I’ve remained skeptical of AI code generation for a long time, until I began chatting with ChatGPT last week. It effortlessly worked through problems in Java, Python, C++, and helped me solve a configuration issue in Pickcode’s backend. Plenty has been written about how impressive this is, and there are hundreds of examples being shared online every day. The quick summary of all of this is that AI code completion and large language models will be an invaluable tool to everyone writing software going forward, and I certainly agree.
The important question for me is how does ChatGPT change computer science education? For seemingly the first time, computers have achieved supremacy in writing nested loops in Java to print out Xs and Os in alternating order. ChatGPT is also demonstrably better at writing Python programs to calculate a basketball player’s free throw percentage, and every other intro to programming assignment you might think of. This does not mean that we can hand every kid Copilot or Replit Ghostwriter and watch them code circles around Linus Torvalds. This means we need to rethink what it means to learn how to program.