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> And then one day came this bloke who was holding chatgee in his hand and asking me questions right off it, as if testing me. I went berserk, and this was the moment I decided

Was that the first/only moment you had a draining/bad student? Seems quick to give up because of one bad experience, maybe this was repeating?

Personally, I felt similarly once the people I'm mentoring started using CC and Codex and similar stuff, as a lot of the questions they asked me were easily answerable by the agent, so I guess I had a brief moment of "But what value do I even provide in the world anymore?".

I ended up kind of restructuring what I'm trying to teach, and instead of getting them more exposed to the mechanics of software engineering, I've started leaning more towards the soft skills like how to collaborate, how to get a feel for when things are right/wrong, how to understand better/faster, and similar things, all still related to software engineering of course, but I basically try to ask myself what I can teach them that no agent/model could, and do that stuff.

I even started introducing mentees to each other (not sure why I didn't before but alas), and have them collaborate on projects together, and figure out what works/not in collaborations with others, as no model can teach you that, as just another example. It's surfacing a whole new host of issues to work through, so seems to work fine :)

> Was that the first/only moment you had a draining/bad student? Seems quick to give up because of one bad experience, maybe this was repeating?

Coding was hard enough that even most bad students understood they knew very little because they'd falter, students with decent knowledge were very seldomly total assholes.

I think the big change in the equation is that chatbots churning out good enough shit without tripping up on basics or tedious tasks makes the insufferably stupid people (those worst affected by Dunning-Kruger) think that they actually know something.

> Coding was hard enough that even most bad students understood they knew very little because they'd falter, students with decent knowledge were very seldomly total assholes.

Hah, are we talking about the same profession here? Programmers, famously known for understanding what they don't know, and the ones who know stuff seldom were assholes? Not often my real-life experience pretty much differs 180 with what I read here, but this is one of those cases.

> the insufferably stupid people (those worst affected by Dunning-Kruger) think that they actually know something

Yeah, this is like 50% of all the developers in the software engineering ecosystem, if not more. We're all riding the highs of past successes then extrapolate that over our entire lives and future work.

>Hah, are we talking about the same profession here? Programmers, famously known for understanding what they don't know, and the ones who know stuff seldom were assholes?

Assuming these behaviors often come from a place of insecurity then I think the normal behavior of programmers may be modified in the case they are in a university class trying to learn from a teacher, because then the programmer's natural fear of saying something and being shown to be an idiot will keep them quiet unless they are very very sure.

> Hah, are we talking about the same profession here? Programmers, famously known for understanding what they don't know, and the ones who know stuff seldom were assholes?

I was a TA the whole time I was in university, for computer science and computer engineering classes. I don't remember any of my students being an asshole even once, and I think this is the kind of thing I (unfortunately) would remember.

Keyword is students, 5-10 years ago I was involved in teaching non-programmers how to develop so however people act once in the profession is irrelevant to this discussion really.

> Keyword is students

Yeah, I think this is fair, I was thinking professionally and don't have much experience of academic students in that way, from either side. Clearly feels like I misunderstood/mistook the wider context here, so thanks for the correction!

> insufferably stupid people (those worst affected by Dunning-Kruger) think that they actually know something.

inevitable, and we cannot close our eyes about it. but okay, lets say a single asshole does not resume the whole group. then again - it is very difficult to convince anyone in 2026 (myself included!) he needs to do something in coding manually. but then again if you don't get one's hands dirty, even like... taking paper notes, then he will inevitably very quickly forget all that is tought. so we cannot 100% agree that teaching with cool AI artefacts is going to be sufficient. also im not sure which manual tasks should be forced upon otherwise (supposedly) smart peoples.

perhaps we'll have people late in life that will turn to coding things again by hand, for the sake of making their brain work, the way people turn to physical careers to stop the stress

> Was that the first/only moment you had a draining/bad student? Seems quick to give up because of one bad experience, maybe this was repeating?

well, in 2025, not sure if related to agentic dev, but very likely, there is a very well felt drop in attention. also we figured there is a massive misproportion between people who have already used GPTs alongside classic dev, and those who have adopted or been exposed to agentic dev.

my surprise is that these people, being 3rd and 4th graders, were not equally exposed to harness-based dev, even though most are already employed on certain roles in actual companies.

> started leaning more towards the soft skills like how to collaborate, how to get a feel for when things are right/wrong, how to understand better/faster, and similar things,

well I agree this is important, but it is not a class in JS anymore. told the faculty staff we need to reinvent the program, and they are not even aware yet how damaging this impact is.

in all honesty - nobody knows at present moment what skills are needed to teach to people. besides, with LLMs, everyone curious enough can teach themselves.

so this changes massively the whole idea of knowledge transfer done by humans, does it not? we should teach other skills, not the technical trivia. i can give many examples, but this is going to eventually become very long post.

...

to add injury to insult, one of the team members invested early on in a 512GB mac studio, put some harness with Qwen on it and is currently collecting trading signals and doing finance. he expressed doubt there's more to do for him in the area, and he was perhaps one of the top notch ES6 devs I've ever known, with vast experience in UI and a long list of contracts (many of them got cancelled recently)!

So while many complain about their job security (due to AI), I can tell you the whole academia is nosing down rapidly. add to this the fact that most compute is concentrated in private enterprises - same entities that slurp my students afterwards and never say thanks.

If you were just teaching technical trivia, I would have considered that teacher a bad teacher even in the 90s.

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