I agree it's often difficult, but I think it's possible to balance honesty with humility and being a so-called team player.
For example, if you see something that's sloppy [1], your honest assessment will likely help both the coder and the manager. But you do have to temper your language, and sandwich the criticism in something that won't make the person interpret it as "you're sloppy/stupid" or "you don't deserve to work here".
The additional problem is: you have to test it with baby steps. If a coder/manager can't take any feedback [2], not even the friendliest suggestion, you have to pick whether to (1) slowly train each other to communicate better, or (2) leave (it alone).
But ultimately (IMO), it's not worth training yourself to be less honest or dishonest. You risk losing the ability to do your best among other smart, honest and feedback-accepting people, or being an honest and feedback-accepting manager/employer yourself [3].
[1] Like many blocks of copy-pasted code, or massive scripts with no separation of concerns, which can really grind my gears.
[2] I've personally had a few discussions with peers and leads in teams who would get defensive, or interpret my feedback as politicking, even in a cooperative environment, and I didn't love that. But I also didn't love getting (what seemed as) "holier than thou" evals in (what I saw as) more competitive environments. So, maybe my cooperative is another's competitive, and vice versa.
[3] Because you can easily get used to a skewed or toxic environment, and accidentally spread that toxicity to others, or unintentionally be seen as toxic yourself.
> your honest assessment will likely help both the coder and the manager
While I'd like this to be always true, there will be cultures and even individual egos for which this will never be true.
Someone who's considered a senior dev in the org might dislike your assessment (regardless of what external resources and industry practices and any number of people's experiences say) and might turn your suggestions for how to make their code a bit better into a bikeshedding argument until either one of you tires out and gives up (no relation to which opinion is even right or what's best) or the manager gets pissed off at the both of you and has to intervene (not necessarily thinking badly of you) and the traditional methods like "pulling rank" wouldn't work either if it's a senior engineer. Even if you do everything right in how you approach it and frame it positively and everything else.
In part, this might be because there's no one set of guidelines for "this is what good code looks like", especially because of how fast moving and disjointed and underregulated the whole craft is (might settle down in a century idk). It might also be because that mess leads to vastly different opinions on what's good (e.g. how some people take SOLID/DRY as gospel, others don't, to the point where WET is a thing). And some people just don't care and don't see things the way you do.
Concrete example: once saw a bit of code that had nested service calls. Suggested to the person that this will lead to the N+1 problem in database interaction. They said that it's okay because the other code is written like that in the app already and that this code is easier to reason about. A month later I had to actually show them cache hit/miss statistics after implementing caching as a band-aid on top of the nested code because there were deadlines and nobody could rewrite the whole thing as a DB view. In that particular case, there wasn't even mean exchanges or whatever, just endless bikeshedding about whether something is needed or not that lead nowhere, even when graphs and data were presented by me.
Same for opinions on how much logging or code comments should there be, stuff like dynamic SQL generation vs DB views and a bunch of more nebulous things, though often with a quality of life impact instead of something so concrete as above, where pages started taking 20-30 seconds to load once the DB was properly populated with a lot of data.
So yeah, absolutely do your best effort and try to orient yourself towards open minded egoless developers in a cooperative environment. But sometimes that's not what life will give you and you might just realize "hey, naah, person X is the problem 100% here but it might be possible that I cannot do anything about it in this environment". I've also been person X, of course, but in general I think more honesty would be good.
Like figuring out why our national e-health project failed so badly as it did and putting the people responsible for the failure in jail after a proper root cause analysis is done, if they didn't seek proper remedies in an adequate amount of time: https://www-lsm-lv.translate.goog/raksts/zinas/latvija/09.04...
The first point about documentation really has to do with the question: whom are you willing to support?
Instead of seeing it as "users of X platform", I think it's more useful to divide user groups into:
1. Completely non-technical users who, at worst, wouldn't know how to download anything, and at best only know how to install from an ".exe" file;
2. Middle-ground users who, at worst, are not willing to learn your preferred way of installation, or at best, are new to non-common installation methods;
3. Technically proficient users who, at worst, have arbitrary reasons for disliking your preferred way of installation, or at best, have legitimate reasons for disliking it;
4. Your ideal technically proficient users.
FOSS is often geared towards the fourth category, and for good reason. But if you want your tool to be adopted more widely, you have to learn more about those other user groups, and how to support them beyond documentation.
And here I'd say it's also fair to look for good reasons or funding for that extra support, because if it's not rewarding work, it doesn't have to stay free as in free beer (even if it's FOSS).
Looks great, and I definitely like the approach, but I wonder who would be the ideal user here.
Regional pricing is not that difficult of a problem, unless you're targeting particular customer bases and want to introduce discounts. So, I expect you'll always have devs who can't be bothered, and will opt for the defaults.
Those who want to do the additional legwork won't face that many problems with calculations, although admittedly your tool makes it easier for them. But what's the genuine difference between the default and your prices, and how much of a customer base is actually lost in that difference?
In fact, to reframe this more optimistically, I'd suggest you reach out to people at Steam (and other platforms) who are working on this. Since your tool is already free, you can aim for even more impact and tell them why their current system is wrong, why this matters and why yours is better.
If you want to adapt this to something you can monetize, I'd suggest introducing more complex considerations into the mix. What if I wanted regional pricing and info when to apply discounts where? What platforms should I support to get the most players from X country? You could leverage more data and advanced analytics to support complex decisions that users would pay for.
I've seen arguments that opening up fresh material makes it easy for less honest institutions to plagiarize your work. I've even heard professors say they don't want to share their slides or record their lectures, because it's their copyright.
I personally don't like this, because it makes a place more exclusive with legal moats, not genuine prestige. If you're a professor, this also makes your work less known, not more. IMO the only beneficiaries are either those who paid a lot to be there, lecturers who don't want to adapt, and university admins.
I wish we would speed run this to where these super star profs open their classes to 20,000 people at a lower price point (but where this yields them more profit)
That's basically MOOCs, but those kinda fizzled out. It's tough to actually stay focused for a full-length university-level course outside of a university environment IMO, especially if you're working and have a family, etc.
(I mean, I have no idea how Coursera/edX/etc are doing behind the scenes, but it doesn't seem like people talk about them the way they used to ~10 years ago.)
They're still around and offering new online courses. I hope they don't have any problems to keep afloat, because they do offer useful material at the very least.
I agree it's hard, but I think it's because initially the lecturers were involved in the online community, which can be tiring and unrewarding even if you don't have other obligations.
I think the courses should have purely standalone material that lecturers can publish, earn extra money, and refresh the content when it makes sense. Maybe platform moderators could help with some questions or grading, but it's even easier to have chatbot support for that nowadays. Also, platforms really need to improve.
So, I think the problem with MOOCs has been the execution, not the concept itself.
Most MOOCs are venture funded companies not lifestyle business so they will not likely do sensible user friendly things. They just need to somehow show investors that hyper growth will happen. (Doesn't seem like though that it did happen)
Most of the MOOCs were also watered down versions of a real course to attempt to make them accessible to a larger audience (e.g. the Stanford Coursera Machine Learning course that didn't want to assume any calculus or linear algebra background), which made them into more of a pointless brand advertisement than an actual learning resource.
I understand what you mean, but I disagree it's mostly or pure branding.
I'd argue that even watered down versions can be useful as a bridge to more advanced courses and material, provided you have access to both.
Personally, I benefited from that ML course by Andrew Ng, because I got the vocabulary and introductory math knowledge to proceed to courses and textbooks on linear algebra. It wasn't the only thing that helped, sure, but it helped.
There were also other STEM and non-STEM MOOCs which brought me free knowledge I probably would've never pursued or paid for otherwise.
They are mostly used for professional courses. Learning python, java, gitlab runners, micro services with NodeJS, project management and things like that
On the flip side, that'd require many professors and other participants in universities to rethink the role of a university degree, which proves to be much more difficult.
It's fair to worry about the geopolitics of borders and minority groups, but this does not have much to do with a company placing its headquarters in a middle country where maybe (former) members of a controversial state could also work.
People believe all kinds of weird things, and that includes Russians. In secular countries, you're free to believe in what you want, but that doesn't mean you will or should be taken seriously. What a random Russian person believes doesn't matter, unless they have power and it has an effect on others.
Switch Russian with any other ethnicity or nation in the world, and you will perhaps see why the rhetoric of mixing geopolitics and ethnic politics with company policy (or even your own relationships) is not the best.
Kagi also kept using Yandex - a Russian search engine - despite many people explicitly requesting they not provide funding to imperialist invaders (aside the obvious question of censorship skewing result quality).
When they said no, and explained Yandex only gets paid when needed for a search anyway, people asked for a toggle to disable Yandex for their searches. That way at least they aren't funding it. Rejected that too.
Not going to lie, it is kinda weird how this is happening again.
I haven't followed the particular situation, but if it's as you say it, I agree that's bad company policy not to allow opting-out.
It's still a leap to conclude that "HQ in a neutral country" equates to or results in "Russian influence". The obvious stepping stones between the announcement and the conclusion of the parent comment would need to be that: A) Kagi (intends to) hires many employees of Russian origin, who B) live in Belgrade and C) also evidently and publicly hold imperialist views, which D) have an effect on the company and its product.
Note that this isn't "neutral" as in "I like chocolate" vs "You don't like chocolate". Sometimes being "neutral" is pretty damning, more so if you are providing a "neutral" ground for sanctioned individuals or people waiting the $CURRENT_GENOCIDAL_WAR out.
I agree with you about not likely being there an A->B->C->D conclusion, but it's a signal about the preferences or lack thereof of the ownership of the company. But really, they can do whatever they prefer.
The "maybe (former) members of a controversial state could also work" carries A LOT of weight here. Given the connection with Yandex, I assume the company itself is A-okay with what russia is doing, since the company is working with what is basically going to be russia's wechat.
I disagree that what a random russian believes doesn't matter. And I disagree about the ethnicity argument. Russian is not "just another ethnicity". Countries bordering russia are now (again) under threat (or war) using "muh russian minorities" as a casus belli. Enough of them in a city/province/country, and institutions will start getting conditioned, from within and from without. I am a liberal, but there is being a liberal, and there is self-sabotage.
Deciding to look the other way, as a company, is just another signal about the owner of that company.
If you genuinely hold those views, and aren't just trolling, then I certainly hope you're not responsible for any hiring or people management decisions. If you do interact with people, I'd suggest talking to those you consider adversarial by default, in person. Things seem much more adversarial online.
"Enough of them" really applies to any minority, so if you think Russians are a problem-ethnicity today, there will be plenty more to choose from tomorrow. If you find it difficult to distinguish between manipulation of ethnic conflict, propaganda, and the role of an individual in a society, there's plenty of literature online. It's not blind tolerance or "self-sabotaging liberalism" to maintain a secular state and non-discriminatory employment policies, and to require your employees to leave politics outside the business.
Regarding your interpretation of the parent comment:
1. HQ in Serbia =/= HQ in Russia
2. Controversial use of Yandex =/= Russian influence or support of imperialist policies
3. Hiring of Russian devs =/= Hiring of devs exercising adversarial or imperialist views
And again, I still suggest you do the exercise: find another ethnicity others find controversial and adversarial (but you don't), and switch the terms in your comments. If that fails, at least be open about your views in public, so others can avoid you and your company.
I don't like nor support what the Russian government does, but I don't conflate those actions with those of Russian individuals or the people.
It does not. You are allowed to pick and choose. Try asking any Baltic country if they'd like 2 extra million russians, and tell them they are wrong because their argument can be proven wrong when abstracted enough. Try asking the Ukrainians.
>If you find it difficult to distinguish between manipulation of ethnic conflict, propaganda, and the role of an individual in a society
This is peak irony, I wish russians would read on those topics.
>Regarding your interpretation of the parent comment:
I didn't state those 3 points. But choosing to operate in Serbia, and choosing to use Yandex, are signals about the company that I can decide to operate on. Clearly the company is pretty "lax" when it comes to this. If they have choosen to hire disproportionately more russian devs ( I don't know), that would be another signal. Choosing to opere in Serbia isn't equal to choosing to operate in Russia, mind you. But still, it's a different signal w.r.t choosing to operate in another country, e.g. Poland. I don't have strong opinions against Serbian people, mind you.
>And again, I still suggest you do the exercise: find another ethnicity others find controversial and adversarial
Again, you are still leaning on the fact that, when abstracted enough, we can bend every argument. I don't support discrimination, that doesn't mean I appreciate getting members from an openly hostile society (to say the least).
>I don't like nor support what the Russian government does, but I don't conflate those actions with those of Russian individuals or the people.
Feel free to keep your head in the sand and live the fairy tale where everything is because of the russian government and not of the people. There are centuries of evidence that this is not the case. I bet you are from a country that has not been under russian rule in the past, or are ill-informed about the history of that society/culture. Not all societies and cultures are equal. "Things seem much more adversarial online", how arrogant. I'm fairly able to distinguish a tribalistic ethnic conflict from something that is not.
Try asking those seemingly complex questions I've asked the russian poster to any russian, including those living in the west. You'll never get a straight answer.
FYI, I've worked with (and hired) people from virtually all over the world, and traveled quite a lot (not vacations, long-term movements), never had an issue. Held friendships with people coming from countries with an "evil" regime, these were normal and kind people. For some cultures a brutal regime is an "accident of history", for others, a tradition.
> It does not. You are allowed to pick and choose.
Of course. You're allowed to choose your narrative and favorite scapegoat. That doesn't make it correct, or useful, or good. But it is useful to your government, I'll give you that.
The Baltic and Ukrainian friends and colleagues I talked to seemed to understand the difference between 1) what the Russian government says and does, and 2) what role their friends, colleagues or family of Russian origin have in that. The Russian and Belarusian friends and colleagues I talked to say they don't support their government's actions. Same with Israelis and Palestinians. So, unless they're all lying, or I'm imagining things, they seem to understand the nuance, even when it's painful or difficult.
I have much more in common with them than I do with any geopolitical warrior, whether they come from the government or just believe in that.
> that doesn't mean I appreciate getting members from an openly hostile society (to say the least)
Aside from the fact that this is a company, not a country, and there's no discussion of hiring let alone getting anyone:
If that's true, why wouldn't these apparently openly hostile Russians join their preferred army? Or do you think they are a fifth column in your country?
Be open about your conclusions. If all or most people of Russian origin are problematic because they come from an openly hostile society, what is your conclusion?
Do you think they should be kicked out? Should they be required to declare and prove allegiance to their host country? If they're as hostile as you say, why would you hire them?
What if they claim they're against their government's actions - are they lying, or should they have to prove it? What if they (falsely) believe in the propaganda of the Russian government - how would you ban this?
How do you feel about people from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Venezuela, the US for that matter? What about the Austrians, Germans, English or Japanese? Kurds, Palestinians, Cherokee? Their governments and/or minority groups have certainly been controversial in various countries and centuries, to say the least.
It's not an abstract subject, it's a question of principles and nuance.
> I bet you are from a country that has not been under Russian rule in the past
My country has been subject to plenty foreign conquerors, adversaries (real or not) and undue influence, including that of various Russian governments. Yet I don't see how the members of those other countries are guilty for that, nor how my hatred for them gets any justice for the pain of my ancestors (or the pain that my ancestors caused). And you don't seem like you have personal grievances that would at least explain your views.
But who knows, maybe scapegoating is more fun, and I'm missing out.
>Of course. You're allowed to choose your narrative and favorite scapegoat
No, that's not it. You are operating under the assumption that every culture is equal; it is not.
>I have much more in common with them than I do with any geopolitical warrior
Since this isn't your first ad hominem, let's get some facts straight. Apparently, you have: 1) Baltic and Ukrainian friends and colleagues, 2) Russian and Belarusian friends and colleagues. "Same with Israelis and Palestinians".
This isn't an attempt at doxxing or anything (you linked to some papers you co-author), you are a Serbian researcher working in Germany. None of your co-authors apparently have these origins, nor any manager/high level people in the company you are working for. I am sorry, but I struggle to believe you have these kind of colleagues, especially in such a nice area like ontologies, protege, etc. AND that happened to discuss with them in depth the russian situation.
I have a similar experience when it comes to Israelis and Palestinians, Belarusians, but not russians, I am sorry. The Ukrainians I know hate russians with a passion.
>Aside from the fact that this is a company, not a country, and there's no discussion of hiring let alone getting anyone
I agree, didn't imply that.
>If that's true, why wouldn't these apparently openly hostile Russians join their preferred army? Or do you think they are a fifth column in your country?
It's very simple, life in the west is better. That doesn't mean they believe in its values. Also, once the 3-day SMO got a bit too real a lot of moscow/peter russians decided to bail out. Would they have left if the 3-day SMO succeeded? I don't think so, they would have been happily chanting "russia strong". Yes, some of them are fifth columnists.
If you are still in doubt if the level of infiltration in Europe is through the roof, I don't know what to tell you. But the issue is that, even the majority of the non-fifth columnists harbor pro-imperialist russia values and resentment towards the so-called west. You'll never get a straight answer from them when it comes to these issues, in my experience.
>Be open about your conclusions
Please don't imply things. I am already open about my conclusions. My conclusion is that russia and russians are culturally unfit for being accepted into democratic societies en-masse due to centuries of brutal regimes known for their hybrid warfare and espionage. I think we should re-vet all "refugee" russian visas we have in europe, and reconsider the influence we allow oligarchs to have because they bring some blood money with them.
>How do you feel about people from Saudi Arabia [...]
>Their governments and/or minority groups have certainly been controversial in various countries and centuries, to say the least.
>It's not an abstract subject, it's a question of principles and nuance.
Nothing against them, not sure why you ask. It's you who decided to bring the abstraction up a notch in your previous comment, when saying "'Enough of them' really applies to any minority". And here's my disagreement. Russians aren't ANY minority, nor for their history, not for their culture, not for the implications of having a russian minority in your country. A minority is NOT fungible, because culture is NOT fungible, and history is NOT fungible.
>My country has been subject to plenty foreign conquerors, adversaries (real or not) and undue influence, including that of various Russian governments. Yet I don't see how the members of those other countries are guilty for that, nor how my hatred for them gets any justice for the pain of my ancestors (or the pain that my ancestors caused).
Serbia has never been under russian rule. Like other countries, it has its foreign invaders, adversaries, etc. But, again, NOT all adversaries are the same, because what they did during their history, what they promoted, and for how long, is not the same. Russia is likely in a unique position when it comes to the integral of applied brutality over time/people. It's not putin, it's not "the government", it has been like this forever.
>And you don't seem like you have personal grievances that would at least explain your views.
If by looking at past data (history, books, etc.) and current data (current state of russian society, their behaviour towards conquered Ukrainians, their nuclear-bomb threats every 3 days) you conclude that everything is fine and dandy with the russian people, so be it. That is not my conclusion. I do have personal grievances because the future of the values (and countries) that I believe in is at stake here, for real. I dislike people who are morally "flexible".
I've written a lot in this HN thread. I'll summarize my opinion:
- Culture and civilization are not fungible, thus not all cultures and civilizations are equal.
- I do not separate the responsibility of the russian people from its government. It has been too long.
- Vast majority of russians that live in the west harbor anti-west resentment and hold imperialist values. Those that left after the 3-SMO fiasco left because they risked their skin, not for any political reason. Will likely move back once this is over.
- I think Kagi having a Serbian HQ and working with Yandex is a signal about its moral compass. In hindsight, the latter is worse than the former.
It is doxxing, but whatever floats your boat. I'm not going to post the names of anyone, so if you don't believe me, up to you. Like I said, I can't know if you're genuine or not either. But if you are, there's some chance you could rethink these views, or at least be open about your conclusions.
But yes, these are discussions you can have when you meet people offline. If you live anywhere professionally attractive - like Germany - you'll get to talk with a lot of people. They're mostly not long in-depth discussions, but when you ask or express genuine concern about the situation, you get some responses. It could be a lie, or well-hidden hatred, or a skewed sample, up to you to decide.
If you're happy to spread this narrative - which you seem to be - then I think you fit the bill of a geopolitical warrior. You think it's right to treat all members of an adversarial country as adversaries before they did anything, and I think it's wrong/counterproductive/bad to do so, especially if you're not a member of your country's military or security apparatus or have a personal grievance which explains it. Currently it's Russians for you, tomorrow it'll be the Chinese, Americans, whomever, based on where you live and who now is the adversary.
Serbia has had plenty of experience with "undue Russian influence" and conquerors of similar profiles, but sure, it's not the same. I think the Russian government isn't very different from other imperial powers, which are notoriously not representative of their people, and problematic for neighboring states and their people. If this wasn't the case, Russians wouldn't be on your radar. Simple as that. You don't have to equivocate cultures to notice a general pattern in geopolitics, and you don't have to tolerate adversaries to treat normal people normally.
As far as those other examples go, ask an LLM of your choice, preferably in Incognito mode: "What has $COUNTRY done that would explain why others hate $COUNTRY_MEMBERS?" See what comes out.
It's not; it's information you willingly shared and I haven't added to it in any way, I just mentioned that the information available online doesn't fit with what you are telling me. In fact, you have now conveniently shifted to the fact that you do not really have in-depth discussions, but you got some responses from "people".
FYI, Germany isn't really that attractive for high-paying jobs. I have lived in different, more attractive countries, and I wouldn't touch Germany bureaucracy-wise or salary-wise, maybe it's good for public sector jobs, I don't know. I can assure you, I am more traveled than you (visiting a random city for a couple of days conference doesn't really count as traveling, sorry). I happened to be in Berlin right after the war started, and the only russian I met was ECSTATIC, literally "we are back" vibes.
>If you're happy to spread this narrative - which you seem to be - then I think you fit the bill of a geopolitical warrior.
I've yet to see a counter-argument from you. You keep saying I am a "geopolitical warrior" and that I am spreading a "narrative".
>Currently it's Russians for you, tomorrow it'll be the Chinese, Americans, whomever, based on where you live and who now is the adversary
Again, pushing this kind of "hater" narrative. Please just f*** stop, it feels like I am talking to a sophomore doing classroom debate.
> I think the Russian government isn't very different from other imperial powers, which are notoriously not representative of their people
You pass this as a fact, but it is not. Not in the case of russians, sorry.
>If this wasn't the case, Russians wouldn't be on your radar. Simple as that.
Not sure I understand the implication here.
Your argument is just an abstract straw man about the fact that, since hating is wrong (it is), and you classify my opinion as hate (it's not), you conclude that my opinion is wrong. This shows up again when you propose to use variables in place of a country, because countries are somehow interchangeable.
Another irony is that you live in Germany, a country that was dismembered and re-educated from the ground up after their atrocities in WW2, in an effort to correct/roll-back the cultural/societal rot that had taken place due to nazism. This succeeded, and German people are, generally speaking, very nice. Had it been 70 years ago, I guess you would have told me that it's just Hitler or the government. In hindsight, we have evidence it wasn't.
I think the gist of it is that I do not separate the responsibilities of the russian people from their government(s), you do. We have different interpretations of the history of russian society, but you must admit that it's quite a coincidence for there to not be any correlation between the russian people/culture and the outcome of their nation, for centuries?
Don't we have ample evidence that deresponsabilization is NOT working?
In my experience, the less one is read about their history and/or the further they are from the blast zone for when they go for the next genocidal war, the more they're willing to look the other way, because doing the opposite is, of course, more tiring.
"Sanctioned individuals" from Russia would have a hard time working in Belgrade, since it is under a lot of pressure and scrutiny from "the West". These individuals would have an easier time in Hungary, Moldova, Turkey, Malta or UAE.
The vast majority of Russians affected by the war, especially those with technical expertise to be Kagi employees, are not "sanctioned". Many situated people (which software engineers and adjacent roles often are) who left Russia have also reached the EU.
The US is also "openly flirting" with Saudi Arabia, Israel and (even) North Korea, if you like that language, but geopolitically controversial relationships between state officials don't and shouldn't determine the relationships between the people.
You are, and should be, free to employ and associate with individuals coming from China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or US, even if the state you're a member of designates their (former) state as adversarial, unless you have reasons to believe that particular individual is adversarial or bad.
Sanctioned individuals would have a hard time working anywhere for the simple fact they cannot open a bank account, practically all banks everywhere deny services to sanctioned individuals or face the wrath of OFAC
As much as I dislike not having a good mental model of all the code that does things for me, ultimately, I have to concede the battle to get things done. This is not that different from importing packages that someone else wrote, or relying on codebases of my colleagues.
That said, even if I have to temporarily give up on understanding, I don't believe there's any reason to completely surrender control. I'll call a technician when things need fixing right away, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't learn (some of) the fixes myself.
We need to grade people because that's the best way we have to determine (for one or more subjects) who's:
1. capable enough, so that we can promote them to the next stage;
2. improving or has potential for improvement, so that we can give them the tools or motivation to continue;
3. underperforming, so that we can find out why and help them turn it around (or reduce the pressure);
4. actually learning the content, and if not, why not.
Thankfully, everyone knows this system is flawed, so most don't put too much weight on school grades. But overall, the grades are there to provide both an incentive for teachers and students to do better, and a way to compare performance.
All good points, and I was sort of coming at it from the point of view of catching cheaters. ofc cheaters skew the data but theyre ultimately hurting themselves. They wont pass a companies' entrance tests or will soon find themselves unemployed if they cant do the work. Yes its a problem but I see a lot of effort being spent on trying to detect them. Is that effort proportional to the problem?
I think we'll still need ways to detect copy-pasted zero-shot content that's generated by LLMs, for the same reasons that teachers needed ways to detect plagiarism. Kids, students, and interns [1] "cheat" for various different reasons [2], and we want to be able to detect lazy infractions early enough so that we can correct their behavior.
This leads to three outcomes:
1. Those that never really meant to cheat will learn how to do things properly.
2. Those that cheated out of laziness will begrudgingly need to weigh their options, at which point doing things properly may be less effort.
3. Those that meant to cheat will have to invest (much) more effort, and run the risk of being kicked-out if they're rediscovered.
[1] But also employees, employers, government officials, etc.
[2] There could be some relatively benign reasons. For example, they could: not know how to quote/reference others properly; think it's OK because "everyone does it" or they don't care about subjects that involve writing; do it "just this once" out of procrastination; and similar.
The whole argument is "A written response to an answer is no longer a valid form of testing for knowledge"
We don't need better detection. We need better ways to measure one's grasp of a concept. When calculators were integrated into education, the focus shifted from working the problem out, to using the correct formulas and using the calculator effectively. Sure, elementary classes will force you to 'show your work', but that's to build the foundation to build on, I believe.
We don't need to detect plagiarism if we're asking students verbal answers, for example
"Grasping concepts" is not the only learning goal in schools or universities. Many classes - including within STEM programmes - want to teach students about writing, argumentation, researching, critical analysis, dealing with feedback, etc.
Oral exams can be more stressful, depending on the student. They also don't check for the student's writing or researching ability. They can be gamed with rhetorical skills. Grading of oral exams tends to be more opaque. And so on.
Then there's the issues I explained above, where you don't want to inadvertently reward cheating. Even if you don't care about the cheaters, you should try your best to detect and reward real effort. Otherwise, it'd be stupid not to cheat and use the class for free credits, at which point, from an educational POV, it's a useless class.
So, all in all, there are still very good reasons for doing take-home written responses and essays, and good reasons for wanting to detect cheating or plagiarism.
You might want to look into knowledge graphs (KGs), graph databases, ontologies, and similar.
I personally and professionally used these to do some cool things, like run audits across different systems simultaneously. Common stack would include Protege for creating the ontologies (i.e., a schema of how the things you're interested in link to each other), Ontotext Refine or py scripts to populate the graphs, and Ontotext GraphDB or Neo4j AuraDB for storing them.
It's relatively easy to then connect this knowledge base to an LLM, and get more flexibility out of it.
That said, there aren't that many user-friendly tools that get the most out of KGs. Most people I worked with weren't interested in KGs or knowledge bases themselves, they just wanted their particular problem solved. And often, it was easier to justify purchasing a subscription to managed tools that (claim to) solve the problem.
So, unless you're OK with building some middleware to combine user apps with KGs, it won't stick with others, in my experience.
For example, if you see something that's sloppy [1], your honest assessment will likely help both the coder and the manager. But you do have to temper your language, and sandwich the criticism in something that won't make the person interpret it as "you're sloppy/stupid" or "you don't deserve to work here".
The additional problem is: you have to test it with baby steps. If a coder/manager can't take any feedback [2], not even the friendliest suggestion, you have to pick whether to (1) slowly train each other to communicate better, or (2) leave (it alone).
But ultimately (IMO), it's not worth training yourself to be less honest or dishonest. You risk losing the ability to do your best among other smart, honest and feedback-accepting people, or being an honest and feedback-accepting manager/employer yourself [3].
[1] Like many blocks of copy-pasted code, or massive scripts with no separation of concerns, which can really grind my gears.
[2] I've personally had a few discussions with peers and leads in teams who would get defensive, or interpret my feedback as politicking, even in a cooperative environment, and I didn't love that. But I also didn't love getting (what seemed as) "holier than thou" evals in (what I saw as) more competitive environments. So, maybe my cooperative is another's competitive, and vice versa.
[3] Because you can easily get used to a skewed or toxic environment, and accidentally spread that toxicity to others, or unintentionally be seen as toxic yourself.