CS 124 All-Student Meeting

Your CS Journey

• Some of you: CS 128, CS 225, CS major...
• Some of you: never another CS course

Either way: skills and mental training that will be useful.

Become an Assistant Tutor

All who completed CS 124 are eligible.

1. Start as assistant tutor (unpaid)
2. One semester tryout
3. Apply for paid tutor position

Application: "push a button on the website and you're in"

Why This Meeting?

• Not done every semester
• Major changes happening around the course
• Want to share what's going on and plans for spring

Unprecedented Change

• 8 years teaching, 20+ years coding
• Last 6 months unlike anything I've experienced
• AI impact on software development—and society

The Age of Anxiety

• AI driving excitement and fear
• Both viewpoints are valid
• We're not burying our heads in the sand

Personal Stakes

It's possible that within a few years, we'll have AI instructors. So I may be out of a job.

We're all potentially affected by these changes.

Practicing What I Profess

• Unusual among faculty—I write a lot of code
• Maintain autograders, website, backend systems
• Like a music teacher who plays the instrument

Summer 2025: Trying Claude

• Was skeptical about AI hype
• Signed up for Claude ($100/month)
• Within a week: "already got my money's worth"

AI Now Supporting the Course

• AI writes code supporting the course
• Course maintenance operations automated
• "Just the tip of the iceberg"

The Vibe Coding Experiment

• Tested Claude on Spring 2025 MP
• Gave it only the test suites
• Said "fix the errors"—full vibe coding mode

Claude completed the entire MP essentially unaided.

Watch the full video (1 hour)

Two Takeaways

1. Traditional assignment has "very little value" if AI can do it
2. We need to teach students to use this technology

This stuff's for real. Not preparing you for the future is irresponsible.

Traditional Assignment Model

1. Instructor creates specification
2. Student translates specification to code
3. Code evaluated against specification

The Specification's Dual Role

• Students use it to write code
• Autograder uses it to evaluate code

Pre-AI goal: make specification as clear as possible.

This Semester's Experiment

The Impossible Balance

We needed a specification that was:

• Precise enough for students to follow
• Imprecise enough that AI can't do it
• Precise enough for fair grading

What We Tried

• Didn't give full test suites
• Even smaller test suites were enough
• Staff reported: "make tests compile" → entire assignment done

Assessment: It Didn't Work

Give them a whiff of what they need to do, and they figure out what's supposed to happen.

AI agents are just too good.

Spring 2026: A New Model

AI handles: specification → code

Design Over Implementation

• AI shifts the balance: implementation is easier
• Design becomes more important
• This format is a better fit for that shift

My Project

• Fully open-ended individual projects
• Still Android apps (Java/Kotlin)
• No more everyone doing the same boring app

First Half: Idea Development

• Discussions become required
• Initial idea formulation
• Wireframing & app planning
• Feedback from peers and tutors

Second Half: Build with AI

• Take your specification to the AI agent
• New MP lessons: general Android concepts
• Apply concepts to your own project

Full Breadth Developer

• Old: "full stack" (frontend + backend)
• New: "full breadth" (idea + implementation)
• One person can do what teams used to do

AI makes implementation much easier.

Challenges Ahead

• Grading will be different
• Supporting students on individual projects
• Pro: forces work at the coding agent level

Classical Programming Continues

• Daily lessons and weekly quizzes remain
• Originally: "skill to build real things"
• Now: mental training

Mental Training

• Critical thinking
• Reading comprehension
• Problem solving

Like weightlifting: the weights don't go anywhere, but you get strong.

Two Components

We're not abandoning classical programming.

Call for Feedback

• We need critical feedback from students
• It's safe to disagree—"let's talk about it"
• I don't know what the right thing to do is

Something definitely is changing.

Questions?

What we covered:

• Congratulations on completing CS 124
• Become an assistant tutor
• How AI coding agents broke traditional assignments
• Spring 2026: "My Project"—your own apps
• Classical programming as mental training

Let's discuss.