Comment by pixlmint | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pixlmint | Hacker News Reader

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I'm currently getting my Bachelor's in Computer Science, while in-person is absolutely necessary, it doesn't necessarily need to be hand-written. We now have the exam questions printed out, and we respond on the online exam platform, just like we would before. It is explicitly stated that no aids, including AI, are permitted. There's usually the prof and at least one more TA walking around the room, if anyone is seen with something other than the exam platform open they fail the exam.

Some profs also started requiring special software for doing the exams, which works fine but is pretty annoying to use since it requires Windows, but that application basically hijacks the OS, making it impossible to navigate to any different webpage/ application.

In 2024, we had some coding exams, and AI was explicitly NOT forbidden, which lead to them making the exam more difficult (because with AI, you can solve it so much more quickly, so gotta make it harder), which was really annoying, because it made it practically impossible to solve it yourself because of the time crunch. I hope they realized how wrong that was.

In 2024, we had some coding exams, and AI was explicitly NOT forbidden, which lead to them making the exam more difficult (because with AI, you can solve it so much more quickly, so gotta make it harder), which was really annoying, because it made it practically impossible to solve it yourself because of the time crunch. I hope they realized how wrong that was.

There should be at least one class, probably more, that work exactly like that.

That’s where the industry is moving. Yes, get the fundamentals too, but don’t omit teaching what graduates will actually be doing out of some misplaced sense of purity.

Of course, but the same way, you need to learn to use your head before using a pocket calculator.

I think this isn't quite the right example - a pocket calculator does not need you to verify its output. It is better to be able to calculate, but if you can't seems much less a issue then using a AI without being able to do whatever you asked of it

(So I fully agree with your point, but I think your example is not strong enough)

I think a better example is that we also don't allow people to pass their driving test in a Tesla with FSD.

Yes, that’s where we are today. Colleges definitely can’t avoid fundamentals right now. But at the same time, they should be skating ahead of the puck. Once the calculator has been invented—-even when it’s rare and awkward—-they begin easing off the slide rule reps.

I don't really see the value in testing something like this in the exam format. We have a lot of programming projects we do, where software engineering is the primary focus, and there I think is space to give an introduction on how to use AI for software engineering, what to avoid, current best practices.

But the class I was talking about in my earlier comment was specifically on the fundamentals of programming (how to write a for loop, how to write and call functions... all that sorta stuff). If you need AI to complete this, why even get the degree. Maybe in 10-20 years we'll think differently about this, but as it stands right now, I think someone holding a degree in computer science should absolutely know the fundamentals of computer programming.

How would that software stop you from Just googling things on your phone at the same time?

You are supposed to not use your phone during an exam

all our exams are in-person.

Ah. Nice! Which university is this? (I keep a list of how seriously to take grades from various places, and this is notable info)

ZHAW, a swiss institute. The locked-down browser we use is developed by ETH, a pretty highly regarded swiss university.

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