Having interviewed with them, this was one of my lasting impressions. One of my interviewers was missing out on their parental leave for their newborn because their work at Anthropic was too important.
They think they’re building the next greatest generation, while sacrificing the generation within their immediate control and (what should be) responsibility.
I worked at a startup. We were really focused on innovating and getting new products from idea to production quickly. It was a fun environment. But at the end of the day we all knew it was just a job.
i don't see the value in AI closing that gap any more than i see the value in AI closing the gap on talking to my friends for me, or closing the gap on watching a movie for me, or closing the gap on taking a walk on the beach for me, etc, etc, etc; the document is the artifact of having written but the artifact is not the value
I got graded homework even in a few college courses and thought it was dumb, but then I realized it's always in the low-tier classes where they can't trust the students to study on their own. Those who skip homework hurt themselves by doing poorly on exams, but that's not enough to stop them. This ruins the curve in ways the instructor can't really fix unless they're prepared to fail half the class, which they aren't.
BTW / Offtopic:
I have read some weeks ago, today if you are hosting a party for your kids birthday, parents are preparing "give away bags" for handing over when leaving the party
The often underworked (most are autograding these days and reading old powerpoints rather than do real curriculum development) and (for the quality) overpaid teachers/professors will mass riot against this because it means they might have to actually teach. We might even get yet more anti-boy treatment than already exists among them as a social class in retaliation.
Please also abolish PowerPoint and force oral exams while you are at it.
Teachers are also luddites as a social class. Math teachers cried about calculators yet everyone of them who refused to adapt did disservice to their students (especially anyone doing statistics). My state's education system is utter trash despite being well off economically because of strong teachers unions keeping them from undergoing even a tiny bit of scrutiny.
They do not deserve the social credit/grace that they get. They are ultimately gatekeepers, whose extremely biased decisions in grading/treatment of their flocks decide which kid grows up on the streets and which kid grows up to eat lobster thermador every day.
Teachers also should not be disciplinarians. Children with discipline problems bad enough to disrupt a whole class should be thrown out of the class room as basically the only thing a teacher does for "discipline". The "right to education for the shit kids means we can't do that" framing is such trash for those who want an education and will inevitably be disrupted by a small minority of terrible students.
Also it's interesting that one of the only other things Max Stirner wrote about besides philosophy was education and his myriad problems with it (given his history as a school teacher).
I like school and think teachers are good and that your comment is the nonsensical ranting of a lunatic and as a result don't feel compelled in the slightest to read whatever it is that you linked.
This is the answer. Many (all?) European schools don’t give homework (this is partly because of the way the grad programs work). It’s on the students to study in order to pass the (difficult) exams.
There is no such thing as a European school. Each country is different. And if the country is a federation, each state might be different. And we have homework in most European countries I’m aware of.
Ah you’re talking about university. There isn’t a European-wide rule or custom for homework, it will very likely be up to each university and/or teacher to decide if they want to give homework or not
Seems this did effectively abolish homework if AI is now doing it all for them. The result seems to be that fewer students pass the exams, not more.
As with any skill, practice is necessary to achieve competence. If homework is no longer a viable way to force students to practice, you'll need to find some replacement, you can't just abolish it and expect there to be no negative consequences.
It is what all my European peers reported to me during grad school, and you should care because it is an example of a system which solves this problem successfully (at the university level).
Oh, university level? The article is about 12-18yo. American grad school already doesn't have graded homework, and undergrad sometimes does or sometimes not.
everything you build potentially increases the surface area of attack. If the benefit of building it is zero or negative then all you've done is increase your risk profile.
unjokingly I think the fact that we removed grayed out buttons for "the button just doesn't appear" is one of the more confusing UI trends of our day and the sight of a grayed out button warms my heart
> Reconsider disabled controls. Disabled controls can be hard to use because users literally have to deduce why they are disabled. Disable a control when users expect it to apply and they can easily deduce why the control is disabled. Remove the control when there is no way for users to enable it or they don't expect it to apply, or leave it enabled, but provide an error message when it is used incorrectly.
> Tip: If you aren't sure whether you should disable a control or provide an error message, start by composing the error message that you might provide. If the error message contains helpful information that target users aren't likely to quickly deduce, leave the control enabled and provide the error. Otherwise, disable the control.
Unfortunately, that nuance has been lost in the modern version of the guidelines with no mention of disabled buttons at all [2]
> Remove the control when there is no way for users to enable it
That guidance is unhinged, and is exactly the anti-pattern that upthread points to that needs to die.
Removing the control is like gaslighting the user: they're looking for "how to do X?" and documentation, Internet searchable screenshots, and, god help us, now AI, are pointing them at a button that does not exist. I cannot tell you how many times I've frustratingly circled that mulberry bush as a user, for a wide range of products.
No, the button (and all other UI elements) should always present/be visible, and if there is a disabled control, there should be a HIG-standardized way to determine why it is disabled. (I.e., a mandatory tool-tip that states what actions would cause the control to enable, though I'd accept that tool-tips themselves are not always discoverable. You could have a small, standardized icon on the disabled control, like an :information-symbol-emoji: that might hit towards the tool-tip, or just put in underneath.)
I agree, just gray it out and have a little question mark button next to it.
Also, way more question mark buttons. I don’t care how well named people think things are. They’re not, and there’s always some hidden behavior you just have to know behind every setting. Include the question mark.
I think the button shouldn't appear if the user doesn't have the access to do it (eg. not an admin, has view rights only, etc).
However, if the user can and they expect to do it, but is in a mode/state which doesn't allow them to do it, greyed out buttons absolutely.
In some cases, greyed out buttons should be clickable (eg. forms) and that should tell the user what is wrong. Looking at you, billion dollar airline, where I couldn't complete my checkin due to this annoyance.
Also, what happened to hover messages and little (?) marks? Every software behaves like it expects me to know what to do from Day 1.
I agree for admin stuff, but certain lack of permissions hiding stuff is annoying. It's nice for things to be disabled and have a hover text explaining why it's disabled. Also, yes, (?) and hover text in general is severely underused in popular software.
I wish every button or menu option that has a shortcut would show me its shortcut on hover or in-place so I didn't have to find it in the manual or buried in the settings menu.
Worse is when the hotkey is underlined but doesn't actually work (multiple buttons with same hotkey, and instead of switching between them it just doesn't do anything. Admittedly this is rare). Or when the list is an MRU that can be navigated with the first letter of the item names, but some letters are reserved for static functions (looking at classic shell start menu: I can't start certain programs from the MRU or pinned list without the mouse because (A)pps Sh(u)tdown (S)ettings are reserved. Numeric helps with MRU, but can't be used in multiple places for the same reason)
> Also, what happened to hover messages and little (?) marks? Every software behaves like it expects me to know what to do from Day 1.
I truly hate fast-food kiosks for this reason: most expect me to be familiar with their offerings and the menu system of that kios. I relatively rarely visit such places and I was better off with a human asking me 1-3 short questions and paying. I'm not paid to know this shit, I'm the customer. Guess I'm just too old, younger people love this crap for some reason.
Younger people love not having to wait in line.
If I'm really hungry and I'm stopping at McDonald's because it's the only place close enough to the bus stop, then I want to order and pay, not wait for the person ahead of me.
If I only have one item at the market/drug store, I want to use a self-checkout machine, and I don't want to be waiting behind someone with a cart full of items who doesn't know they have to actually unload their cart for the cashier, or who decides to go back for "one more thing" that happens to be at the back of the store where they get caught up talking to someone they know.
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