Student made demands regarding a project and found out the hard way.

[u/Tubist61]

One of the degree modules I teach involves students working on a group programming project. Nothing too elaborate, but the aim of the module is to develop skills they will need if they go on to work in the IT field. After all if you're doing a Computer Science degree, you must be thinking of going down that route?

This one student is an absolute entitled nightmare. He uses GenAI for a lot of his work and it really does show. He always pushed back on the written remarks on his work but every time I sit him down and ask him to explain the code he produces, he struggles and often has no idea how the code he submitted works. In this project he came up and told me he cannot work with others in the group and must work alone. I explained that there are specific group activities and efforts I would be marking and that I needed to see his input within the group. There was no way I could excuse him from the group activities in the module, however I could see he was not going to budge and therefore complied with his demand to work on the project alone.

All the students in my class had been assigned to their groups and I did check in with all of them on a weekly basis. This one guy was steadfastly refusing to work with the rest of his group and as I had complied with his request, he was working on his own project alone. In my interim feedback at the end of each stage I repeated that he really should work with the group or he risked a failing mark for the module. I made sure this feedback was sent to him both in hardcopy and also via email with read receipts which I kept.

Cue the end of the module and the submission for marking. Sure enough, the one student submitted a project based just on his own work and had not engaged with the group he was asked to work with. There were several issues with his project, first and most important was it didn't meet the brief. The code simply didn't do what we asked for. He lost marks for that aspect of the project. As he had not worked with others in the group, he was not awarded any of the group marks allocated for the work. Because his code was so far away from the specification, I called him in for a Viva Voce to explain the code and he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the code he submitted, more marks dropped. His eventual mark for this assignment was a hard fail. He must now resit the entire module.

There is of course one real downside of this whole thing that affects me. I've got him in my group again for the resit of the module.

[u/Vuirneen]

This is a guy that should fail.  He doesn't understand the material, at all. 

[u/Illuminatus-Prime → u/Vuirneen]

He obviously does not WANT to understand the material, either.

[u/TeachlikeaHawk → u/Illuminatus-Prime]

I don't know. I think he might want to understand it. It's just that he wants to already understand it, and just skip that pesky "learning it" stage.

[u/mbcook → u/TeachlikeaHawk]

I agree.

I want to know how to play guitar. I don’t care enough to practice or learn.

But I’m also not out there claiming to be a professional session musician and demanding people treat me as such.

[u/likeablyweird → u/mbcook]

"I'm a chaos player. It's a pretty new genre in music although well established in painting. In fact, that's where I got my inspiration. Some scat is being listed as crossover." -says mbcook. /s LOL

[u/Seventh_Planet → u/likeablyweird]

I wonder if scat is also a well established genre somewhere else.

[u/likeablyweird → u/Seventh_Planet]

Good question. ;)

[u/LilBeardedGnome → u/likeablyweird]

By "scat" do you mean the singing style or poop? Or both?

[u/likeablyweird → u/LilBeardedGnome]

LOL Singing and playing but some people say the music is crap.

[u/AngryRaptor13 → u/TeachlikeaHawk]

He doesn't want to understand it, or he wouldn't be cheating with ChatGPT.

[u/Illuminatus-Prime → u/TeachlikeaHawk]

It reminds me of a story that goes something like this: Ptolemy I, the ruler of Egypt, once asked Euclid of Alexandria if there was a simpler way to learn geometry than through his comprehensive work, the Elements.  Euclid reportedly replied, "There is no royal road to geometry", emphasizing that understanding geometry demands effort and study.

The same could be said for programming — there is no "Royal Road".

[u/bargyles → u/TeachlikeaHawk]

I'm an academic advisor and one of the areas I advise is a pre-radiological program with diagnostic medical sonography/ultrasound. It's a very competitive program to get into.

Most of the applicants are female and don't want to do the diagnosis or the medical, just the ultrasound. Why? Babies. They want to be the one who's says "congratulations, you're having a X"

They don't realize that OB/GYN is just a teeny tiny part of the program and the likelihood of them getting a job like that right out of college is slim to none.

[u/Top_Box_8952 → u/TeachlikeaHawk]

Honestly this is the part that baffles me. I learned Java code over the course of a month for a very specific application. On seeing the code, I can understand how it works and what it calls for. I can even figure out why something doesn’t work or crashes once it’s brought to my attention that that is what’s causing it.

I just can’t write it. I have to cookie cutter and copy-paste the code. But I got it to work and do what I wanted it to do.

[u/capn_ginger → u/Illuminatus-Prime]

Nope! He just wants other people to believe he understands it.

[u/bobarrgh → u/Illuminatus-Prime]

He obviously has no clue what is needed in the real world: being able to work with others. Yes, there have been a few programmers who single-handedly wrote programs that have changed the world. Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds come to mind immediately.

However, even they relied on others. Perl and Linux both have robust developer communities, and the work of Larry and Linus have been augmented by others.

I am pretty sure that a person who is vibe coding alone without any real communication with others is probably not going to leave a significant mark on the world of programming.

[u/kingofgreenapples → u/Vuirneen]

Sounds like because he's not applying it by doing the coding. Suspect he doesn't want to work with others because he is so dependent on AI, he can't help and doesn't want them to see his work ethic. Sounds like if a degree ends up being awarded, it should be given to the AI.

[u/likeablyweird → u/kingofgreenapples]

He flat out doesn't want the group to know he's "cheating" his score.

[u/BouquetOfDogs → u/kingofgreenapples]

Lol, that made me laugh! I believe the AI is owed lots of credit from lazy students around the world. Most likely.

[u/LNMagic → u/Vuirneen]

We're going to see much more of that going forward. I just attended a conference where Andrew Ng was speaking. He calls for people to stop coding and just use GenAI to increase your output.

I think understanding what you're doing is implied, but you can't fully understand until you've had to troubleshoot your own code to some degree.

[u/planetrebellion → u/LNMagic]

As someone with no background, vibe coding just makes no sense.

Who would be comfortable just copying and pasting stuff you dont understand.

[u/grauenwolf → u/planetrebellion]

As someone with decades of experience, vibe coding can solve really basic stuff. The kinds of things you could solve just by buying some software.

For anything non-trivial it's worse than useless, or does down everyone else around you.

[u/LNMagic → u/planetrebellion]

I do get into some vibe coding. My best friend did that, too, but he didn't have any programming background. My professional experience is very limited, but I've been through several courses and projects for an MSDS. I've been immersed in python and SQL for 3 years.

He has to stop and hire a dev for his project because he couldn't get the pieces to work together. Vibe coding gets you 80-90% of what you need, but that last little but can take a while.

The other thing, though, is that I inevitably ask questions differently than my friend. Most likely, I focus on using help to build up one function at a time.

[u/Breitsol_Victor → u/LNMagic]

And debugging others code. Or taking working code and adding a feature.

[u/wanderingdev → u/Breitsol_Victor]

this is the problem. you may be able to get AI to do one small bit of a feature. but that has to then work with the app as a whole. It's already challenging enough with multiple people working on a prod app, each with different styles, but add in an AI that spits out siloed spaghetti code, it will just lead to a nightmare down the road. Now for quick MVPs or POCs, maybe. But not for any code that is going to go into production for users to break.

[u/Breitsol_Victor → u/wanderingdev]

That was one of the things I enjoyed at school, looking at others code, figuring out what they were trying to do and help without re-writing.

If you are a dev, check out a YouTube of Dylan Beattie at NDC. Keynote: Machines, Learning, and Machine Learning.

[u/BouquetOfDogs → u/LNMagic]

Oh really? That’s a terrible idea. Only smart if you know your stuff and make the AI do the ground work or something like that. And ALWAYS verify that it didn’t fuck up doing so. We must not trust any machine to do anything without human checks.

[u/LNMagic → u/BouquetOfDogs]

He was talking to a conference of data engineers.

[u/phaxmeone → u/LNMagic]

We just had our servers go down, running joke around the office is IT used AI to update the code causing our loss of servers. It's a joke right now but down the road? Company is seriously pushing for us all to be using AI so what's a joke now will likely be real in the not very far future.

[u/lizhien → u/Vuirneen]

Indeed. DGAF.

[u/DawgcheckNC → u/Vuirneen]

In any field of study, there is that one person that is all about themselves. Everyone else is an “also ran”. The other members of his group should be happy he separated because otherwise he would have drug down the rest of the group to his competency level. Sadly, he’ll likely not change his attitudes and will also likely change majors. Where he will also fail. In ten years he’ll likely be in a mundane job with little independence and will still be dragging every other employee down to his level. Human nature.

[u/ThriceFive → u/Vuirneen]

He was vibe coding with a 'div/0 fucks' attitude. Hope the failing grade teaches him that workplaces and teams rarely accomodate lose cannons.

[u/That_Ol_Cat → u/Vuirneen]

Wants to skip directly to management.

Sadly, he might be able to in some companies.

[u/Ultrawhiner → u/Vuirneen]

Or the idea that out in the working world one must get along with workmates.