Comment on our generation is too dependent on tiktok and ai (we are so cooked)
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I know you didn’t ask for commentary on your friend, but I’d be concerned that he’s convinced he’s going to “win” you over through just spending tons of time with you. Wearing you down. Probably not how he thinks about it explicitly, but that definitely appears to be his strategy.
Asking you out to dinner after a rejection, and not at least distancing himself from you for a while after it (still just following you around constantly and the other codependent behavior) is a little concerning. Also, your phrasing of “first confession”. He’s told you, you know. It sounds like he doesn’t respect your decision enough to let it lie. It raises some serious red “nice guy” flags.
If he can’t get over it and handle you as just a friend, it’s not your responsibility to cut ties (it’s his feelings after all, not yours), but it might be in your best interest to enforce some distance. He’s not going to get over his feelings if he’s spending every free moment with you.
It sounds like you have some absolutely shit (but not particularly uncommon) professors. Quizzes and tests on programming concepts you haven’t gotten to yet? Fuckers.
I also totally get the struggle of not being given enough time to get the concepts because you have to implement them in an assignment ASAP. It’s one of my biggest complaints (of very many) about how programming is taught at universities. While your approach shouldn’t be necessary, it absolutely will give you a leg up.
I dropped out of a “New Ivy” university BS in Computer Science, then eventually went back and got an Associates degree in Computer Information Systems (bit more broad with hardware, sysadmin, IT troubleshooting, and project management courses on top of a lighter programming course load). I used to think I’d kill myself if I had to program 8 hours a day. Now I’m the lead scripting and automation monkey on a sysadmin/sysengineering/infra architecture/infra ops team and for the most part I enjoy it, including days with 8hrs of scripting.
My advice to learners is to focus on the concepts and problem solving aspects of it as much as your courses will allow you to. Eventually you’ll reach a point with your experience coding, develop your toolkit and skills so that the focus will be “How do I break down this big problem into smaller and smaller chunks, then how do I accomplish those” rather than “how do I do if statements in this language?”.
At a job, you can always look up language specific syntax as long as you have the right terms to look for it online. I spend more time thinking over how I’m going to solve the problem than what specifically I’m typing for code.
And as far as your main point goes about short form content?
Lazy students have existed for far earlier than your generation, and will continue to for long after. While there are far more easily available dopamine injection addictive things now, lazy and unmotivated students find a way. Tiktok wasn’t a thing until after I was out, but by god I wasted entire semesters modding Smash Bros Brawl and playing shit on Steam, hanging out with friends instead of studying and doing assignments.
I won’t deny that the more modern distractions are backed by an unimaginably large industry, with head-spinning amounts of psychological research put in towards keeping people hooked. It’s a problem, and it’s getting worse the more money they find they can make off it. But there have always been different levels of investment in studies and craft.
XiELEd@piefed.social 1 day ago
Thanks for your response!
Unfortunately for him, I am starting to get annoyed at being followed around. I am an introvert and I get easily irritated about certain stimuli, and another thing I dislike is people thinking of me in relation to someone and not as a person of my own, among other things. Recently someone asked me if I was his gf (as he was following me around) and that internally made me feel the bitterest or sourest of emotions. I also don’t like the idea of playing an idealised role in someone’s own self-narrative. For the sake of our friendship yes I probably should have to enforce distance. Instead of being worn down I feel like a ticking time bomb. Also I kinda feel bad for his friends cuz he’s spending a lot of his time with me :(
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Our current teacher is a bit more laid back and we didn’t get any major projects. The thing is, is that she doesn’t really give lectures during our time and instead tells us to watch her lecture videos. Our credit hours for this subject is all Lab and no Lecture so I can sort of understand. Not all of my classmates have computers of their own so I guess another reason is to let the students develop their skills independently, and to pass their assignments using the computers. But yes, I also hate the way programming is taught. I personally would prefer an incremental approach at the beginning like short workbook style exercises. Isolating concepts and progressing into more complex implementations. As it stands programming classes start with our teachers making us stare at a huge program and expecting us to learn everything in bulk by analysing it.
Also… I remember watching a Developer roadmap video and at the bottom of the iceberg Philosophy and Math were mentioned :sob: I also do wish we had a class that outlines what programming is all about. Like what we should expect and its general philosophy. I did read that developers spend most of their time trying to think how to solve a problem than just typing code. I also noticed that some people lose self-esteem because of AI, because we as a society are so focused in the output rather than the internal process. We think that what a programmer is all about is producing code and not being a problem solver.
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Tbh I feel like there’s a difference between gaming and short form content. When you’re a dedicated gamer you at some point would at least use your brain to solve problems. I mean, hopefully anyway. Some games that focus on grinding and idling are pretty low on the mental effort scale, but passively consuming content is literally on the bottom tier, even worse than watching television, to the point that I’ve been catching news of television trying to get into short form movies where the episodes are like super short.