Joe Gibbs Politz

We are hiring an Assistant Teaching Professor at UCSD CSE! This is a teaching-focused position with equal status to assistant professor, including tenure, faculty governance, and so on. More in thread... apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04041

@MegaCrit TBH I was not Prepared for this one, but I will have lots of time to Prepare for the next one.

Hey everyone, we appreciate all the feedback on the recent beta patch! Since we have a lot of new players that weren’t around for StS1’s Early Access phase and players who are new to Early Access games in general, we wanted to explain our patching methodology a bit. (1/4)

Hitting new levels of nirvana.

@FreyaHolmer @abeyang What fun! My proposal: On completion a square of size 10, clear lines that include the placed piece as if it's a normal Tetris clear all pieces and fragments above fall straight down in the current orientation. Recenter the pivot downward, do not rotate on clears.

@abeyang right now you can't! clearing is difficult from a design perspective, since "falling" towards the center has a lot of ambiguities that aren't predictable

been feeling kinda stressed lately so I made a little prototype is this anything

@samth @xenocryptsite I'm enjoying reading this literally as “DiCaprio” and not “DiCaprio's characters.”

@xenocryptsite I think both Shutter Island and Inception (controversially) suggest that DiCaprio is wrong and delusional.

Speaking of "Bugonia" etc, is there a single piece of fictional pop culture about paranoia and delusions that doesn't end up validating them in the narrative. Does anyone wonder what the effects of that are on like, the public, and everything else.

@patio11 I think Starcraft 2 vs Starcraft is a useful analogy. It's basically a better, smoother, cleaner replacement that serves (will eventually serve) basically all players better from amateur to pro.

Slay the Spire 2: more slay, more spire. Feels more of a content pack than a separate game, but if your complaint about StS was that the magic eventually wore off, you’ll enjoy it. Some minor observations:

@nikhilaprabhu @alexgaoth I mean I know I assigned you the PA but I think I was clear on how it can be irresponsible to code in C so 🤷‍♂️

@alexgaoth should tag joe on this one to get his opinion

just had an old lady sitting next to me on my flight call me satanic for coding. the thing is that im just doing my PA in c by hand. wait until she hears abt coding agents.

the 49-year Falcons-Saints rivalry has all been leading to the moment Sunday when they decide an NFC South title that neither team can win

Solana Beach

Super excited to release the latest version of "A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing" (DCIC). See release notes for 2025-08-27 for what's changed and new (a LOT!): dcic-world.org/2025-08-27/Rel…. dcic-world.org

1/ Super-excited to release the first complete rewrite to the Pyret home page in 10 years, corresponding to major language improvements! So many cool new things, let me give you a brief tour: ↵ pyret.org

Del Mar dog beach

@AndrewCMyers @satnam6502 Surprised they didn't try to both-sides it.

@satnam6502 They all gave the same Answer

I asked my students if they liked continuations. Their constructive response was they don't dislike them.

@samth If that's all that repeated TA visits is providing to students, then I agree.

@JoePolitz I think that "the TA tells you the trick to solving the problem and then you implement it" is both well short of that outcome and also involves a lot more learning than pasting the problem into ChatGPT and submitting the output.

2. The biggest problem is that AI is now good at the introductory problems, across every discipline. But introductory problems are necessary for learning.

@samth Absolutely. I evaluate compilers work differently than CS1/2/3 work. But I think in the same way that a 2h programming exam can checksum a bunch of CS1 practice, an oral exam can checksum understanding of a bunch of open-ended project work. e.g. jpolitz.github.io/docs/splash-e-…

@JoePolitz Yes, that's definitely true. It takes a lot of practice to pass my HtDP exams. But you can't have an on-paper exam where students write a 500-line program let alone do the final project in the verification course I just taught.

@samth And students can end up thinking thinking “I produced the program once, therefore I achieved the course outcomes”, when that is far from the truth, with friend + TA help. And the course may give grade signals that reinforce that belief.

@samth I actually disagree with this fairly strongly. The are different, and cause different kinds of learning, but all of them fall pretty far short of the outcome “being able to write the program without assistance”.

@samth For some students it may take more or less practice to get there, the same way a violin solo or lifting 20% more weight than a month ago might require more or less practice for some folks (prior experience, brain chemistry, biology, etc)

@samth I think there *are* ways to assess that practice has happened. Being able to write certain kinds of programs in <2h is evidence of certain amounts of practice!

A few thoughts on AI and education, from someone who uses AI and also teaches many levels of student. 1. Most importantly, it's not possible to know what will happen because no one knows what skills AI will or will not replace in the next few years.