• 0 Posts
  • 77 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle











  • Boaty McBoatFace was NOT a debacle. It was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get kids interested in climate science with programs like “The diary of Boaty McBoatFace” or “Zoom call with a Boaty McBoatScientist” all around the world in classrooms. Hell, even in high school I would’ve taken an elective that was doing actual work if it was Boaty McBoatFace-themed*.

    *not to say that I’m young enough to have been in high school at the time, but that it would appeal to kids that old

    The debacle was that they were too stuck up to realize what a gift they’d been given and completely squandered it. Boaty McBoatFace was beautiful. For a couple days, the internet cared about science in the absence of technology.




  • I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that you’re quite understanding the role of school? In school they teach you one programming language so you can learn many. You might be the most comfortable with Java, but you’ll quickly see why you need to witch. And sure, we were taught how to use a bunch of Mac-only programs, but more than that we were taught how basic UX of programs works, how to use the internet, how to search with keywords, I think a bit later on Google existed and we were taught how to use the advanced search. All of this is very transferable knowledge, even if you feel most at home somewhere.

    Also keep in mind most kids in school are not blindly doing what school says to do outside of school and building heavily into the ecosystem they were told to do. Certainly not those who are using APIs.

    Anyway I guess my point is, it is much better to learn something than nothing, and foundational knowledge is the point. In this case, it does not matter so much what you learn, and you are best off deep diving into something kids already have a bit of familiarity with, so that they can build onto existing knowledge.

    Edit: Although, I would agree with you if this is like, an advanced LLM programming class. In that case for sure an OSS version should be preferred. But this sounds like basic LLM literacy?