From the Professor’s Files:
This week, during one of my coding classes, an unexpected lesson in financial responsibility took place. Students were happily using Copilot in Visual Studio Code to assist them with their programming questions until their tokens suddenly ran out.
RUT ROH!
Suddenly, the class conversation shifted from “Prompt the AI again” to “Maybe I should think about this for a minute.” Not even their rubber ducks could help them solve this situation.
Budget your resources, ask better questions, and take the time to think. It turns out that learning to code and learning to manage money have something in common.
Lesson learned: sometimes the best teacher in the room is a token limit.
AI Tokens and the Value of Thinking First
Bruce Elgort 