Comment by ray_v
6 hours ago
Lots of interesting ways to spin this. I was in a computer science course in the late 90s and we were not allowed to use the C++ standard library because it made you a "lazy programmer" according to the instructor. I'm not sure if I agree with that, but the way that I look at it is that computer science all about abstraction, and it seems to me that AI, generative pair programming, vibe coding or what ever you want to call it is just another level of abstraction. I think what is probably more important is to learn what are and are not good programming and project structures and use AI to abstract the boilerplate,. scaffolding, etc so that you can avoid foot guns early on in your development cycle.
The counterargument here is that there is a distinction between an arbitrary line in the sand (C++ stdlb is bad) and using a text-generating machine to perform work for you, beginning to end. You are correct that as a responsibly used tool, LLMs offer exceptional utility and value. Though keep in sight the laziness of humans who focus on the immediate end result over the long-term consequences.
It's the difference between the employee who copy-pastes all of their email bodies from ChatGPT versus the one who writes a full draft themselves and then asks an LLM for constructive feedback. One develops skills while the other atrophies.
That's why it's so important to teach how to use them properly instead of demonizing them. Let's be realistic, they are not going to disappear and students and workers are not stopping using them.
When in school the point is often to learn how to write complex code by writing things the standard library does.
Though also in the 90's the standard library was new and often had bugs