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Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

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Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#31

Post by joseda-hg »

worthless-trash wrote: post #22
ndr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad advice to people with the correct posture. If you want to learn: don't use these models to do the things for you. Do use these models to learn. LLMs might not the best teachers in the world but they're available right there and then when you have a question. Don't take their answers for granted and test them. Ask to teach you the correct terms for things you don't know yet, so you can ask better questions…

Having seen the code they make, don't learn from these models. Remember they are trained on a lot of code, not a lot of good code.

They don't neccesarily do, but you can get them pretty far, one of the most interesting parts of LLM's (I guess chat based, haven't tried copilot style ones well enough) is that smallish rewrites are really low cost

Don't like the way it did something convoluted or didn't do early returns? say it, it will do it, chain as many requests as you need, it won't get fed up with you, and if you see it losing detail because memory, use those requests for a significantly more polished prompt on a new chat for a cleaner starting point

Don't just accept what it gives you either

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#32

Post by Nullabillity »

closewith wrote: post #18
_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

If your goal is to become a fundamentally sound computer scientist, this may be good advice. However, if - like 99% of software developers in the workforce - your goal is to work on software until you earn enough that you no longer have to, then ignore this awful advice and focus on learning the tools that are becoming ubiquitous and mandatory is most roles. Otherwise you are pre-assigning yourself to irrelevance, eq…

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Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#33

Post by soco »

jonplackett wrote: post #16
ndr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad advice to people with the correct posture. If you want to learn: don't use these models to do the things for you. Do use these models to learn. LLMs might not the best teachers in the world but they're available right there and then when you have a question. Don't take their answers for granted and test them. Ask to teach you the correct terms for things you don't know yet, so you can ask better questions…

I feel bad for anyone learning to code now. The temptation to just LLM it must be sooooo high. But at the same time, having personalised StackOverflow without the negative attitude at your fingertips is super helpful, provided you also do the work of learning.

But wouldn't you learn if you actually have to enter and test that code, even if it's LLM generated, every day? Maybe you learn bad models, which can happen from SO as well, but you do learn. I'm more worried that the juniors won't have this opportunity anymore, or rather, they won't be needed anymore. So when I retire, what? Unless AI gets better and replaces everybody, then it won't matter at all what and how you learned.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#34

Post by mrtksn »

darkerside wrote: post #24
mrtksn wrote: post #21

I don't believe that this is the future of computer programming, all those coding assistants feel like companies trying to make mechanical horses and caravans when the combustion engine was invented. IMHO they should be inventing cars, planes and trains. Why? Because they write code using tools made to accommodate people and when you are taking out people from the loop keeping those is useless. It's especially eviden…

That would be the case of this were actually AI. But LLMs actually do procedurally generate language in a fairly human way, so using human languages makes sense to me.

The problem with this is that we can't get rid of the baggage of higher and higher level of libraries and languages that exist to accommodate humans.

I agree that it makes sense to use these currently but IMHO the ultimate programming will be human readable code-free, instead the AI will create a representation of the algorithm we need and will execute around it.

Like having an idea, for example if you need to program a robot vacuum cleaner you should be able to describe how you describe it to behave and the AI will create an algorithm(an idea, like "let's turn when bump into a wall then try again") and constantly tweak it and tend it. We wouldn't be directly looking at the code the AI wrote, instead we can test it and find edge cases that a machine maybe wouldn't predict(i.e. the cat sits on the robot and blocking the sensors).

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#35

Post by TiredOfLife »

pdimitar wrote: post #7

Curious to try this as most other tools have fairly stingy free tiers where you basically have one good interaction and boom, now you have to pay. (Zero analogies to drug dealers. Wink wink.) So can this be used standalone or must you use JetBrains / VSCode / Firebase / GitHub with no other option? I am not seeing any.

Codeium free autocomplete is free

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#36

Post by rightbyte »

icepat wrote: post #15
rightbyte wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye you probably want to get grip on the fundamentals. My old college still have the students write some programs by hand with paper and pencil on exams to enforce this. But, exercise pressure in courses will probably increase to recalibrate for the difficulty level. I feel LLMs would make you make assignments so much faster I don't think you can not use it.

Pen and paper in my opinion is absurd. You will never write code by hand. Ever. Writing things by hand teaches you how to do something in a way you will never use, so the memories being developed are going to be attached to a context that is alien to the reality of what your end goal is.

The programs written by hand where really simple and like a third of the exam. (Edit: Programming assignments were done on computers of course.)

Fizzbuzz to bubblesort level and a hard one we hadn't been exposed to that I failed. Required knowing the hare and turtle pointer walk thing.

I think it is good as an exercise. Just like manual assembler to machine code transcription is good to have part of a course in computer architecture, like a small part.

I regret doing so much of my studies with the least effort approach. In the end I would probably have saved time if I tried to learn like the teachers tried to force me to. Study during the whole course and not just the last week. Try to understand the concept instead of studying for the exam. Etc.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#37

Post by fredgrott »

ndr wrote: post #11
_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

This is bad advice to people with the correct posture. If you want to learn: don't use these models to do the things for you. Do use these models to learn. LLMs might not the best teachers in the world but they're available right there and then when you have a question. Don't take their answers for granted and test them. Ask to teach you the correct terms for things you don't know yet, so you can ask better questions…

I had this argument with Mark Cuban recently and he admitted he was wrong, my example was using a calculator to learn calculus....

We are forgetting what general purpose name means to learning and real practical usage as a tool.

BTW the best AI and Computer Science discussions are happening on bluesky

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#39

Post by pinoy420 »

_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

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Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#40

Post by pinoy420 »

BLubliulu wrote: post #8
_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

I think this is not a good idea or suggestion at all. If i use google maps to find my way around, i'm faster by a lot. I also do remember things despite google maps doing the work for me. Use Code assistent as much as possible but make sure to read and understand what you get and try to write it yourself even if you just write it from a second window. In this age and pace, writing code will change relevant in the nex…

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