this spring I've been teaching undergrads to use LLM agents. my rationale for doing this was that it would give me a chance to covertly teach lots of real software engineering, which is what I've done.

meanwhile, I've been watching the students closely to try to figure out whether a coding agent is a leveling factor (reducing differences in effectiveness between different students) or an anti-leveling factor (amplifying differences). at this point I'm 99% sure it's the second thing.

@regehr This very much aligns with my university experience as well. My running theory is that utilizing LLMs effectively (a) is just a very different skill from plain coding, somewhat closer to product management / requirements engineering (b) requires additional level of self discipline, because clicking "accept" on everything may get you a passing grade due to how courses are setup today, but definitely won't get you an actually good result.