason for the "AI epidemic" is that people are avoiding effort like the plague.

So the problem seems to boil down to, how can we convince everyone to go against the basic human (animal?) instinct to take the path of least resistance.

So it seems to be less about specific techniques and technologies, and more about a basic approach to life itself?

In terms of integrating that approach into your actual work (so you can stay sharp through your career), it's even worse, since doing things the human way doubles the time required (according to Microsoft), and adding little AI-tutor-guided coding challenges to enhance your understanding along the way increases that even further.

And in the context of "this feature needs to be done by Tuesday and all my colleagues are working 2-3x faster than me (because they're letting AI do all the work)... you see what I mean! It systemically creates the incentive for everyone to let their cognitive abilities rapidly decline.

Edit: Reposted this at top-level, since I think it's more important than the "implementation details" I was responding to.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#96

Post by IanCal »

Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #70
cm2187 wrote: post #21

It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. Not even just about coding, about any other knowledge.

I recently interviewed a candidate with a degree in computer science. He was unable to explain to me how he would have implemented the Fibonacci sequence without chatGPT. We never got to the question of recursive or iterative methods. The most worrying thing is that the LLM were not very useful three years ago when he started university. So the situation is not going to improve.

This is just the world of interviewing though, it was the same a decade ago.

The reason we ask people to do fizzbuzz is often just to weed out the shocking number of people who cannot code at all.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#97

Post by ookblah »

motorest wrote: post #44
cm2187 wrote: post #21

It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. Not even just about coding, about any other knowledge.

> It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. I am from the generation whose only options on the table were RTFM and/or read the source code. Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. Apparently SO is not a problem anymore, but chatbot…

at risk of sounding like a grandpa this is nothing like SO. AI is just a tool for sure, one that "can" behave like an super enhanced SO and Google, but for the first time ever it can actually write for you and not just piddly lines but entire codebases.

i think that represents a huge paradigm shift that we need to contend with. it isn't just "better" research. and i say this as someone who welcomes all of this that has come.

IMO the skill gap just widens exponentially now. you will either have the competent developers who use these tools accelerate their learning and/or output some X factor, and on the other hand you will have literally garbage being created or people who just figure out they can now expend 1/10 the effort and time to do something and just coast, never bother to even understand what they wrote.

just encountered that with some interviews where people can now scaffold something up in record time but can't be bothered to refine it because they don't know how. (ex. you have someone prompting to create some component and it does it in a minute. if you request a tweak, because they don't understand it they just keep trying re-prompt and micromanage the LLM to get the right output when it should only take another minute for someone experienced.)

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#98

Post by asddubs »

jstummbillig wrote: post #89
Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently interviewed a candidate with a degree in computer science. He was unable to explain to me how he would have implemented the Fibonacci sequence without chatGPT. We never got to the question of recursive or iterative methods. The most worrying thing is that the LLM were not very useful three years ago when he started university. So the situation is not going to improve.

But it is. Some knowledge and questions are simply increasingly outdated. If the (correct) answer on how to implement Fibonacci is one LLM query away, then why bother knowing? Why should a modern day web developer be able to write assembly code, when that is simply abstracted away? I think it will be a hot minute before nothing has to be known and all human knowledge is irrelevant, but, specially in CS, there is goin…

the point is that it's an easy problem that basically demonstrates you know how to write a loop (or recursion), not the sequence itself

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#99

Post by TeMPOraL »

andyferris wrote: post #59
opan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues I see are that private chats are information blackholes whereas public stuff like SO can show up in a search and help more than just the original asker (can also be easily referenced / shared). Also the fact that these chatbots are wrong / make stuff up a lot.

I had never thought about that - I guess the privacy cuts both ways.

That's not really a problem with LLMs, which are trained on material that is, or was, otherwise accessible on the Internet, and they themselves remain accessible.

No, the problem is created and perpetuated by people defaulting to building communities around Discord servers or closed WhatsApp groups. Those are true information black holes.

And yes, privacy and commons are in opposition. There is a balance to be had. IMHO, in the past few years, we've overcorrected way too much in the privacy direction.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#100

Post by MrMcCall »

stuaxo wrote: post #93

Funny, but expected when some chunk of the training data is forum posts like: "Give me the code for" "Do it yourself, this is homework for you to learn". Prompt engineering is learning enough about a project to sound like an expert, them you will he closer to useful answers. Alternatively - maybe if trying to get it to solve a homework like question, thus type of answer is more likely.

I shudder to think that all these LLMs were trained on internet comments.

Of course, only the sub-intelligent would train so-called "intelligence" on the mostly less-than-intelligent, gut-feeling-without-logic folks' comments.

It's like that ancient cosmology with turtles all the way down, except this is dumbasses, very confident dumbasses who have lots of cash.

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