@jannem
All that is true. Fortunately, for the topic of •this• thread (avoiding learning loss from LLM shortcutting), it’s not necessary to split my teaching for different parts of the vocation / avocation continuum!
For the students for whom CS education is primarily vocational (and more power to them), I can say quite honestly that:
- Having the degree helps open some employment doors, more in some places than others — but even in the most credentialist regions and job markets, it doesn’t do much more than get you •in• the door. If you are unable to function in your job, you’re not going to do well professionally…except maybe at the most dysfunctional of businesses and in the most miserable of career trajectories. The experience of education is •still• what matters most, even in purely professional terms.
- Getting the degree may open doors, but individual course grades? My dude, nobody really cares whether you got an A+ or B- in COMP 127 at Macalester. Come on.
- However, lack of struggle means lack of learning, which •will• inhibit your ability to function in a job. So you LLM and/or cheat your way through intro CS and manage to get away with it and get an A. So what? Nobody else cares about the A, and you’re coming into all the next steps with a deficit. That’s going to be miserable; the only way through is an ever-enlarging snowball of deception. That does not end well. Far better (for you, for your career) to struggle and take the B+.
- Whatever the future of AI in employment, each human’s job market differentiator is always going to be what •they• can do as a human. If you’re not building some kind of capacity that is you and not the tool, then what are you bringing to the job market? A slip of paper and an AI subscription that anyone can buy? Good luck with that.
So yes, motivations differ, but even so, the underlying messages of good learning — make it your own work, embrace struggle, be engaged, be curious — apply to both passion-seekers and job-seekers. There are plenty of other ways in which there is pedagogical tension between those groups, but this isn’t one of them!
@josch @ireneista @baldur
