Fortran AI images

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Hey Joseph, thanks for the encouraging words.

Do you think a mix of AI-assisted and traditional coding exercises could help bridge the gap?

That’s the current design of the workshop. Having students solve a problem without AI and one with AI assistance encouraged, then looking at what was produced on how participants felt about these as learning experiences.

In the long-term, I do think teaching these side by side may be an option. We teach 3rd generation languages (incl. Fortran, Pascal) alongside 4th generation languages (like Python), because they complement each other. Sure, 4GL replace some 3GL in specific tasks, but 3GL remain relevant. In a similar manner, I imagine AI in coding will find its place alongside others, replace some 4GL and 3GL for specific tasks, but not all. We’ll see …

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Yes. As always. Tools are used and abused. Unfortunately, humans are all too keen to blame the tools rather than the systems that promote their abuse.

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That’s a really important point—creativity doesn’t disappear; it just shifts!

As in shifts from mankind to machinekind?

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As in it shifts from humans being creative in one discipline (e.g., coding basic problem solutions) to humans being creative in another (perhaps new) discipline.

86

Now we know how the mercury delay line programmers felt when FORTRAN came along.

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