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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

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Well, as a college student planning to start a CS program, I can tell you that it actually sounds fine to me.

And I think that teachers can adapt. A few weeks ago, my English professor assigned us an essay where we had to ask ChatGPT a question and analyze its response and check its sources. I could imagine something similar in a programming course. "Ask ChatGPT to write code to this spec, then iterate on its output and fix its errors" would teach students some of the skills to use LLMs for coding.

This is probably useful and better than nothing, but the problem is that by the time you graduate it's unlikely that reading the output of the LLM will be useful.

Tons of devs (CS grad devs that is) have made their career writing basic CRUD apps, iOS apps, or python stuff that probably doesn't scratch the surface of all the CS course work they did in their degree. It's just like everyone cramming for leetcode interviews but never using that stuff in the job. Being familiar with LLMs today will give you an advantage when they change tomorrow, you can adapt with the technology after college is over. Granted, there likely will be less devs needed but the demand for the highly skilled ones could be moving upwards as the demand for this new AI tech increases

Fair point. Perhaps I'm just too pessimistic or narrow-minded, but I don't believe that LLMs will progress to that level of capability any time soon. If you think that they will, your view makes a great deal of sense. Agree to disagree.

Right, but if AI gets to the point where it can replace developers (which includes a lot of fuzzy requirement interpretation etc.); then it will replace most other jobs as well, and it wouldn't have helped to become a lawyer or doctor.

> It's not good if you're a freshman currently starting a CS program

CS is the new MBA. A thoughtless path to a safe, secure job.

Cruelly, but necessarily, a society has to destroy those pathways. Otherwise, it becomes sclerotic.

Its not cruel, its stupid. Why would we organize our society in such a way that people would be drawn towards such paths in the first place, where your comfort and security are your first concerns and taking risks, doing something new, is not even on your mind?

> where your comfort and security are your first concerns and taking risks, doing something new, is not even on your mind?

Because individually, lots of people seek low-risk high-return occupations. Systematically, that doesn’t exist in the long run.

Societies do better when they take risks. Encouraging the population to integrate that risk taking has been a running them in successful societies from the Romans and Chinese dynasties through American commerce and jugaad.

How about switching to English? There is a high demand for people who are very good at communication and writing nowadays.

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