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"Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

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Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#121

Post by hn_acc1 »

timr wrote: post #82
hintymad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship. And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. Not the ones per Mark Trevor's words ( https://marktarver.com/professor.html ), of course, but a self-respecting university will train their students with progressively challenging and practical assignments. We started with implement…

> And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. I spent a good portion of my life in Universities -- and went as far as one can go in terms of educational credentials and taught at the university level -- and I cannot disagree more. Universities produce job skills incidentally , if at all. It's simply not their goal [1]. Even today, at the best CS programs in the country, it'…

I'll disagree with your "disagreement" - of course, I went to a relatively unique school: Waterloo computer engineering with co-op in the 90s. 8 study semesters, 6 work semesters. Clearly lets you see what "work" is like, and which parts of your studies seem relevant. Obviously, no one will use 100% of their engineering courses - they're designed to cover a lot of material but not specialize in anything.

True, grad school was focused on making professors - I did a master's, ended up being a lecturer for a while. Now a 20+ year software developer in the valley. But undergrad was focused on blending theoretical and practical skills. If they didn't, employers would have stopped coming back to hire co-op students, and would stop hiring the students at a high rate when they graduate.

I COULD have learned a lot of software myself - I was already coding in multiple languages before attending and had a side-software-contract before ever going in - and that was before the "web", so I had to buy and study books and magazines and I was able to do that reasonably well (IMHO).

Yet I never regretted my time in school. In fact, I had a job offer with my last employer before going back to grad school, and they hired me as a summer contractor at a very nice hourly rate back then.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#122

Post by jrowen »

Socrates expressed strong reservations about books and writing, primarily because he believed they weaken memory and true understanding, leading to a false sense of knowledge and a reliance on external "marks" rather than internal wisdom. [Pasted from Gemini]

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#124

Post by anthk »

palata wrote: post #117
rhetocj23 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You learn by doing and thinking. Not reading and watching. Pure and simple.

Read/watch, do, fail, think, read/watch, do, fail, think, ... Learning requires effort and access to knowledge . And of course, learning requires that you know how to learn. This is what school tries to teach.

Read, eval, print, loop.

Learn, apply, review, repeat.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#125

Post by black3r »

While I agree with the premise that "vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell", they are very much not the same. To expand on that, let's start with the fact, that a good coder needs both "skill" and "knowledge".

Tutorials (at least the good ones) give you some knowledge - the tutorial often explains why they do what they do and how they do it, but don't give you any skill, you just follow what other people do, you don't learn how to build stuff on your own.

Vibe coding on the other hand gives you some skill - how to build stuff with AI, but don't give you necessary coding knowledge - the AI does all the decisions for you and doesn't explain why it did what it did, or how it did it, it just does it for you.

"I can't do anything without Cursor's help" is not really the problem. The problem is that vibe coders create some stuff and they don't understand how that stuff works. And I believe this is much bigger problem than knowing how stuff works but not knowing how to use it.

Learning doesn't need to be "uncomfortable". Learning needs to be "challenging". There is a difference. The suggested approach here vaguely reminds me of the "you must first learn how to code in a notepad before using an IDE" approach.

While the real takeaway should be "you must first learn how to learn, before properly learning something". To learn something properly, you need 2 things: To know what to learn, and to know when you've learned it. To know what to learn you need a curriculum - this obviously depends on your specialization for coders, and can be more crude or more detailed, but you still need something to follow so that you can track your progress. "When you've learned it" for coders is when you can explain what some code does to a colleague and answer questions about said code. It doesn't matter if you wrote it, or someone else wrote it, or an AI wrote it. Understanding code you didn't write is even more important than understanding your own code.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#126

Post by usefulcat »

hintymad wrote: post #70
gota wrote: post #38

Minor part of the article, but the thing about "tutorial Hell" is very true: > Students would watch (or fall asleep to) 6-hour videos, code along in their own editors, feel like they got it, and then freeze up the moment they had to write anything from scratch. Classic tutorial hell. This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship . You, the junior, tag along a senior.…

> This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship. And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. Not the ones per Mark Trevor's words ( https://marktarver.com/professor.html ), of course, but a self-respecting university will train their students with progressively challenging and practical assignments. We started with implement…

I went to a good university with a decent CS program, and I'd definitely say I learned a lot more on the job than I did in school. I didn't always have any mentors to speak of but I did have at least a couple who were good.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#127

Post by g9yuayon »

hintymad wrote: post #70
gota wrote: post #38

Minor part of the article, but the thing about "tutorial Hell" is very true: > Students would watch (or fall asleep to) 6-hour videos, code along in their own editors, feel like they got it, and then freeze up the moment they had to write anything from scratch. Classic tutorial hell. This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship . You, the junior, tag along a senior.…

> This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship. And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. Not the ones per Mark Trevor's words ( https://marktarver.com/professor.html ), of course, but a self-respecting university will train their students with progressively challenging and practical assignments. We started with implement…

My own experience: https://www.quora.com/Could-online-coding-programs-and-codin...

And my wife's experience: https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-learn-computer-scie...

In short, the training that we got from our universities was invaluable, and I always feel fortunate and grateful to my CS department.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#128

Post by hintymad »

timr wrote: post #82
hintymad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship. And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. Not the ones per Mark Trevor's words ( https://marktarver.com/professor.html ), of course, but a self-respecting university will train their students with progressively challenging and practical assignments. We started with implement…

> And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. I spent a good portion of my life in Universities -- and went as far as one can go in terms of educational credentials and taught at the university level -- and I cannot disagree more. Universities produce job skills incidentally , if at all. It's simply not their goal [1]. Even today, at the best CS programs in the country, it'…

> Even today, at the best CS programs in the country, it's possible to get a degree and still not be better than a very junior engineer at a software company (and quite a few graduates are worse).

I think it's important to differentiate the personal achievement of students and the training offered by their universities. For instance, the courses offered by CMU and MIT are super useful - insightful, practical, intense, and sufficiently deep. That said, it does not mean that every MIT/CMU graduate will reap the benefit of the courses, even though many will.

It goes without saying that it does NOT mean people can't teach themselves. I'm just saying universities offer a compelling alternative to training next gen of engineers.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#129

Post by g9yuayon »

usefulcat wrote: post #126
hintymad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship. And in our modern world, universities are still the best place for such apprenticeship. Not the ones per Mark Trevor's words ( https://marktarver.com/professor.html ), of course, but a self-respecting university will train their students with progressively challenging and practical assignments. We started with implement…

I went to a good university with a decent CS program, and I'd definitely say I learned a lot more on the job than I did in school. I didn't always have any mentors to speak of but I did have at least a couple who were good.

I think both can true. I learned a lot in my university, and my learning has been carrying me ever since. Case in point, it was never a problem for me to pick up functional programming or programming-language concepts in general because the courses on programming languages were so wonderful. I had no problem tap into formal verifications or data science or distributed systems because my universities gave me solid fundamentals. Heck, I was not even a good student back then. It was Sam Toueg of the failure detector fame who taught us distributed systems, yet I was lost most of the time and I thought he was talking some abstract nonsense. Only after I graduated could I appreciate the framework of analyzing distributed systems that he taught us.

On the other hand, we certainly learned more after graduation (or something is wrong, right?). When I was in the AI course, the CS department was all about symbolic reasoning I didn't even know that Hinton was in the same department. I think what matters is the core training stayed with me and helped me learn new stuff year after year.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#130

Post by rhetocj23 »

65 wrote: post #63
rhetocj23 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You learn by doing and thinking. Not reading and watching. Pure and simple.

I disagree with the reading part, as that's a major component of learning. Programming only clicked for me when I had a goal in mind and started reading documentation: change the color of the button when I click it. How to do something on click? How to change the color of an element? Etc. From there my goals became bigger and reading documentation and examples along the way got me to where I am today. Video is the tr…

My point is reading does not provide substantial value, it provides barely any because you have to net out the opportunity cost of time spent reading. The gains are realised when you think and do something with the information consumed.

Therefore reading and watching are not the key to success.

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