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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

#121

Post by sarchertech »

iddan wrote: post #82
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.

I’m 10 years in software and was never bothered to remember how to implement it the efficient way and I know many programmers who don’t know even the inefficient way but kick ass. I once got that question in an interview for a small startup and told the interviewer: with all due respect what does that have to do with the job I’m going to do and we moved on to the next question (still passed).

You don’t need to memorize how to compute a Fibonacci number. If you are a barely competent programmer, you should be capable of figuring it out once someone tells you the definition.

If someone tells you not to do it recursively, you should be able to figure that out too.

Interview nerves might get in your way, but it’s not a trick question you need to memorize.

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

#122

Post by TeMPOraL »

ghssds wrote: post #107
jstummbillig wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Some knowledge and questions are simply increasingly outdated.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…

Not outdated. If you know the answer on how to implement Fibonacci, you are doing it wrong. Inferring the answer from being told (or remembering) what is a Fibonacci number should be faster than asking an LLM or remembering it.

> Inferring the answer from being told (or remembering) what is a Fibonacci number should be faster than asking an LLM or remembering it.

Really?

If I were to rank the knowledge relevant to this task in terms of importance, or relevance to programming in general, I'd rank "remembering what a Fibonacci number is" at the very bottom.

Sure, it's probably important in some areas of math I'm not that familiar with. But between the fields of math and hard sciences I am familiar with, and programming as a profession, by far the biggest (if not the only) importance of Fibonacci sequence is in its recursive definition, particularly as the default introductory example of recursive computation. That's all - unless you believe in the mystic magic of the Golden Ratio nonsense, but that's another discussion entirely.

Myself, I remember what the definition is, because I involuntarily memorize trivia like this, and obviously because of Fibonacci's salad joke. But I wouldn't begrudge anyone in tech for not having that definition on speed-dial for immediate recall.

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

#123

Post by dijksterhuis »

iddan wrote: post #82
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.

I’m 10 years in software and was never bothered to remember how to implement it the efficient way and I know many programmers who don’t know even the inefficient way but kick ass. I once got that question in an interview for a small startup and told the interviewer: with all due respect what does that have to do with the job I’m going to do and we moved on to the next question (still passed).

i’m around 10 years as well and i can’t even remember how the fibonacci sequence progress off hand. I’d have to wikipedia it to even get started.

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

#124

Post by alonsonic »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #110
andai wrote: post #102

This isn’t just about individual laziness—it’s a systemic arms race towards intellectual decay.[0] With programming, the same basic tension exists as with the more effective 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…

> With programming, the same basic tension exists as with the more effective 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. That's not true. Yes, you can get more effective at something with more effort, but you can get even more effective at it if you find a way to get results…

It's ironic to see people say this type of things and not think about old software engineer practices that are now obsolete because overtime we have created more and more tools to simplify the craft. This is yet another step in that evolution. We are no longer using punch cards or writing assembly code, and we might not write actual code in the future anymore and just instruct ais to achieve goals. This is progress

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

#125

Post by vaylian »

ookblah wrote: post #97
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…

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 h…

> this is nothing like SO

Strong agree. There have been people who blindly copied answers from Stack Overflow without understanding the code, but most of us took the time to read the explanations that accompanied the answers.

While you can ask the AI to give you additional explanations, these explanations might be hallucinations and no one will tell you. On SO other people can point out that an answer or a comment is wrong.

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

#126

Post by orbital-decay »

Hah, that's typical Sonnet v2 for you. It's trained for shorter outputs, and it's causing it to be extremely lazy. It's a well known issue, and coding assistants contain mitigations for this. It's very reluctant to produce longer outputs, usually stopping mid-reply with something like "[Insert another 2k tokens of what you've been asking for, I've done enough]". Sonnet 3.7 seems to fix this.

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

#127

Post by protocolture »

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.

I interviewed a guy with a CCIE who couldnt detail what a port forward was. 3 years ago.

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

#128

Post by strken »

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.…

Yes, they were, for reasons that have turned out to be half-right and half-wrong. At least by some people. Ctrl-c ctrl-v programming was widely derided, but people were also worried about a general inability to RTFM.

I had the good fortune to work with a man who convinced me to go read the spec of some of the programming languages I used. I'm told this was reasonably common in the days of yore, but I've only rarely worked on a team with someone else who does it.

Reading a spec or manual helps me understand the language and aids with navigating the text later when I use it as documentation. That said, if all the other programmers can do their jobs anyway, is it really so awful for them to learn from StackOverflow and Google? Probably not.

I imagine the same is true of LLMs.

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

#130

Post by DanHulton »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #110
andai wrote: post #102

This isn’t just about individual laziness—it’s a systemic arms race towards intellectual decay.[0] With programming, the same basic tension exists as with the more effective 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…

> With programming, the same basic tension exists as with the more effective 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. That's not true. Yes, you can get more effective at something with more effort, but you can get even more effective at it if you find a way to get results…

_Kinda sorta?_

There's actually two things going on when I'm coding at work:

1) I'm writing the business code my company needs to enable a feature/fix a bug/etc. 2) I'm getting better as a programmer and as someone who understands our system, so that #1 happens faster and is more reliable next time.

Using AI codegen can (arguably, the jury is still out on this if we include total costs, not just the costs of this one PR) help with #1. But it _appreciably bad_ at #2.

In fact, the closest parallel for #2 I can think of us plagiarism in an academic setting. You didn't do the work, which means you didn't actually learn the material, which means this isn't actually progress (assuming we continue to value #2, and, again, arguably #1 as well), it is just a problem in disguise.

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