'Coding is Dead': University of Washington CS Program Rethinks Curriculum For the AI Era (geekwire.com)
- Reference: 0178348776
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/07/11/1418225/coding-is-dead-university-of-washington-cs-program-rethinks-curriculum-for-the-ai-era
- Source link: https://www.geekwire.com/2025/coding-is-dead-uw-computer-science-program-rethinks-curriculum-for-the-ai-era/
The Pacific Northwest's premier tech program now allows students to use GPT tools in assignments, requiring them to cite AI as a collaborator just as they would credit input from a fellow student. The school is considering "coordinated changes to our curriculum" after encouraging professors to experiment with AI integration.
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2025/coding-is-dead-uw-computer-science-program-rethinks-curriculum-for-the-ai-era/
It kinda sounds like in the 1990s (Score:4, Informative)
when schools got rid of their programming courses and replaced them with Office 95 courses in Germany. The result was a lost generation... and a world in which "telling a computer what to do" is a very lucrative job, particularly if you know what the computer should do.
History (Score:3)
Coding was dead with 4GL. Then again with RAD tools in the 1990s like PowerBuilder. I've heard people argue coding was dead with UI coding tools like Scratch. Coding has been dead for decades. Still a lot of coding jobs, though.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, office skills are probably of far more use to most students. As long as the ones who wanted to learn to code had the opportunity to, it seems okay. I'm not complaining about it being lucrative either.
Re: (Score:2)
Well but those weren't "office skills", but "Microsoft Office skills". Nothing in there prepared you for working in an office. It was essentially learning how to work around the bugs of that software package in the current version.
It's not this is different (Score:2)
We really didn't have the tech back then we really do now. At least for the rank and file jobs that are out there
Coding is absolutely dead. What's left is high-end mathematics. But coding is dead. The kind of job where you could just come in and bang out code all day is kaplitzki. Mind you most of those jobs were already going either offshore or to h-1b's but they were still some left.
I think the biggest problem humanity faces isn't climate change or fascism. It's the inability to adapt to and recog
Re: (Score:2)
> When human beings hit about the age of 12 they are locked in. Anything to change is they refuse to acknowledge or interact with.
This is absolute horseshit.
List of things that didn't exist when I was 12, which near everyone my age or older uses on a regular basis:
Smartphones
Cellular data services
WiFi
Commercialized internet access
Instant messaging
Streaming media
"The Cloud"
Residential broadband
Your theory contends there is still tens of millions of people in the US in their mid-40s and above regularly using dial-up, or are completely disconnected because they "refuse to acknowledge or interact" with any of the above. Ridiculous.
Good. (Score:3)
Between established coders with careers and the folks already nearly through the pipe, we're staffed up. It's not that I agree that coding is dead... I just think we're saturated, and the demand will decrease. People entering two and four year programs to become commodity coders are in for a shock, like pinning your hopes on being a web designer because you understand html in 2005.
Re: (Score:2)
> Between established coders with careers and the folks already nearly through the pipe, we're staffed up. It's not that I agree that coding is dead... I just think we're saturated, and the demand will decrease.
HR: "We're doing a RIF , and unfortunately, we're going to have to let you go".
Worker: "What am I going to do?"
HR: "Learn to co... oh, fuck, I'm so sorry".
Re: Good. (Score:3)
I now think that AI gives an experienced programmer a huge advantage over a new programmer. Coding at speed with AI is all about knowing what to ask for as precisely as possible. Ask it a more general question and it is more likely to hallucinate.
How will they verify correctness? (Score:5, Insightful)
If kids don't know how to code, or how to read code, how will they know whether the product of AI is correct in the first place? How will they know where to look when there's a problem? This is about as dumb as not teaching future mechanics how to use their tools.
Accreditation Will Soon Matter (Score:3)
Do to changes like this, I foresee universities more loudly advertising that their CS programs are accredited because I'm pretty damn sure that using GPT to create a program will not be worthy of a CS degree in most peoples' eyes.
Re: (Score:3)
Learning to program isn't the same as Computer Science.
Computer Science is lots of algorithms, computational theory (finite automata, P and NP, etc.), graph theory, tons of numerical algorithms, lexical, syntax and semantic analysis, program transformations (loop unrolling, etc.), lots of compiler theory, databases, networking, cryptography, etc. Tons of really interesting stuff! A lot of CS is more like mathematics than programming. Lots of proofs.
Focusing on programming is a little like telling an en
We still need programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you use ai to write it, you still need to code.
You still need to know the math so you can check the results.
You still need logic to figure out if it did the right thing.
You still need to sit down and write the process to write the code.
One of the most popular books for teaching csci is written in lisp scheme (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs), which is not a language many people use day to day. But you still learn in that language because it makes a good starting point on how to think about code.
After you know the principles, you can then start applying that knowledge to other computer languages.
AI just makes it so we have more English like code. COBOL, C, Javascript, all of these are ways to make coding easier.
It's fine to use AI as part of the coding process, but it's like telling people that calculators make mathematicians obsolete. We still need programmers.
You can't code with AI (Score:2)
if you don't understand what you are coding. Yes, it's good to have classes to teach you how to be more efficient but you have to understand more than the computer and you will have to know how to code. I don't think it would be more than adding a class or two about AI to any CS program, not change the whole program.
Claim that coding will be done by AI is puzling (Score:3)
Current LLM approach to software development is leading to too many errors. LLMs spit garbage about 10-20% of the time. We cannot use software which would be buggy so much. That means that people need to check what LLMs are generating. That is not much distant from "coding". People still need to understand the code itself. Whether they write it themselves from scratch or whether they let LLM generate first version and then review and correct it is not such a big difference. The code still needs to be well understood by people.
We use exactly defined programing languages for coding for a reason. A programming language must be precise so that we can describe correct systems with it. If LLMs could do coding then we would not need a programming language. A specification in imprecise and poorly defined (as for as schematics goes) English would be enough.
But I agree that LLMs and stable diffusion can be used anywhere where precision is not important. Thinks like marketing campaigns, sentiment management, disinformation spreading, engagement control, spam filtering etc. Art to a high level as well. In the end, it is subjective what is correct and pretty as for as art goes. Occasional mistakes can be interpreted as artist's intention.
Re: (Score:2)
I argued with an LLM for about an hour about how to properly escape paths with whitespace in them for passing to AWK. I could have fixed it myself quicker, but I wanted to see just how many times of going 'No, you have to because " it'd take before it'd realize what the actual issue was.
It took a *long time*
Coding is dead! (Score:1)
LONG LIVE CODING! (AI tools have a long way to go before they can understand requirements, integrate and solve day to day issues)
I have several opinions (Score:4, Insightful)
Predictions are hard, especially about the future. While it's true that AI research is making great progress, the hype vastly exceeds reality.
I agree that the days of minimally talented programmers making big bucks are over.
Creating complex, novel systems is hard, regardless of the language used to specify them. Current "vibe coding" works because the code being produced is simple and very similar to code that already exists.
Talent is real. It takes a special kind of mind to be really good at programming. Unfortunately, many people advocate that everyone, regardless of talent, can learn to code and make big bucks. This is a myth. For those with talent and passion, studying CS still makes sense. And yes, I define CS as Computer SCIENCE, not basic coding.
5x (Score:3)
I am now using AI to code and once I figured it out it made me around five times faster with probably more efficiency to gain. Much better if you need to write a bunch of small scripts. I now structure my code around AI query sessions.
Re: (Score:2)
It probably made me 5 times slower because it gets hung up on a stupid thing, misinterprets me telling it what the correction is, does something different, rewrites the whole thing, introduces different issue
thank god (Score:3)
Time to return to the golden years of discovering new ways of organizing, conveying, and processing information, solving problems with less drudgery and understanding how things work without arcane syntax getting in the way.
No-one complains about word processors stifling the creative process, why should they complain about tools to support advancing CS. Well, I suppose people who think CS is learning how to use excel perhaps
Not what AI does (Score:3)
> Director Magdalena Balazinska has declared that "coding, or the translation of a precise design into software instructions, is dead" because AI can now handle that work.
That's exactly what AI doesn't do. You give it poorly defined instructions in an imprecise language. It produces code that might or might not do what you were hoping for. Any computer scientist had better understand the difference.
facing reality (Score:2)
There's no sense in whining about it, just like complaining about the weather. AI can now generate high quality code very quickly, write test cases for it, and thoroughly document it. Academic institutions have no choice but to adapt.
"We have never graduated coders. We have always graduated software engineers.” A sensible way of thinking about it.
“The hard problem is to precisely figure out what we want computers to do in order to accomplish some task,” she said. “That creati
might as well light it on fire (Score:1)
The result of this isn't predictable, what are you talking about
people who predict stuff are wizards using magic and magic isn't real
like there's gonna be secret codes to reality that make stuff easier
says the AI game designer