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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

#131

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

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 Some knowledge and questions are simply increasingly outdated.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…

Not everyone does web dev. There are many jobs where it is necessary to have a vague idea of memory architecture.

LLM are very poor in areas such as real time and industrial automation, as there is very little data available for training.

Even if the LLM were good, we will always need someone to carry out tests, formal validation, etc.

Nobody want to get on a plane or in a car whose critical firmware has been written by an LLM and proofread by someone incapable of writing code (don't give ideas to Boeing ).

The question about Fibonacci is just a way of gently bringing up other topic.

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

#132

Post by indeyets »

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 learning improves your internal LLM which allows you to creatively solve tasks without using external ones. Additionally it is possible to fine tune your internal LLM for the tasks useful for your specific interests, the fun stuff. And external llms are too generalised

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

#133

Post by genewitch »

coldtea wrote: post #25
littlestymaar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not reasonable to say “I cannot do that as it would be completing your work”, no. Your tool have no say in the morality of your actions, it's already problematic when they censor sexual topics but the tool makers feel entitled to configure their tools only to allow you some kind of use for your work then we're speedrunning to dystopia (as if it wasn't the case already).

> Your tool have no say in the morality of your actions, Asimov's "three laws of robotics" beg to differ.

Only if your actions would harm another human or yourself, right?

Anyhow in the caliban books the police robot could consider unethical and immoral things, and even contemplate harming humans, but it made it work really slow, almost tiring it.

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

#134

Post by Shorel »

mattlondon wrote: post #2

Quite reasonable of it to do so I'd say. The AI tools are good, and they have their uses, but they are currently at best at a keen junior/intern level, making the same sort of mistakes. You need knowledge and experience to help mentor that sort of developer. Give it another year or two and I hope they the student will become the master and start mentoring me :)

Still not enough.

Not only that, still very far away from being good enough. An opinionated AI trying to convince me his way of doing things is the one true way and my way is not the right way, that's the stuff of nightmares.

Give it a few years and when it is capable of coding a customized and full-featured clone of Gnome, Office, Photoshop, or Blender, then we are talking.

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

#135

Post by 4ndrewl »

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…

Your cognitive abilities to do programming may cognitively decline, but that's not the aim here is it? The aim is to solve a problem for a user, not to write code? If we solve that using different tools maybe our cognitive abilities will just focus on something else?

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

#136

Post by GoblinSlayer »

HPsquared wrote: post #118
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the least resistance instinct is to conserve resources of the organism due to scarcity of food. Consequently in absence of scarcity of food this instinct is suboptimal.

Time is always scarce.

For short term wins you pay with long term losses.

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

#138

Post by TeMPOraL »

alonsonic wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Elsewhere in this discussion thread[0], 'ChrisMarshallNY compares this to feelings of insecurity:

> It’s really about basic human personal insecurity, and we all have that, to some degree. Getting around it, is a big part of growing up (...)

I believe he's right.

It makes me think back to my teenage years, when I first learned to program because I wanted to make games. Within the amateur gamedev community, we had this habit of sneering at "clickers" - Klik&Play & other kinds of software we'd today call "low-code", that let you make games with very little code (almost entirely game logic, and most of it "clicked out" in GUI), and near-zero effort on the incidental aspects like graphics, audio, asset management, etc. We were all making (or pretending to make) games within scope of those "clickers", but using such tools felt like cheating compared to doing it The Right Way, slinging C++ through blood, sweat and tears.

It took me over a decade to finally realize how stupid that perspective was. Sure, I've learned a lot; a good chunk of my career skills date back to those years. However, whatever technical arguments we levied against "clickers", most of them were bullshit. In reality, this was us trying to feel better, special, doing things The Hard Way, instead of "taking shortcuts" like those lazy people... who, unlike us, actually released some playable games.

I hear echoes of this mindset in a lot of "LLMs will rot your brain" commentary these days.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43351486

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

#139

Post by brulard »

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…

> because they're letting AI do all the work

This is an unnecessary hyperbole. It's like saying that your reportees do all the work for you. You need to put in an effort to understand the strengths and weaknesses of AI and put it to good work and make sure to double check its result. Low-skill individuals are not going to get great results for moderately complex tasks with AI. It's absurd to think it will do "all the work". I believe we are on the point of SW engineering skills shifting from understanding all the details of programming language and tooling more to higher level thinking and design.

Although I see without proper processes (code reviews, guidelines, etc.) use of AI can get out of hand to the point of a very bloated and unmaintainable code base. Well, as with any powerful technology it has to be handled with care.

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

#140

Post by maxbaines »

block_dagger wrote: post #87
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.

LLMs are trained on public data though.

Less and less now actually. Synthetic data is now being used on most new models as the public data runs out.
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