[svachalek]

`Geoffrey Challen, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, plans to offer a new course this fall in which he will teach students to develop software “without writing, reading, debugging, or viewing a single line of code,” he told me.`

This is "studying computer science" now? Vibe coding is easy and fun, but why spend 4 years and a small fortune to study it when practically anyone can pick it up over a weekend?

[hyperhello]

Computer Science without code is as worthless as literary study without reading. That curriculum is going to be torture.

[layla5alive]

Heh, I think you meant to say math. Plenty of theoretical CS is study of things like algorithms, which looks more like math proofs than code. But we can all agree that vibe coding has little to do with Computer Science. And if you're not touching or reviewing the code, little to do with anything resembling software engineering, either!

[coldtea]

>Plenty of theoretical CS is study of things like algorithms, which looks more like math proofs than code

Even those are just going to be outsourced to AI by the "students"

[whattheheckheck]

"Make no mistakes"

Is the non-math ceo going to validate his formula is right?

[bwhiting2356]

Teaching systems is useful. The worst vibe coding I've seen has been bad system design choices. But I agree that we should also still look at the code.

[ninjalanternshk]

I had an algorithms class in undergrad where we designed algorithms for computers with specific memory and processor configurations that didn’t exist, and specifically, would never be built.

But we studied algorithms for them anyway.

[alun]

Yeah this one definitely seems like the wrong approach. I prefer the approach of the other professor who makes her students write the code by hand (with the analogy of how grade schoolers learn basic algebra by hand before they are allowed to use calculators).

Although making students write it on paper (as described) feels extreme. Why not just make them write the code manually on a regular IDE, see how it compiles, etc.?

[mikeweiss]

You never really had to get a formal education in programming to be successful before AI either....