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Comment by throawayonthe | Hacker News Reader

CS students should never use an LLM

To be fair I see two separate ways CS students use LLMs, one is to just complete assignments in the same way you could by asking someone else to do it, the other way is by getting an LLM to explain certain concepts in another way, or create more examples of them to aid in understanding quicker/in more depth. I actually think in the 2nd case they can be incredibly useful and can assist in creating a deeper understanding, but in the 1st case they obviously create fundamental gaps in understanding.

In a way it's on the student to make sure whatever they're doing, they actually understand it, or come exam season the gaps in their knowledge sans Claude will become quite obvious.

way back in the dark ages when I was in college I used the hell out of back files. we all did. Over the years the teachers had added more and more homework because the students using backfiles were answering more and more homework correctly. The teacher swore that home work should take about 3 hours a week. the smartest guy I knew did it once without backfiles, because the fraternties, the holders of the backfiles, were all at an off campus event. it took 17 hours. he just gave up and used the backfiles.

I don't think homework load has adjusted in some classes. it was hard to do the homework and learn honestly, it was just copying and finding previous answers. it actually detracted from the learning experience.

it would be nice to have something that could explain it to me, like a tutor. My mom paid for me to have a private tutor to get me through a compressed calc 3 summer class. Best I scored in a math class other than diffy-q.

so I think it's, like everything, on the student. but fuck the homework load at some places, it's not a good solution.

They shouldn't use the LLM to do their school work. There is still and will always be value in understanding.

However, to say they "should never use an LLM" entirely is going to make them unemployable.

People who need to get places shouldn't use rockets.

Such a dumb analogy.

Maybe "people who need to be able to make decisions about rocket use should understand them deeply not just ride on them"

No, actually, it's a great analogy:

- Can get you somewhere very quickly.

- Requires technical knowledge and ability to use correctly.

- If you're not careful, you will get to the wrong place, and will probably blow up by the time you arrive (if not before).

P.S. Your analogy is dumb. (Just arguing at your level here.)

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