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Comment by whizzter | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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

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