pavelboyko

"Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. [...] The core barrier to scaling is not infrastructure, regulation, or talent. It is learning. Most GenAI systems do not retain feedback, adapt to context, or improve over time."

I mentored junior SWE and CS students for years, and now using Claude as a coding assistant feels very similar. Yesterday, it suggested implementing a JSON parser from scratch in C to avoid a dependency -- and, unsurprisingly, the code didn’t work. Two main differences stand out: 1) the LLM doesn’t learn from corrections (at least not directly), and 2) the feedback loop is seconds instead of days. This speed is so convenient that it makes hiring junior SWEs seem almost pointless, though I sometimes wonder where we’ll find mid-level and senior developers tomorrow if we stop hiring juniors today.

Please consider adding Simplified English as an output language option, preferably with a level, e.g., A2, B1, etc. This way, I can adjust the language complexity to my kids' level and then gradually remove the crutches as they improve in English.

I have the same experience. I'm sure they are constantly finetuning the model on real user chats, and it is starting to understand low-effort "on the go" prompts better and better.

Well, if I want my universe to be manageable (don't ask me why), introducing the hierarchy of scales from the beginning is a natural solution.

This reminds me of a story that an old professor of theoretical physics told me. In the early nineties, he left the former Soviet Union for the United States to teach physics at one of the top universities. There he encountered the fact that American students were fantastically good at solving all his standard problems for integrals. It quickly became clear that the students were using the then-new program for symbolic calculations, Mathematica. As a result, our professor also mastered Mathematica and spent half the night finding such integrals that it still could not calculate for assignments.

I use Copilot every day and I can assure you it makes a lot of mistakes. I think that, at least in the short term, CS teachers will still find assignments where it makes mistakes.