Leo and Dan just showed an AI-integrated CS1 where students still write code.
We want to talk about the other fork: a pure elective for non-technical students where, as much as we can manage, they never see code at all. No syntax, no error messages, no stack traces. The programming happens entirely through conversation with an agent.
Nobody has taught this yet, us included. So this is a conversation, not a pitch. Please jump in any time, by unmuting or in the chat.
You don't teach a carpenter the saw. You teach them to build, and the saw is just part of the shop.
Tools change every semester, so we won't debate platforms today. We want the three things that don't change:
What is a course like this for? What should a non-technical student walk away able to do or think?
Not content coverage. Durable capability. Computational literacy, creative confidence, judgment, getting real things done? We don't agree on the primary one.
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With no code on screen, what must students actually understand? What do abstraction and decomposition even mean here?
A candidate answer: the durable skill is a good mental model of the agent. Predict what it will do, catch it when it's wrong, specify so it does what you meant. Is that enough?
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How do you build it so learning is felt? Chatting and building works, but it doesn't feel like the ladder of a normal intro course.
One project or many? What cadence? Could an architecture studio and critique carry the structure? And how would you even grade it?
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Vote in the chat: type the code for your favorite. Write-ins welcome.
Where we agree: the durable skill beats the tools, and building is the point.
Where we don't yet agree: what the goals are, how to make the learning felt, and how to grade it. That's the fun part, and it's why we wanted to think it through with you.
Geoffrey's piloting a version this fall, and we've heard of a few other pilots starting up. Let's keep in touch and compare notes.