Imagine lacking the curiosity to want to take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn interesting new things with all the resources at your fingertips. I think the root of the problem is that capitalist society sends students the message that learning is valuable only as a means to make more money. If that’s your view then it makes sense to skip the difficult stuff and just pay for the piece of paper that gives you access to better-paying jobs. Capitalism absolutely doesn’t value having a wiser and more knowledgeable populace, and students pick up on this.
I was one of the people who went to college to learn things, but the more I learn, the more I’m saddened by all the people I went to school with who studied things they didn’t enjoy, didn’t particularly care to get better at, all because they saw it as a way to make money. In optimizing for money, they miss out on learning and fulfillment.
This wasn’t that long ago, but I can only imagine how much heavy GenAI use could intensify that effect
I was one of those people too and the academic environment was honestly depressing. Almost none of the professors actually cared about the topics they taught, only about the ones that were their research subjects, on the topics they taught many were stuck at the state the introductory topics were at when they first graduated themselves (in IT where everything changes much more quickly than that). Many university wide decisions were nonsensical (e.g. teach memory management in OS classes in Java because Java was the language they standardized on for everything due to industry pressure). For Bachelor topics they only wanted to accept topics where you could tell you would basically spend months to write something that would end up in the round filing cabinet once it had served its grading purpose. Questions in larger classes were highly discouraged, even pointing out mistakes in the lecture materials (obvious indisputable ones that shouldn’t hurt anyone’s ego like some typo in the order of digits) got responses that discouraged doing that again.
Most people can’t afford to go to Universities for the purpose of research. Most people go to Universities for a specific college (every university is requured to have multiple colleges to be accedited) to learn information that is already known. Which is where I think we have it set up wrong. It shouldn’t cost large sums of money for a person to learn what is already known, the information should be made available for free. The tests universal and unattached to a University name. Were you able to pass the test showing proficiency in A, B and C. Yes or no, that is what we need to know you are proficient in for this job. It doesn’t matter if you went to Alabama, Yale, Community college, online seminars, w.e. Researching knowledge we do not currently possess is what I think the University setup should be pushed back towards.
Imagine borrowing $200k for an education, and then doing as much work as you can to actually learn the things you’re paying to know and then not being able to get a job
My argument is knowledge is priceless, but education is worthless. Degrees now mean nothing whether AI assisted or not so going into insane debt for no reason is reckless.
I want coders to learn from trusted sources too. How do you authorize a user and store the password (plain text, hash, encrypt)? Do you use MD5 or SHA-256? (Always hash passwords, don’t use MD5)
If you have to encrypt some information, do you use AES or Triple DES ? (never Triple DES)
When authorizing with OAuth, should one send the auth url, client id, client secret, scopes, and redirect url to the client machine? (yes, yes, no, yes, yes)
These are basic questions with answers that are easy to find…and many programmers get them very, very wrong. Mostly out of carelessness, often the question itself doesn’t even pop into their head.
Are you paying to know those things? I think you’re paying for a piece of paper that said you went there. The number of employers who have hired me for what my Bachelor’s of Science is for: 0. Programmers are probably screwing themselves if they are going to program later in life and using an LLM to write it. But something like 60-90 out of the 120 credit hours for that Bachelor’s degree are not programming courses. If I was in college today I could safely say I would know which courses I needed to pay attention to, and which ones I don’t. Hell I took Archeology of Caribbean Piracy one semester, fun course though.
Imagine borrowing $200k for an education, and then doing as little work as you can to actually learn the things you’re paying to know
Imagine lacking the curiosity to want to take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn interesting new things with all the resources at your fingertips. I think the root of the problem is that capitalist society sends students the message that learning is valuable only as a means to make more money. If that’s your view then it makes sense to skip the difficult stuff and just pay for the piece of paper that gives you access to better-paying jobs. Capitalism absolutely doesn’t value having a wiser and more knowledgeable populace, and students pick up on this.
I was one of the people who went to college to learn things, but the more I learn, the more I’m saddened by all the people I went to school with who studied things they didn’t enjoy, didn’t particularly care to get better at, all because they saw it as a way to make money. In optimizing for money, they miss out on learning and fulfillment.
This wasn’t that long ago, but I can only imagine how much heavy GenAI use could intensify that effect
I was one of those people too and the academic environment was honestly depressing. Almost none of the professors actually cared about the topics they taught, only about the ones that were their research subjects, on the topics they taught many were stuck at the state the introductory topics were at when they first graduated themselves (in IT where everything changes much more quickly than that). Many university wide decisions were nonsensical (e.g. teach memory management in OS classes in Java because Java was the language they standardized on for everything due to industry pressure). For Bachelor topics they only wanted to accept topics where you could tell you would basically spend months to write something that would end up in the round filing cabinet once it had served its grading purpose. Questions in larger classes were highly discouraged, even pointing out mistakes in the lecture materials (obvious indisputable ones that shouldn’t hurt anyone’s ego like some typo in the order of digits) got responses that discouraged doing that again.
Most people can’t afford to go to Universities for the purpose of research. Most people go to Universities for a specific college (every university is requured to have multiple colleges to be accedited) to learn information that is already known. Which is where I think we have it set up wrong. It shouldn’t cost large sums of money for a person to learn what is already known, the information should be made available for free. The tests universal and unattached to a University name. Were you able to pass the test showing proficiency in A, B and C. Yes or no, that is what we need to know you are proficient in for this job. It doesn’t matter if you went to Alabama, Yale, Community college, online seminars, w.e. Researching knowledge we do not currently possess is what I think the University setup should be pushed back towards.
Imagine borrowing $200k for an education, and then doing as much work as you can to actually learn the things you’re paying to know and then not being able to get a job
You frame that as if the same can’t happen if you use AI. At least if you actually do the work you have the knowledge and the ability to research.
My argument is knowledge is priceless, but education is worthless. Degrees now mean nothing whether AI assisted or not so going into insane debt for no reason is reckless.
If you’re coding or whatever this is fine. But I would really, really like my doctors and engineers to be educated by other doctors and engineers.
I want coders to learn from trusted sources too. How do you authorize a user and store the password (plain text, hash, encrypt)? Do you use MD5 or SHA-256? (Always hash passwords, don’t use MD5)
If you have to encrypt some information, do you use AES or Triple DES ? (never Triple DES)
When authorizing with OAuth, should one send the auth url, client id, client secret, scopes, and redirect url to the client machine? (yes, yes, no, yes, yes)
These are basic questions with answers that are easy to find…and many programmers get them very, very wrong. Mostly out of carelessness, often the question itself doesn’t even pop into their head.
Relavent XKCD
You have way too much faith in humans.
Are you paying to know those things? I think you’re paying for a piece of paper that said you went there. The number of employers who have hired me for what my Bachelor’s of Science is for: 0. Programmers are probably screwing themselves if they are going to program later in life and using an LLM to write it. But something like 60-90 out of the 120 credit hours for that Bachelor’s degree are not programming courses. If I was in college today I could safely say I would know which courses I needed to pay attention to, and which ones I don’t. Hell I took Archeology of Caribbean Piracy one semester, fun course though.
I went to college to get the degree so I could check that box on job applications, I already knew most of the material.