GeoffMar 21
Edwin Brady

Today, thanks to a former PhD student, I learned that LLMs are terrible at generating Whitespace code: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.09678

Also today, I was invited (and I am accepting) to join a group on redesigning our undergraduate curriculum, which includes discussions on our choice of first programming language.

I am not saying that these things are related. I just happen to be mentioning them both at once because I saw them both today. You get a lot of characters in one toot after all.

What?

Mar 20 at 9:25pmWeb
Show threadWellsiteGeoMar 21
@edwinb You will require students to submit their Whitespace submissions double-spaced, or single spaced?
Show threadShadSterlingMar 21
@edwinb hmmm. Now I want to see an intro programming course using an in-house language, and a later course which makes breaking changes to the language every semester
Show threadColin WatsonMar 21
@ShadSterling @edwinb When I was at Cambridge they used ML on the explicit basis that people were unlikely to have learned it as teenagers and so it created a level playing field. Feels like it rhymes with the current LLM problem, at least.
Show threadJan de Muijnck-HughesMar 21

@edwinb good luck with the curriculum discussions! The dicussons are actually interesting as it forces us to think outside our comfort areas. CS is a cyber-physical socio-technical theory and practice based subject. At St Andrews it’s compounded with the major minor tertiary module structure. You need the polder model if discussions are going to work.

Related side note, I remember years ago hearing a discussion in St Andrews about first languages. Fascinating the arguments were.