Initially I was sad about #StackOverflow's collapse, not so much because I've contributed a lot to it (and as a #Wikipedian, I've already resigned myself to big tech trying to sell my own words back to me), but because I learned a lot of programming and statistics from it; it gave me focused answers to specific problems. It already bothered me that my students were turning to AI for that purpose, and now what I was telling them to use instead is turning into AI slop... (1/2)
... (2/2) But thinking about it, it was actually a pretty crappy way to learn, making me much slower to see the big picture. I only used SO because I couldn't get formal training in those areas. When I got to the point where I could read books on stats and programming instead, I got a lot better a lot faster.
So I guess now I'll double down on encouraging students to focus on fundamental concepts and the ability to formulate the right questions to ask of high quality sources.
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