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To my students

ozark.hendrix.edu

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Re: To my students

#211

Post by kyleee »

flowerbreeze wrote: post #196
beej71 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those people are going to be the absolute most dangerous possible thing you can do to a company. I hear you, but here's the thing: the companies don't give a shit about software quality any farther than it takes to keep you coming back as a customer. And it's actually been like this for a long time. They're going to hire people who can ship who-cares-how-buggy software as fast as possible. It's better for the botto…

It is rather backwards. I've not seen things quite as bad as interviewers wanting to know how many agents you can run, but the attitude of "launch & fix later" is always present and kind of depressing. Then I think of the companies (not necessarily software) that have had long term success and their products have been quite high quality at least at some point in time. The count of genAI instances someone can keep in…

Making the product actually work can be a fast follow

Re: To my students

#212

Post by bdelmas »

saadn92 wrote: post #59
cdfalcon wrote: post #19

There's something so off-putting about academics giving industry advice when they haven't spent a day working as an engineer at a company. > Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. Outside of the bit on avoiding cutt…

What gets me is the craft point. I've shipped more useful software in the last year than probably the previous five combined, and most of that is because I stopped treating code as the artifact and started treating the product as the artifact. The craft moved up a layer. > until it is clear and elegant New grads who spend weeks refactoring code are going to get lapped by new grads who ship something and iterate. Ther…

> New grads who spend weeks refactoring code are going to get lapped by new grads who ship something and iterate. There's just a faster feedback loop now.

With AI becoming so prevalent, on the long run I won’t be so sure. True experts will become more and more rare.

Re: To my students

#213

Post by oxag3n »

Being part of academia while few family members faang-ish, I see comments to this post are amusingly resembling debates we have - I'm in for deep thinking, research and analysis with code being a product of your mental work, while family members with 10+ years in the industry are proud of not writing a single line of code and thinking Opus is just their new tool to be more productive. They can't answer one simple question though - why those corporations need them in this working setup. It's a hard one because my family well-being depends on it and it doesn't look good.

Re: To my students

#214

Post by strange_quark »

simonw wrote: post #182
strange_quark wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't need computer science professors to like LLMs, but I still want them to be able to poke at them with a stick without feeling like they are violating their principles regarding energy usage and unlicensed training data. Why? Language models are interesting from a technical perspective, but so are tons of areas of CS. There's nothing inherently virtuous about using an LLM.

I think LLMs are the most fascinating new piece of computer science to come along in at least the past decade. The academic field of computer science pretty much started as an exploration into whether machines could be built that could understand human language. The Turing test dates back to Turing!

> I think LLMs are the most fascinating new piece of computer science to come along in at least the past decade.

Agree to disagree.

> The academic field of computer science pretty much started as an exploration into whether machines could be built that could understand human language.

No? CS started as an offshoot of applied mathematics and physics. The study of formal logic, algorithms, digital circuits, etc. predates Turing by centuries. Hell, even the Turing machine predates the Turing test by a couple decades.

Re: To my students

#215

Post by tptacek »

strange_quark wrote: post #214
simonw wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think LLMs are the most fascinating new piece of computer science to come along in at least the past decade. The academic field of computer science pretty much started as an exploration into whether machines could be built that could understand human language. The Turing test dates back to Turing!

> I think LLMs are the most fascinating new piece of computer science to come along in at least the past decade. Agree to disagree. > The academic field of computer science pretty much started as an exploration into whether machines could be built that could understand human language. No? CS started as an offshoot of applied mathematics and physics. The study of formal logic, algorithms, digital circuits, etc. predat…

Wait, really? Say more about the disagreement? That's interesting. Even LLM skeptics I've talked to are still shocked at how far transformers can get you.

Re: To my students

#216

Post by strange_quark »

tptacek wrote: post #215
strange_quark wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think LLMs are the most fascinating new piece of computer science to come along in at least the past decade. Agree to disagree. > The academic field of computer science pretty much started as an exploration into whether machines could be built that could understand human language. No? CS started as an offshoot of applied mathematics and physics. The study of formal logic, algorithms, digital circuits, etc. predat…

Wait, really? Say more about the disagreement? That's interesting. Even LLM skeptics I've talked to are still shocked at how far transformers can get you.

I guess it depends how you define fascinating. I think there's certainly aspects of ML that I find fascinating, but I don't think that LLMs specifically are actually that interesting. In fairness, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't surprised that you could get this far with the transformer. On the other hand, it's shouldn't be that surprising that if you can mobilize an Iraq war's level of money and a bunch of smart people to work on one specific thing, you can muscle basically anything into existence.

But back to the GP comment: I'm still not sure why a CS prof necessarily needs to be able to poke at LLMs at all. There are plenty of other areas of CS that are worth exploring. And if it's not possible to make a good LLM without violating your principles, well, then maybe they aren't such a worthwhile piece of technology.

Re: To my students

#218

Post by cpill »

saadn92 wrote: post #59
cdfalcon wrote: post #19

There's something so off-putting about academics giving industry advice when they haven't spent a day working as an engineer at a company. > Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. Outside of the bit on avoiding cutt…

What gets me is the craft point. I've shipped more useful software in the last year than probably the previous five combined, and most of that is because I stopped treating code as the artifact and started treating the product as the artifact. The craft moved up a layer. > until it is clear and elegant New grads who spend weeks refactoring code are going to get lapped by new grads who ship something and iterate. Ther…

yeah, but everyone can use the coding agents, not everyone can choose well. the rarer the skill the more you get paid for it. also, the better you code the better the results you get from the agent

Re: To my students

#219

Post by pickleRick243 »

strange_quark wrote: post #117
simonw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remain hopeful that some day someone will train an LLM which is tolerable to people who take this stance (which I respect, much like I respect food vegetarians despite not being one myself). I've been tracking models trained entirely on out-of-copyright data, for example. I've not yet seen one of those which appears generally useful and didn't chuck in a scrape of the web or get fine-tuned on examples generated by…

I don't get why it's so hard for you and others in this comment section to understand why people hate AI so much because it's not just the theft and environmental destruction. A college professor, especially one at a liberal arts school, is obviously not going to like something that enables you to outsource your thinking and steals your agency. I think that's a perfectly valid viewpoint; maybe talk to someone without…

I don't see how "wordcel" brain is bigger on thinking and agency than "shape rotator" brain unless you have a very biased view of what each is.

Also, it really doesn't matter who does or doesn't hate AI. It's like the automobile- it's inevitable and society will adapt to its endemic use.

Re: To my students

#220

Post by cdot2 »

MattyRad wrote: post #189
cdot2 wrote: post #51

"where technology is used to distract, extract, surveil, and kill" The first general purpose, programmable computer was designed in 1945 to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army and was immediately used to help design nuclear weapons. Computers and all technology has always been, and will always be, used as a weapon (either directly or indirectly).

See below that: 'Don't believe self-serving lies about technologies being "inevitable" or "here to stay". You don't have to just go along with the dominant narrative. You can make deliberate choices and help others to do the same.'

What technology has been invented and abandoned due to moral reasons?
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