Do you think that Computer Science courses in high school and college should focus on developing skills to program and problem solve where AI is allowed to assist or is not allowed to assist?

[u/sharewithme]

Hi there! My name is Mike and I teach computer science. I was wondering whether students should be allowed to program and problem solve with AI assistance or not. Do you think this will change much over the next few years? If you have any thoughts or preferences based on your personal experience, I would be very excited to hear! Thank you!

[u/nuclear_splines]

I think that especially at that fundamental level AI undermines learning. It's one thing to use AI to accelerate tasks that you could already do yourself, but how can you correct the model's work or identify bad design or downstream consequences - or even know in detail what to ask for - when you don't know how to program yet?

It feels a little to me like "why teach anyone to do math by hand when we have calculators, and Wolfram Alpha can even do algebra and calculus?" Because the goal is building understanding and intuition, not literally expecting that you'll do the work by hand throughout your life.

[u/reality_boy → u/nuclear_splines]

Can I upvote this twice? Everyone misses that education is first and foremost about understanding a topic. The practical doing part can be done with a lot less understanding. That is why you can work on a car with little education, but just because you can change your oil does not make you a car engineer (even with ai).

It is frustrating that understanding is hard, and doing is actually another skill set all together, that education does not always teach, but it is the main focus.

[u/victotronics]

I teach programming too. It's my opinion that many students don't have the self-discipline to make "wise" use of AI. They wind up learning nothing if you allow them to use AI. So I forbid it. And I think solid knowledge of programming will stay in demand so I don't foresee changing my ways.

[u/reality_boy → u/victotronics]

I’m a professional developer. As an experiment I used AI to make some scripts in a language I barely understand. I have no idea what the code does anymore. It is far easier to ask ai to tweak it then to slog through and understand it. It completely stifled the learning I could have been doing. I’m going to work very hard to keep ai at arms length, it has the potential to make you stupid.

[u/Esseratecades]

Definitely not, especially at earlier levels.

The point of having AI is for it to takeover the things that are easy but tedious. In fact these things should be so easy that it should be obvious to you when someone does them wrong. When you know nothing about a subject you are learning, by definition none of it is easy but tedious.

[u/victotronics → u/Esseratecades]

"The point of having AI is for it to takeover the things that are easy but tedious" Maybe. I use AI for diagnosing problems. Point me to different probable causes. Sometimes it's off, and sometimes it points out things that would not have occurred to me, ever, or at least in a long time.

[u/Kyle_2099 → u/victotronics]

So you are deliberately preventing yourself from learning the skills of troubleshooting, i.e logical thinking, intuition, a working theoretical model inside your head for the system in question etc.

[u/wrosecrans]

I am not sure I'd see the point of using AI. "Hey, type this homework question into an AI prompt" doesn't really develop a skill besides maybe typing. Being pushed to figure out that stuff with your own brain is the whole point of being assigned problems in school.

Like with arithmatic, we make sure kids can figure out multiplication and division and understand it before we let them go off and use calculators to crank through stuff later. If you just hand a little kid a calculator hefore they have actually learned the principles, you not only deny them the skill but make the tool useless because they don't understand what to do with it.

[u/dmazzoni]

I got my CS degree more than 20 years ago. None of the programming languages, tools or frameworks we used at the time are still widely used. But, my degree is still relevant today because I learned the fundamentals:

• Binary numbers
• How logic gates work
• How a CPU works, registers and assembly language
• Compilers and interpreters
• Algorithms and data structures
• Operating systems

That's the most important thing you should be teaching.

I don't think you should ignore the fact that AI is a thing. You need to adapt the way you teach.

But, I don't think it should affect the fundamentals of WHAT you teach. The fundamentals above are just as important now with AI as they were before. Maybe even more so.

[u/Key_Net820]

In my opinion, it should be similar to learning math. When you're first staring out, you don't get to use calculators because then that's taking away your learning of arithmetic. but once you've learned it and progressed to algebra, you're beyond needing to know how to add and subtract and it shouldn't be a problem to have an aid like a calculator.

In that same vein, when they're learning programming, they should not be using AI. After they know how to program, then let's just be honest, you are gonna use AI in the real world so you might as well let them get used to it. If I were to construct the course, I would do in person exams and in person programming challenges up until the final project, where I don't restrict if they use AI or not.

[u/Metomorphose]

Kind of just echoing others here, but the point of Computer Science classes is to teach you fundamentals of computational logic, which you don't build proficiency in by asking someone or something else to do the work for you. If given a magic wand, I wouldn't permit the use of AI for students in the discipline until at least senior year of a 4-year program, possibly longer, depending on their sub-field of interest.

[u/georgejo314159]

More focus on learning the skills themselves

Some focus on using AI and correcting its mistakes

[u/Sexy_Koala_Juice]

Not allowed. Kids these days have it easy, they need to learn how to read a stacktrace and use GDB

[u/BlobbyMcBlobber]

Problem solving as a skill is not going anywhere. The thing to avoid is AI doing the problem solving work for students.

[u/Accordingto938]

I think it's more important to highlight beginner CS courses are about learning how to think about coding and problem solving rather than learning how to code in a specific language. By doing it without AI assistance, you're rewiring your brain - AI use undermines this. At most, teaching them how to use AI in a way that undermines this process the least. But better yet, teaching them the value of collaboration in problem solving by working together when they're stuck.

[u/kevleyski]

Yes absolutely as it will become an expected qualification, being taught how to use the tools well has a lot of value and will open a lot of doors - at the same time domain knowledge will become even more important and so focus on that first imo

[u/Prom3th3an]

At the senior level, kids may as well get used to using AI; but at the freshman level, let them gain the skills to judge whether the AI output makes any sense. It's just like how we teach kids pen-and-paper arithmetic and mental estimation so that once they're using calculators, they can think about whether the output makes any sense, which is important since typos are always possible.