i hate blossoms ai

Hi what's up.

I have been in college for around two months now. I am a Computer Science major. This is like.. honestly all you need to know. I'm taking one course for comp sci right now which is this introductory python course to programming. It's very. very. simple stuff. I took Comp Sci in high school using java and this class is bascially just that but in python so I guess a little simpler? Anyway, on the first day my teacher tells us that we are going to be using this platform called "Blossoms AI", for literally everything. Our work is going to be submitted on there, we can code on there, we're meant to study and practice on there, and all of our stuff is going to be graded on there. I did a quick search to learn what the hell Blossoms AI was and why we were doing everything on there instead of just submitting code in literally any other way. It turns out, after finding their linkedin that blossoms ai is an ai startup in the education space, with literally 4 employees. All young and seemingly directly out of college. "AI for Education" brandishing their bios. Good on them on getting out there and trying to get a foothold out here but god their website sucks. The idea of it sucks especially.

The class works as follows, our teacher gave us this big zip folder that contains our portfolio and the proper folder structure of everything that we need for the class, all divided into chapters each with their own labs and exercises. This default portfolio she gave us has no instructions, it's just blank python files with a few of them code in them already that we need to start. What she expects us to do is work on everything using our own computer, then copy and paste our code into blossoms ai. Blossoms ai has its own integrated vscode right in the browser running on some server they have. So here I have an issue with the act of copying and pasting code into blossoms, it's just an uneeded extra step. You can code in the integrated environment but it kind of sucks, and there's another issue that comes with the "turtle" python module that we are meant to use for some assignements. For the first month it just didn't work in the integrated environment, and now they added it and it works after taking forever to load up (since the turtle module creates another window), and this is a smaller thing but it still technically doesn't work since you need to use the built in run button in vscode for the module to work correctly, and we are suggested to run all of our code through the terminal and not using the vscode button. Which I'm for, I'm alright with using the terminal by the way. So it turns out the reason why we need to put our code into blossoms ai in the first place is because there is this entire AI grading system they have. Which I learned about when a TA pinged the discord we're in (yeah our teacher made a discord for our class i have my thoughts about that) talking about how we need to format our file structure in an exact way or the autograder wouldn't pick up on our work. This is the entire reason why I'm writing this right now because I had literally no idea there was a goddamn ai autagrader they were using. Honestly I hate how there's no trust here anymore. The idea behind the blossoms ai grading system is that the ai gets the "first round" of grading then TA's are meant to check and see what's wrong (as per the video on their website). But we're so far disconnected from the grading process here there's literally no confirmation that a person even saw our work in the first place. I see no comments or anything from the TA's that shows they even looked at it in the first place. We are also meant to be able to consult an ai assistant see why our stuff was graded in a certain way, but I think that part just doesn't work I literally cannot find it. There is an "AI TA" popup for us to click on when we are in the integrated vscode environment but I swear to god it doesn't work. I refuse to ask the AI TA anything, I should to figure out if it sucks a lot or a little but so far I have just asked it why it graded my assignment a certain way and I was left hanging.

So much of this website doesn't work. The integrated envrionement doesn't load up half the time (which i guess can be excused because servers are expensive and tough but I feel there's a nonzero chance it's their fault it runs like this) and you always have trouble signing in. Students couldn't make an account for the first like week of class and even now it feels like a gamble whether or not I'll be able to log in or not. Okay okay, back on the grading thing we're also supposed to have comments on how our code works, which makes sense as it would help a human better understand our code. But I feel they want us to have descriptive comments just so the AI can understand us better, not them. Maybe that's insane. I have been putting comments . By the way I'm not complaining about needing to put comments or documentation. Just about whether a human has been seeing our work. Also there's no goddamn feedback I don't think any of the TA's have given any comments about literally anything, or even their AI since apparently it isn't working. I need this feedback. I don't really trust an AI to give me feedback because I can't trust the word of an AI, I trust someone with real experience who I know won't pander to me. Also if there is feedback that I'm just not seeing, maybe it should be in a better spot. The website looks clean but it feels SO clunky and disgusting. So many little things. I pray the website wasn't vibe coded but really there are so many things the website is lacking that you would think is common sense to add. One thing is when you press submit when in an assignment in the intergrated development environment it kicks you out into the main assignment page, and there's no feedback that confirms to you that the assignment is submitted. All you get is this little popup that lasts like 2 seconds saying "assignement submitted!" but everything looks the same after that. It's small but it has been an issue, our teacher was complaining telling us to only submit assignments when we have made changes. Meaning I'm sure everyone else has been faced with the submit button issue, submitting it twice because there's literally no concrete confirmation that it is submitted. We give a fuck because it's our grade. Which is also why I hate the idea of AI grading. Also I haven't said much about my classmates and I have kind of aligned myself with them in this entire statement so far. But they are definitely at fault too. I watched someone in front of me in real time use chatgpt to do his lab for him. Which I don't know if I mentioned but this is an introductory CS course. The lab was so simple. This isn't me having a big ego I know for a fact most of the people in this class took a CS course in high school, probably the same one as me. I haven't programmed much outside of school on my own time, everyone should be capable. Also this dude in specific had a fancy vscode theme you can't have a nice vscode theme and not know how to do lab THREE of the easiest cs course at your university. Maybe a nitpick. Which isn't me faulting these people I think they are capable but it gets to a point. Maybe this random dude in my class really does know his stuff and was just using AI to do this simple thing for him. Which sure, whatever I still have issues with that but at least he knows what he's doing. But to be honestly I so doubt it. I think the truth of this class that I'm in is that people are writing their code with AI then it's being graded with AI. Which fucking sucks, all the way down.

Rant not over I'm still going. The alternative to blossoms ai was making a github page where we would upload all of our work, where our teacher could check and grade our stuff. I know this because some CA's who took this class before have literally talked about how they have never used blossoms AI before. In the portfolio our teacher gave us, there was a README markdown file which doesn't make any sense to have if it's not a github repo. The first lab was just setup, and it told us to update this readme file for literally no reason. This sucks because experience using git is like... important???? Like genuinely. I'm not that experienced using github and using github here would be nice. I did set up my own repo and I am using github so I am getting that experience, but that had to be done in my own time, it should literally just be part of the class.

There's probably much more to say here. I have heard from many sources that college is just kind of fucked right now. And this is my firsthand seeing it. AI papers graded by AI teachers. I hate this class but I still enjoy computer science. I want to learn, but I'm beginning to feel cheated at least a bit. I'll keep my mind open, maybe I made some overexaggerations so far, but honestly I feel it is as bad as I think. Literally everyone is using AI to cheat their way through college and instead of my teacher caring she's forcing this shitty AI education platform onto us. The arugment from Blossoms AI is that it's important to have this "AI experience" in this changing time. But honestly I feel it's not that goddamn hard to use ai as a tool it's literally the most streamlined no brainer thing ever. I think it's more important for us to actually fucking learn the content, then maybe after really know and understanding we can use AI to make use faster in the future. Right now these people are just pumping out code they don't understand with no intention of trying to understand it. If I get any more examples, of really how many people are using chatgpt like this I'll definitely share. But this is all I really have to say right now. I hate you blossoms ai.


10-01-2025