Python Coding

With an AI as a tutor?

Looks like Andrew Ng, legendary Stanford professor who launched the MOOC movement and started Deeplearning.ai after Coursera, has a new class out to teach Python programming by using an LLM. It’s quite interesting. Here’s the link to the class and I’ve made it through the first few videos.

I really like the way they have the page set up. It’s a Jupyter-style notebook in the center where you can type the code that you're learning and then with a simple shift-enter have the page run it and return the results — or, more likely, an error message — right there on the page. Previously, when I was learning several years ago, you’d have one window or a book propped up with the tutorial and another window with a text editor and then a third with the command line. You’d type into the text editor, trying not to just copy-paste because come on bro you need to learn, and then save then Command-Tab over to the iTerm2 window and tell it to run the script and see what the output is.

The rest of the Deeplearning.ai page is a video on the right showing what the tutorial is and walking you through some sample code in the blocks of the notebook in the center, and then a pop-up panel to ask the LLM how to solve the problem. You copy the code that the AI spits out into the notebook and give it a try. So, yeah, still some copy-paste but it avoids so much of the tedium and friction and keeps you focused on learning the actual code. I mean, did you really need to waste ten extra seconds because you went arrow-up on the zshell and re-ran the last command, but forgot to change it from py-tutorial-ch12-ex4.py to py-tutorial-ch12-ex5.py before hitting enter to see if you debugged that issue correctly?

No, dear reader, you do not. Those are wasteful interruptions to your actual learning. This way is far better, and I’m loving the idea that AI coders are the future, so learn that instead of the Old Way. It’s like admitting that people will, actually, use Quickbooks for bookkeeping so let’s go ahead and teach that instead of making a would-be CPA use paper ledger sheets and pencil and abacus to learn how to do accounting.