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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?

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.

>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.

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!

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