this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] riskable@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Arguably, a much more important thing for the students to learn is the limits of humans. The limits of the computer will never be a problem for 99% of these students or they'll just learn on the job the types of problems they're good at solving and the ones that aren't.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The limits of computers would be the same as the limits for humans. We have no reason to think the human brain has a stronger computation power than a Turing machine.

So, in a way, learning about the limits of computers is the exact same as learning the limits of humans.

But also, learning what the limits of computers are is absolutely relevant. You get asked to create an algorithm for a problem and its useful to be able to figure out whether it actually is solvable, or how fast it theoretically can be. Avoids wasting everyone's time trying to build an infinite loop detector.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

The "limits of humans" I was referring to were things like:

  • How long can you push a deadline before someone starts to get really mad
  • How many dark patterns you can cram into an app before the users stop using it
  • The extremes of human stupidity

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