521–530 of 672 posts
No mention of Danny Dunn. Tsk. https://www.semicolonblog.com/?p=32946
The long list of titles is interesting and almost leads us to a self-referential thought. These series were often known as "boiler-room novels" because they were basic and formulaic, and it was possible to command a team of entry-level writers to churn them out.
I’m enrolled in an undergraduate CS program as an experienced (10 year) dev. I find AI incredibly useful as a tutor. I usually ask it to grade my homework for me before I turn it in. I usually find I didn’t really understand some topic and the AI highlights this and helps set my understanding straight. Without it I would have just continued on with an incorrect understanding of the topic for 2-3 weeks while I wait fo…
This is my biggest concert about GenAI in our field. As an experienced dev I've been around the block enough times to have a good feel of how things should be done and can catch when and LLM goes off on a tangent that is a complete rabbit hole, but if this had been available 20 years ago I would have never learned and become an experienced dev because I absolutely would have over relied on an LLM. I worry that 10 years from now getting mid career dev will be like trying to get a COBOL dev now, except COBOL is a lot easier to learn.
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I teach computer science / programming, and I know what a good AI policy is: No AI. (Dramatic. AI is fine for upper-division courses, maybe. Absolutely no use for it in introductory courses.) Our school converted a computer lab to a programming lab. Computers in the lab have editors/compilers/interpreters, and whitelist documentation, plus an internal server for grading and submission. No internet access otherwise. W…
>Our school converted a computer lab to a programming lab. Computers in the lab have editors/compilers/interpreters, and whitelist documentation, plus an internal server for grading and submission. No internet access otherwise. We've used it for one course so far with good results, and extending it to more courses in the fall. As an higher education (university) IT admin who is responsible for the CS program's comput…
It's a complete game changer for assessment—anything, really, but basic programming skills in particular. At this point I wouldn't teach without it.
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You're confusing the way things are with the way things ought to be. The reality is life is full of time boxed challenges.
Other than a subset of interviews, what do you have in mind that has a structure similar to an exam? Because I'd agree with the comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44106325 .
All of life! An exam is a time boxed challenge. Sometimes it's open notes, sometimes it's not. I've had exams where I have to write an essay, and I've had exams where I've had to solve math problems. All things I've had to do in high pressure situations in my job.
Solving problems with no help and a clock ticking happens a million times per day.
We even assign grades in life, like "meets expectations" and "does not meet expectations".
Even still, you missed the point of my comment. You keep focusing on how interviews should be done, not how they're conducted in reality.
I’m enrolled in an undergraduate CS program as an experienced (10 year) dev. I find AI incredibly useful as a tutor. I usually ask it to grade my homework for me before I turn it in. I usually find I didn’t really understand some topic and the AI highlights this and helps set my understanding straight. Without it I would have just continued on with an incorrect understanding of the topic for 2-3 weeks while I wait fo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I teach computer science / programming, and I know what a good AI policy is: No AI. (Dramatic. AI is fine for upper-division courses, maybe. Absolutely no use for it in introductory courses.) Our school converted a computer lab to a programming lab. Computers in the lab have editors/compilers/interpreters, and whitelist documentation, plus an internal server for grading and submission. No internet access otherwise. W…
Isn't auto-grading cheating by the instructors? Isn't part of their job providing their expert feedback by actually reading the code the students have generating and providing feedback and suggestions for improvement even at for exams? A good educational program treats exams as learning opportunities, not just evaluations. So if the professors can cheat and they're happy about having to do less teaching work, thereby…
The value of educational feedback drops rapidly as time passes. If a student receives immediate feedback and the opportunity to try again, they are much more likely to continue attempting to solve the problem. Autograders can support both; humans, neither. It typically takes hours or days to manually grade code just once. By that point students are unlikely to pay much attention to the feedback, and the considerable expense of human grading makes it unlikely that they are able to try again. That's just evaluation.
And the idea that instructors of computer science courses are in a position to provide "expert feedback" is very questionable. Most CS faculty don't create or maintain software. Grading is usually done by either research-focused Ph.D. students or undergraduates with barely more experience than the students they are evaluating.
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Grading homework has two reasonable objectives: Provide an incentive for students to do the thing they should be doing anyway. Give an opportunity to provide feedback on the assignment. It is totally useless as an evaluation mechanic, because of course the students that want to can just cheat. It’s usually pretty small, right? IIRC when I did tutoring we only gave like 10-20% for the aggregate homework grade.
I can say that making my homework part of my grade is a great way to actually get me to do it.
Before college, when I was a kid, I just had the textbooks, so I read the chapters and did the assignments… it was much better than sitting and listening in lectures, then doing some small assigned subset of the problems…
Perhaps we should reconsider the purpose of teaching. If one does not want to learn, why are we teaching them?
That's a silly argument, onus is on the teacher to make the subject interesting for students.
But regardless I don't buy that, especially in college where you pick your own set of classes.
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> Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. Those I ask are unanimously horrified that this is the choice they are given. They are devastated that the degree for which they are working hard is becoming worthless yet they all assert they don't want exams back. Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions and in contrast excel in open tasks that allow them to explore, so my sample is biased but…
It is always interesting to me when people say they are "bad test takers". You mean you are bad at the part where we find out how much you know? Maybe you just don't know the material well enough. caveat emptor - I am not ND so maybe this is a real concern for some, but in my experience the people who said this did not know the material. And the accommodations for tests are abused by rich kids more than they are util…
If I was evaluating the health of various companies, I wouldn’t use one metric for all of them, as company health is kind of an abstract concept and any specific metric would not give me a very good overall picture and there are multiple ways for a company to be healthy/successful. Same with people.
There are lots of different ways to utilize knowledge in real world scenarios, so someone could be bad at testing and bad at some types of related jobs but good at other types of related jobs. So unless “test taking” as a skill is what is being evaluated, it isn’t necessary to be the primary evaluation tool.