Prompts First, Finally

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Reeves, Brent N., Prather, James, Denny, Paul, Leinonen, Juho, MacNeil, Stephen, Becker, Brett A., Luxton-Reilly, Andrew
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Reeves, Brent N.
Prather, James
Denny, Paul
Leinonen, Juho
MacNeil, Stephen
Becker, Brett A.
Luxton-Reilly, Andrew
author_facet Reeves, Brent N.
Prather, James
Denny, Paul
Leinonen, Juho
MacNeil, Stephen
Becker, Brett A.
Luxton-Reilly, Andrew
contents Generative AI (GenAI) and large language models in particular, are disrupting Computer Science Education. They are proving increasingly capable at more and more challenges. Some educators argue that they pose a serious threat to computing education, and that we should ban their use in the classroom. While there are serious GenAI issues that remain unsolved, it may be useful in the present moment to step back and examine the overall trajectory of Computer Science writ large. Since the very beginning, our discipline has sought to increase the level of abstraction in each new representation. We have progressed from hardware dip switches, through special purpose languages and visual representations like flow charts, all the way now to ``natural language.'' With the advent of GenAI, students can finally change the abstraction level of a problem to the ``language'' they've been ``problem solving'' with all their lives. In this paper, we argue that our programming abstractions were always headed here -- to natural language. Now is the time to adopt a ``Prompts First'' approach to Computer Science Education.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_09231
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Prompts First, Finally
Reeves, Brent N.
Prather, James
Denny, Paul
Leinonen, Juho
MacNeil, Stephen
Becker, Brett A.
Luxton-Reilly, Andrew
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Generative AI (GenAI) and large language models in particular, are disrupting Computer Science Education. They are proving increasingly capable at more and more challenges. Some educators argue that they pose a serious threat to computing education, and that we should ban their use in the classroom. While there are serious GenAI issues that remain unsolved, it may be useful in the present moment to step back and examine the overall trajectory of Computer Science writ large. Since the very beginning, our discipline has sought to increase the level of abstraction in each new representation. We have progressed from hardware dip switches, through special purpose languages and visual representations like flow charts, all the way now to ``natural language.'' With the advent of GenAI, students can finally change the abstraction level of a problem to the ``language'' they've been ``problem solving'' with all their lives. In this paper, we argue that our programming abstractions were always headed here -- to natural language. Now is the time to adopt a ``Prompts First'' approach to Computer Science Education.
title Prompts First, Finally
topic Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09231