Why would you even be taking the course at this point
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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Why do they even care? it's not like your future bosses are going to give a flying fuck how you get your code. at least, they won't until you cause the machine uprising or something.
The bullshit is that anon wouldn't be fsked at all.
If anon actually used ChatGPT to generate some code, memorize it, understand it well enough to explain it to a professor, and get a 90%, congratulations, that's called "studying".
I don't think that's true. That's like saying that watching hours of guitar YouTube is enough to learn to play. You need to practice too, and learn from mistakes.
I don't think that's quite accurate.
The "understand it well enough to explain it to a professor" clause is carrying a lot of weight here - if that part is fulfilled, then yeah, you're actually learning something.
Unless of course, all of the professors are awful at their jobs too. Most of mine were pretty good at asking very pointed questions to figure out what you actually know, and could easily unmask a bullshit artist with a short conversation.
It's more like if played a song on Guitar Hero enough to be able to pick up a guitar and convince a guitarist that you know the song.
Code from ChatGPT (and other LLMs) doesn't usually work on the first try. You need to go fix and add code just to get it to compile. If you actually want it to do whatever your professor is asking you for, you need to understand the code well enough to edit it.
It's easy to try for yourself. You can go find some simple programming challenges online and see if you can get ChatGPT to solve a bunch of them for you without having to dive in and learn the code.
Professors hate this one weird trick called "studying"
Yeah, if you memorized the code and it's functionality well enough to explain it in a way that successfully bullshit someone who can sight-read it... You know how that code works. You might need a linter, but you know how that code works and can probably at least fumble your way through a shitty 0.5v of it
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I mean at this point just commit to the fraud and pay someone who actually knows how to code to take your exam for you.
Yeah fake. No way you can get 90%+ using chatGPT without understanding code. LLMs barf out so much nonsense when it comes to code. You have to correct it frequently to make it spit out working code.
- Ask ChatGPT for a solution.
- Try to run the solution. It doesn't work.
- Post the solution online as something you wrote all on your own, and ask people what's wrong with it.
- Copy-paste the fixed-by-actual-human solution from the replies.
If we're talking about freshman CS 101, where every assignment is the same year-over-year and it's all machine graded, yes, 90% is definitely possible because an LLM can essentially act as a database of all problems and all solutions. A grad student TA can probably see through his "explanations", but they're probably tired from their endless stack of work, so why bother?
If we're talking about a 400 level CS class, this kid's screwed and even someone who's mastered the fundamentals will struggle through advanced algorithms and reconciling math ideas with hands-on-keyboard software.
Are you guys just generating insanely difficult code? I feel like 90% of all my code generation with o1 works first time? And if it doesn't, I just let GPT know and it fixes it right then and there?
the problem is more complex than initially thought, for a few reasons.
One, the user is not very good at prompting, and will often fight with the prompt to get what they want.
Two, often times the user has a very specific vision in mind, which the AI obviously doesn't know, so the user ends up fighting that.
Three, the AI is not omnisicient, and just fucks shit up, makes goofy mistakes sometimes. Version assumptions, code compat errors, just weird implementations of shit, the kind of stuff you would expect AI to do that's going to make it harder to manage code after the fact.
unless you're using AI strictly to write isolated scripts in one particular language, ai is going to fight you at least some of the time.
I asked an LLM to generate tests for a 10 line function with two arguments, no if branches, and only one library function call. It's just a for loop and some math. Somehow it invented arguments, and the ones that actually ran didn't even pass. It made like 5 test functions, spat out paragraphs explaining nonsense, and it still didn't work.
This was one of the smaller deepseek models, so perhaps a fancier model would do better.
I'm still messing with it, so maybe I'll find some tasks it's good at.
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Can not confirm. LLMs generate garbage for me, i never use it.
My first attempt at coding with chatGPT was asking about saving information to a file with python. I wanted to know what libraries were available and the syntax to use them.
It gave me a three page write up about how to write a library myself, in python. Only it had an error on damn near every line, so I still had to go Google the actual libraries and their syntax and slosh through documentation
I just generated an entire angular component (table with filters, data services, using in house software patterns and components, based off of existing work) using copilot for work yesterday. It didn't work at first, but I'm a good enough software engineer that I iterated on the issues, discarding bad edits and referencing specific examples from the extant codebase and got copilot to fix it. 3-4 days of work (if you were already familiar with the existing way of doing things) done in about 3-4 hours. But if you didn't know what was going on and how to fix it you'd end up with an unmaintainable non functional mess, full of bugs we have specific fixes in place to avoid but copilot doesn't care about because it doesn't have an idea of how software actually works, just what it should look like. So for anything novel or complex you have to feed it an example, then verify it didn't skip steps or forget to include something it didn't understand/predict, or make up a library/function call. So you have to know enough about the software you're making to point that stuff out, because just feeding whatever error pops out of your compiler back into the AI may get you to working code, but it won't ensure quality code, maintainability, or intelligibility.
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I remember so little from my studies I do tend to wonder if it would really have cheating to… er… cheat. Higher education was like this horrendous ordeal where I had to perform insane memorisation tasks between binge drinking, and all so I could get my foot in the door as a dev and then start learning real skills on the job (e.g. “agile” didn’t even exist yet then, only XP. Build servers and source control were in their infancy. Unit tests the distant dreams of a madman.)
This person is LARPing as a CS major on 4chan
It's not possible to write functional code without understanding it, even with ChatGPT's help.
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isn't it kinda dumb to have coding exams that aren't open book? if you don't understand the material, on a well-designed test you'll run out of time even with access to the entire internet
when in the hell would you ever be coding IRL without access to language documentation and the internet? isn't the point of a class to prepare you for actual coding you'll be doing in the future?
disclaimer did not major in CS. but did have a lot of open book tests—failed when I should have failed because I didn't study enough, and passed when I should have passed because the familiarity with the material is what allows you to find your references fast enough to complete the test
Most of my CS exams in more advanced classes were take home. Well before the internet though. They were some of the best finals I ever took.
Assignments involved actual coding but exams were generally pen and paper when I got my degree. If a question involved coding, they were just looking for a general understanding and didn't nitpick syntax. The "language" used was more of a c++-like pseudocode than any real specific language.
ChatGPT could probably do well on such exams because making up functions is fair game, as long as it doesn't trivialize the question and demonstrates an overall understanding.
I mean, I don't know how to code but I imagine it's the same as with other subjects. like not being able to use a calculator during some math tests. The point of the examination is for you to demonstrate you know and understand the concepts. It's not for you to be tested in the same way you would be in the real world.
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pay for school
do anything to avoid actually learning
Why tho?
Job
Losing the job after a month of demonstrating you don't know what you claimed to is not a great return on that investment...
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https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-illiterate-programmers
Relevant quote
Every time we let AI solve a problem we could’ve solved ourselves, we’re trading long-term understanding for short-term productivity. We’re optimizing for today’s commit at the cost of tomorrow’s ability.
I like the sentiment of the article; however this quote really rubs me the wrong way:
I’m not suggesting we abandon AI tools—that ship has sailed.
Why would that ship have sailed? No one is forcing you to use an LLM. If, as the article supposes, using an LLM is detrimental, and it's possible to start having days where you don't use an LLM, then what's stopping you from increasing the frequency of those days until you're not using an LLM at all?
I personally don't interact with any LLMs, neither at work or at home, and I don't have any issue getting work done. Yeah there was a decently long ramp-up period — maybe about 6 months — when I started on ny current project at work where it was more learning than doing; but now I feel like I know the codebase well enough to approach any problem I come up against. I've even debugged USB driver stuff, and, while it took a lot of research and reading USB specs, I was able to figure it out without any input from an LLM.
Maybe it's just because I've never bought into the hype; I just don't see how people have such a high respect for LLMs. I'm of the opinion that using an LLM has potential only as a truly last resort — and even then will likely not be useful.
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Hey that sounds exactly like what the last company I worked at did for every single project 🙃
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virtual machine
deserved to fail
Probably promoted to middle management instead
He might be overqualified
I don't think you can memorize how code works enough to explain it and not learn codding.
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