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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

#71

Post by xboxnolifes »

nvarsj wrote: post #65
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.…

Uncle Bob has been saying this for decades. But - I'm not really sure it's necessary in software. The skillset can be entirely self taught if you're intelligent enough. There are an abundance of resources and all it requires is a terminal. Good software engineering principles can be covered in a 200 page book. You can't say the same for trades like plumber, electrician, etc. which still use apprenticeships.

> The skillset can be entirely self taught if you're intelligent enough.

> You can't say the same for trades like plumber, electrician, etc. which still use apprenticeships.

Yes you can, and yet they still have apprenticeships.

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

#72

Post by LPisGood »

whatever1 wrote: post #40
LPisGood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem can probably almost certainly be solved to provable optimality using HiGHS or even CBC - the open source Python package PuLP comes with CBC. If you want to be seen as the hero who solves things instead of the realist who says why other solutions won’t work, this could be worth exploring.

Of course it can be solved using the proper tools by a domain expert/practitioner (even with chatGPT since the expert will know what to ask). But why didn't the AI expert solve it using chatGPT? If it has to land to an expert for reimplementation from scratch after wasting a day on reviewing slop, did we gain productivity?

Gain on productivity, maybe nothing. I didn’t mean to comment on the broader scope, just an actionable suggestion for GP.

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

#73

Post by tokai »

nvarsj wrote: post #65
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.…

Uncle Bob has been saying this for decades. But - I'm not really sure it's necessary in software. The skillset can be entirely self taught if you're intelligent enough. There are an abundance of resources and all it requires is a terminal. Good software engineering principles can be covered in a 200 page book. You can't say the same for trades like plumber, electrician, etc. which still use apprenticeships.

Sure you can be self taught in plumbing. Overall we are just much less accepting of big screw ups with plumbing and electricity than we are with most software.

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

#74

Post by kazinator »

> We’ll have a drought of educated workers.

That's scary, because you cannot escape from the repercussions just by not being one of the dummies who relinquished all learning to AI.

You depend on being surrounded by other people who know what they are doing. And not just immediately surrounded, but in a broader scope.

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

#75

Post by leptons »

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'm self-taught and did pretty much all of those things. All it took was reading the docs.

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

#76

Post by vulk »

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.…

I use LLMs for teaching me how code exactly like that, I am the apprentice and the LLM move forward only If I say so, it does only explaining and teaching I do the writing. I much prefer it than looking for the next course or tutorial. The tutorial hell is mainly a problem of the people who decided that they can be teachers. From the countless books and courses I have purchased nothing actually teaches you anything, the whole model of teaching someone how to code is completely wrong in my opinion. At this point it is just plain frustration I rather prefer to tell the LLM to look for the latest documentation of a language or just go and look the documentation myself, a library, or whatever, and come up with a plan from it. My only gripe is that I am not sure if the LLM hallucinates and it is actually looking at the thing I pointed to or just spits the things that It was pre-trained on.

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

#77

Post by nvarsj »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #71
nvarsj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncle Bob has been saying this for decades. But - I'm not really sure it's necessary in software. The skillset can be entirely self taught if you're intelligent enough. There are an abundance of resources and all it requires is a terminal. Good software engineering principles can be covered in a 200 page book. You can't say the same for trades like plumber, electrician, etc. which still use apprenticeships.

> The skillset can be entirely self taught if you're intelligent enough. > You can't say the same for trades like plumber, electrician, etc. which still use apprenticeships. Yes you can, and yet they still have apprenticeships.

Sorry, but in no way can you equate an electrical apprenticeship with being self taught. The variety and complete insanity of wiring in different installations requires wide exposure (under an experienced mentor) to be a competent electrician.

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

#78

Post by leptons »

scottyah wrote: post #62
rhetocj23 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you train at the gym with bad form, you will hurt yourself in the long run. A person with a personal trainer giving feedback at the right time, decreasing the feedback loop from years to seconds will always outperform someone trying to figure it out on their own(assuming the trainer is competent).

If you are trying to teach yourself programming and never read any documentation, you're going to make a mess of it.

If you're trying to work out at the gym on your without reading anythi g about it first, you'll probably make a mess of it.

There's a lot of info out there about how to train at the gym, as well as how to write code. People who know how to read can certainly get a long way by reading a few simple tutorials.

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

#79

Post by JohnMakin »

If you are writing a tutorial, please for the love of all that is holy do not just make it a bunch of copy/paste steps without much or any explanation. Make me work through it, debug it, take me down the wrong path on purpose for the "aha!" moments. Leave copious amounts of explanation and documentation. Tell me what can go wrong and how I can fix it. I do not want a video. I hate videos. I know not everyone does and people learn differently but videos suffer even worse from the copy/paste problem, I'm essentially just parroting what I'm watching usually without much explanation either. And also, going back and referencing is difficult without taking copious notes.

"Now we do x,y, z, and voila! here you have it, a fully fledged (whatever)." Ok, but what did you just do? Why doesn't it work on my machine? etc. I've seen tutorials that do this stuff right and it's a very obvious night and day difference.

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

#80

Post by somenameforme »

tokai wrote: post #73
nvarsj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncle Bob has been saying this for decades. But - I'm not really sure it's necessary in software. The skillset can be entirely self taught if you're intelligent enough. There are an abundance of resources and all it requires is a terminal. Good software engineering principles can be covered in a 200 page book. You can't say the same for trades like plumber, electrician, etc. which still use apprenticeships.

Sure you can be self taught in plumbing. Overall we are just much less accepting of big screw ups with plumbing and electricity than we are with most software.

I'm skeptical of this. There is an extremely large barrier to entry in terms of the cost of the supplies and hardware. And how would you even begin to realistically get practice/experience working on and solving the countless issues plumbers are responsible for, all in different contexts with different setups? And then there's also a safety issue - plenty of environments and tasks plumbers are responsible for can be quite dangerous. Danger and self-learning isn't entirely a non-starter, but it's certainly an part of the 'balance' here.

By contrast software just isn't comparable at all. You can sit at your desk, pay $0, and the only limitations to your experience is the amount of time you're willing to dedicate.

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