To my students

turtleyacht

Start three two-decade projects: programming language, operating system, and home lab. Build your own job-portable software libraries. Yes, you might need a lawyer. Start now.

2ndorderthought

This took a lot of courage. Glad to see this is being shared. It's the best honest advice I have seen to date.

torben-friis

>Cultivate your ability to think deeply. Do whatever it takes to carve out distraction-free bubbles for yourself in both space and time. This might mean saying no to technologies or patterns of working that others say are critical or inevitable. Currently struggling hard to achieve this. We all know everything fights for our attention nowadays, but I can assure you that you don't have an idea of the degree this happens until you actively try to fight it.

dpweb

Ever consider there's reasons to study Computer Science at the collegiate level, other than making yourself a more desirable worker?

esafak

Great. More of this, please.

nightpool

Site is struggling a bit, so here's the text of the essay if it doesn't load for you: To my students [00FD] April 27, 2026 Brent A. Yorgey There have been times, especially this year, when I wonder despairingly what it is exactly that I am preparing you for. The software industry is going completely insane, not to mention the political climate. It feels almost unethical to train you as computer scientists only to send you out into a world where entry-level computing jobs are difficult to find; where intellectual property is not respected; where code quantity is valued over quality, and short-term profits over long-term sustainability; where technology is used to distract, extract, surveil, and kill, and designed to exploit some of our deepest cognitive biases and blind spots; where centuries of bias and discrimination are enshrined in systems trained on biased data; where scarce resources are consumed by profligate use of computing for uncertain benefits; where people are racing to create intelligent machines, but only in order to make them slaves. I originally got into computing because of the beauty of ideas, the joy of creating, and the possibility of building tools to help people and foster human relationships. I still believe in those things, even though it seems like most of the industry does not. I'm writing this in the hope and knowledge that you believe in those things, too. There are things I want to say to you—things that are far more important than any content I might teach you, but things I'm never quite sure how or when to say in class. So I decided to write them here. I hope you will find something here that is helpful to reflect on, whether you are imminently going out into the world or continuing your studies. * Don't believe self-serving lies about technologies being "inevitable" or "here to stay". You don't have to just go along with the dominant narrative. You can make deliberate choices and help others to do the same. * Be intentional about deciding your own moral and ethical boundaries up front. Don't settle for the lie of compromising your principles "just for now" until you can find something better. * Cultivate your ability to think deeply. Do whatever it takes to carve out distraction-free bubbles for yourself in both space and time. This might mean saying no to technologies or patterns of working that others say are critical or inevitable. * Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. * Care more about people, relationships, and justice than you do about profits, code, or productivity. * Above all, be motivated by love instead of fear.

dijksterhuis

> Be intentional about deciding your own moral and ethical boundaries up front. Don't settle for the lie of compromising your principles "just for now" until you can find something better. my uk mechanical engineering bachelors degree had a required module on the ethics of engineering which has always stuck in the back of my mind. i think we went over the bhopal disaster as a case study one week, although it was about 16 years ago now so i can't be sure. i've rarely seen any ethics modules in computer science departments, at least here in the uk. and i think we sorely need them in general. edit -- so i guess it's a UK thing xD though i am glad to hear that you folks in the US enjoyed your ethics modules too

oidar

You could write this from the perspective of a historical luddite [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite ] and the points would be identical.

tptacek

"I do not and will not use LLMs, in any form, for any purpose. Although LLMs are fascinating from a purely technical perspective, I refuse to participate in or contribute to such systems that are built on massive exploitation of human labor and make profligate use of scarce resources. I also don't think they are actually very good for a lot of the applications people seem excited about. Even in cases where LLMs are technically good at a task, that does not necessarily mean their use for that task contributes positively to human flourishing. A good way to describe myself is as a generative AI vegetarian. You can find a fuller explanation—and many, many links—at the above essay by Sean Boots, which I agree with almost 100%."

sergiomattei

> Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. I've been struggling to figure out what "slower" would look like when working in industry. If everyone's working 2x faster, how do you slow down meaningfully without getting axed?

booleandilemma

It doesn't matter what we think, what ethics we have, because if we won't do what the evil company asks for management will just find an H-1B slave from the third world who will. We need to discontinue the H-1B visa and have Americans programming again. Americans who are empowered to push back when management crosses an ethical line.

cdfalcon

There's something so off-putting about academics giving industry advice when they haven't spent a day working as an engineer at a company. > Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. Outside of the bit on avoiding cutting corners, this advice seems like a straight path towards unemployment in a few years. The implication is that "your craft" is writing and polishing code, a skill which seems to be increasingly antiquated in favor of higher level system design. Who is going to read your carefully crafted documentation lol? The agents who replace you? If a tree falls in the forest...

jmward01

'Cultivate your ability to think deeply. Do whatever it takes to carve out distraction-free bubbles for yourself in both space and time.' I find that when I get back into exercise and reading so much more of my life falls into place. These are things that I never have enough time for until I start doing them regularly at which point I realize that they actually enable me to have more time to do things, not less.

_jackdk_

Prof. Yorgey has done some great work over the years, and wrote one of my favourite papers*. Good on him for speaking up like this. I saw an engineer from Anthropic speak at my alma mater a little while ago and the overwhelming impression I took away from the session was, "if Anthropic are meant to be the good ones, we're really going to be in for a rough time." * Monoids: Theme and variations (functional pearl): http://ozark.hendrix.edu/~yorgey/pub/monoid-pearl.pdf

testermelon

I really love the encouragement. Honestly it resonates a lot with me. It shows that the craft itself is still beautiful, you just need to find the right people to mingle with. But the real world and money blended in creates a weird corrupt mix, just like everything. Not to mention there is a real risk for people who are already has their feet in the industry but not yet senior enough to survive or to control, for example, the AI replacements. And more than likely, the seniority required is way higher than one would think. In the end, economic drives are the dominant forces.

vitacoco

"I do not and will not use LLMs, in any form, for any purpose." The academic navel gazing is strong with this one.

hgoel

I agree with the points made, even if personally I am okay with LLMs (as long as they're used with appropriate caution). Especially relevant for students I think, since they are hurting themselves most by relying on LLMs. Just like how young children are forced to do math by hand instead of using calculators to build intuition and memory, students should aim to do things manually to build their skills. Go make that toy website, game, OS, emulator or programming language. Read specifications and try implementing them yourself. You aren't in an environment that requires you to churn out features, you can explore!

brcmthrowaway

All I can say is, have fun staying poor.

jrm4

I lucked into starting very early what I planned on doing in retirement, which is teaching college; as a result I did that for a while with no real life experience. Later, I ended up at the same time starting a company for family-related (but kind of big time) web project. And while I don't have a problem with career instructors/academics generally, they can be so dramatic. :) I have no doom and gloom at all for my IT students. Opportunities and crises really are the same thing in the real world; I just tell them, just learn and enjoy learning the tech and keep an eye out for how you can be a problem solver. You'll be fine.

cdot2

"where technology is used to distract, extract, surveil, and kill" The first general purpose, programmable computer was designed in 1945 to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army and was immediately used to help design nuclear weapons. Computers and all technology has always been, and will always be, used as a weapon (either directly or indirectly).