Coping with Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: Coping with Copilot

#151

Post by sarchertech » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

buscoquadnary wrote: post #54

zeta0134 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more to this: it used to be that a college degree carried with it something of a soft guarantee that the student could achieve a baseline level of work on their own. This acted as a useful filter for employers. If cheating runs rampant that filter becomes meaningless, and once the student has successfully cheated their way into the work force, their incompetence can (depending on field) do very real damage to…

A college degree used to signal competence. Now it signals you have the ability to show up and avoid doing something to get kicked out for 4 years. I feel we'd probably get the same value to society if we just made grades 9-12 optional. It would remove the people that don't want to be there, improve the quality of instruction, and college would actually be a meaningful achievement so we no longer have requirements fo…

In many states school is already optional after age 16.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#152

Post by ticviking » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #112

NikolaNovak wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I moved as well, I experienced three different Canadian universities' Computer Science Program. There was only one professor and course that I still remember 20 years later: CS408, Software Engineering, Professor Wortman, UofToronto. Class project was in four phases, cumulative (basic functionality for the application in phase 1, progressively additional functionality in other phases, frequently strongly interacti…

There are a few issues with this kind of assignment. The first issue is that it's really hell on the TAs with all of the administrative work needed to do the swapping between phases. Software engineering is already one of the more annoying classes to TA, and this makes it even less palatable. The bigger issue is that, on the basis of fairness, you grade in later phases is very heavily dependent on factors that are ou…

I had a similar software engineering course experience to the one above with a lot of things out of my control.

I got an A. By being humble reflective and proactive, showing the instructor that I was looking for solutions to the problem and giving an appropriate amount of time and effort to the class.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#153

Post by ticviking » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

haskellandchill wrote: post #134

jcranmer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few issues with this kind of assignment. The first issue is that it's really hell on the TAs with all of the administrative work needed to do the swapping between phases. Software engineering is already one of the more annoying classes to TA, and this makes it even less palatable. The bigger issue is that, on the basis of fairness, you grade in later phases is very heavily dependent on factors that are ou…

> It is extremely rare that someone will be dumped on a codebase without a prior author remaining on to help them ramp up on the code. what? I must be living a rare life.

Most of my major professional achievements involve jumping into code like this, and solving some problem anyhow.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#154

Post by unnouinceput » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

Quote: "Oh, have I mentioned that Copilot is free for students? Yep, COPILOT IS FREE FOR STUDENTS. It integrates helpfully right in their favorite IDEs."

Does it integrate with Lazarus?

Re: Coping with Copilot

#155

Post by dwohnitmok » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

hospadar wrote: post #43

I've always thought that the ability to communicate to other humans about programs and to be able to synthesize a conceptual understanding from looking at code are highly valuable and sometimes-overlooked in the workplace. Assignments to write a function don't really demonstrate either skill. Maybe more assignments like: - "Here is a function that is supposed to generate a fibonacci sequence, but it is not correct, e…

Those two questions are definitely within the reach of current AI. Not within 100%, but probably better than 70%.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#156

Post by andrepd » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

glacials wrote: post #128

ALittleLight wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Copilot for a little while. I'm away from my computer at the moment but I'm very confident it would generate Fibonacci methods.

I don’t think they mean that it can’t, just that the better way to think about the advantages it gives an experienced engineer is more along the lines of “autocomplete v2”, i.e. a keystroke-saver.

Is it a keystroke saver if you need to review every line it proposes to you?

Re: Coping with Copilot

#157

Post by drran » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

philipswood wrote: post #48

russfink wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjunct instructor here. Before I came into the program, cheating was on the rise. When given programming assignments, students would go to Geeks for geeks and download solutions, some of them mostly correct, and submit those for credit. One remedy was to try to make programming assignments harder and harder. Eventually, they got so hard that we were asking people new to computer science to implement a full arbitrary…

When playing with GPT-3, I've found it to be impressively good at explaining what code does in English...

When teachers require recording of timelapses, we will have AI which will be able to generate text and a video of a user typing it. IMHO, they should start to require timelapses right now.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#158

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #44

russfink wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjunct instructor here. Before I came into the program, cheating was on the rise. When given programming assignments, students would go to Geeks for geeks and download solutions, some of them mostly correct, and submit those for credit. One remedy was to try to make programming assignments harder and harder. Eventually, they got so hard that we were asking people new to computer science to implement a full arbitrary…

> one addition to programming assignments includes an analysis write up. when i was interviewing candidates this was the fastest way to filter those who understood and those who didnt. ask someone to talk you through how to solve some real-life problem. to look at a stack trace and describe what they see, or to run a profile and trace through the cause of a hotspot/contention. show them an issue and have them live de…

That's a great way to evaluate someone! Individualized and personal, uses concrete problems, no artificial restrictions.

It's a shame our mass education systems cannot use it. They simply cannot apply such a humane method to hundreds or thousands of students. They are reduced to applying their bullshit test questions because it's the best they can come up with at their scale.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#159

Post by NoraCodes » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

drran wrote: post #157

philipswood wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When playing with GPT-3, I've found it to be impressively good at explaining what code does in English...

When teachers require recording of timelapses, we will have AI which will be able to generate text and a video of a user typing it. IMHO, they should start to require timelapses right now.

That requires either trusting that students haven't edited out the evidence of cheating, which is pointless, or forcing them to use specific, proprietary software to record the video, which is unacceptable.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#160

Post by matthewmacleod » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #156

glacials wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they mean that it can’t, just that the better way to think about the advantages it gives an experienced engineer is more along the lines of “autocomplete v2”, i.e. a keystroke-saver.

Is it a keystroke saver if you need to review every line it proposes to you?

Yes. For my part, it's a very obvious boost in exactly that sort of keystroke-saving way.

Here's an example I just now tried in the codebase I had open. I literally typed in the following Go in a function:

  mean := geom.Vec3D{}
  for

Copilot then autocompleted this, me pressing tab to accept each line, to:

  mean := geom.Vec3D{}
  for _, detection := range filtered {
    mean.X += detection.X
    mean.Y += detection.Y
    mean.Z += detection.Z
  }
  mean.X /= float64(len(filtered))
  mean.Y /= float64(len(filtered))
  mean.Z /= float64(len(filtered))

It's not a perfect platform by any means, but it's also pretty useful for this sort of autocompletion.