I’m on the middle of my CS Degree, and seems that every assignment I need to use a LLM, or is because short deadlines or the people in your group use LLM and without critical thinking of it. Some teachers seems to be fine with that, however my experience is that we make complex essays and complex class diagrams, a lot of code, however no one seems to understand or learn form what they are making and wend defending their work only can do it by reading a resume the LLM made, that make me hopeless and unmotivated. I what is yours experience and opinions on this matter?
P.S. Sorry for any grammar error with English, is not my main language. About AI I am not fully against AI. The Local LLM installed on my machine is helpful for a few things, but the amount that we are using on CS seems too much.
I took programming classes before the LLM craze, and I just want to say I felt similarly about people not learning from or understanding what they made. A lot of my classmates were happy to be led by the hand through every assignment or project, but would completely fall apart when asked to make their own solutions.
Part of it I think was motivation. The people who were into programming because computers were their passion, or because they liked building things did better. A lot of people were just taking the class in hopes to get a high-paying job, and those didn’t do great even if they did go on to get a degree.
It’s a shame because I believe the true wonder of computer programming is the open-ended ability to solve any problem. You don’t have to be steered in a particular direction, and if you have an idea that you follow through on you can achieve your goal in any number of ways.
I think LLMs are attractive to students because it points them in a direction they can follow without having to think about it, unfortunately to the detriment of personal growth. They appear all over the place in business because your boss is never going to assign enough time and budget for a project, and the perceived velocity or cost of LLM-driven development is cheaper than hiring enough developers.
In my opinion, if you’re in the middle of your degree then this is the exact time you should be avoiding LLMs to learn. Presumably you have access to your professors, mentors, or tutors when you need to understand something, and all of that goes away after graduation.
i wonder the people who use llms to get a degree recently are they even getting jobs, or they get laid off because they cant code, because the llm did all the stuff for them.(not in tech)