Gabor Szabo

Posted on Aug 11 • Originally published at perlweekly.com

Perl 🐪 Weekly #733 - Perl using AI

#perl #news #programming

Originally published at Perl Weekly 733

Hi there,

AS you know I teach Python and Rust (and I would teach Perl as well if clients were asking for it), and recently I started to wonder how to change my material and my assignment to have any value in the age of AI.

I tried several of the assignments I usually give to my students, pasted them in copilot and got a working solution with tests and documentation. The solutions were good, and way 'better' than what I teach. Better in that they already included input validation, exception, written with separation of concerns. Most of these things are relatively advanced. Well, at least you usually don't learn about them in the first few hours of learning.

The students can also ask the AI to explain each word and each symbol in the code. The question remains of course, if they will understand the language the AI uses or if they need a simpler explanation.

In any case it seems these assignments are now rather useless as the students - especially the ones that are only interested in the credit - will use AI to generate the solution and won't learn a thing. Besides copy-pasting the assignment and the solution.

If you have ideas of how and what should I teach to help them become productive, let me know in an email!

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

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