reuven
Joined 19 years ago
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Comment · 2 months ago
MIT's report on AI and education is one of the smartest and deepest takes I've seen to date on the subject. But it's not a "we'll allow X and we'll forbid Y" report. Rather, it's saying that AI can and should profoundly change how we teach and learn, and that the sooner we start to experiment, always keeping people as our central focus, the better.
Comment · 5 months ago
A very interesting point. Coding with AI definitely requires tight, fast loops. I don't have much experience with Rust, but I had heard that the compiler is slow (because it's doing so much thinking and checking in advance).
I'm OK with Lisp output, but maybe that just shows how old I am. :-)
I wonder if it's possible (or wise) to have two different compilers for a language -- one that's optimized for such tight loops, and another that does thorough checking, etc. You know, kind of like -O, but at a much deeper level.
Comment · 5 months ago
I've been taking Chinese lessons for a number of years, and my teacher described her son as learning characters via pinyin. But it's quite possible (even likely) that the common ones don't require pinyin, and/or that I misunderstood how it's used. Nevertheless, even if I pushed the analogy a bit, I still think this might happen as a bridge between learning to code and agentic coding.
Comment · 5 months ago
I can see Rust (and to some degree, Go) as the modern outputs from AI. My point about Python being Pinyin is that both of these languages have a relatively steep learning curve for someone without programming experience, and that it might be worth learning Python before doing agentic coding in Rust, much as children in China learn Latin characters before they learn characters.
Comment · 5 months ago
I don't know if it's that hard for people to go from Python (where whitespace is significant) to languages that use {} and the like. But hey, people only hire me when they want people to learn Python, not when they're moving away from it. :-)
Comment · 5 months ago
Interesting -- I still think that Python is an easier onramp than TypeScript for new developers. But given the popularity and depth of JavaScript, and the clear advantages (and popularity) of TypeScript in serious development, that's not a bad prediction.
You can buy individual courses, or get a subscription that includes all of them, at https://LernerPython.com .
I've written two books for Manning: Python Workout (https://PythonWorkout.com/), and Pandas Workout (https://PandasWorkout.com/). They're full of exercises that'll increase your fluency in Python and Pandas, respectively.
I also teach online for O'Reilly, tweet frequently about Python (@reuvenmlerner) and Threads (@reuvenlerner), and post videos on my YouTube channel (https://YouTube.com/reuvenlerner).
I created one of the first 100 Web sites in the world (http://tech.mit.edu/), graduated from MIT in 1993 and got a PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern in 2014. I've been consulting since 1995.
I live in Modi'in, Israel with my wife and three children.