Simone Martini
Teaching programming in the age of generative AI
Abstract. The term “automatic programming” has a long history, changing its meaning over the years, from punching paper tape, to compiling high-level programming languages, to program synthesis. Today, however, the availability of machine learning artefacts that produce high-level code from natural language specifications has completely changed the traditional meaning. At a time when several computer scientists have begun to question the conventional wisdom that the core of their profession is deeply connected to programming. If we are at the end of programming, we should also change the curriculum, where programming, algorithms, and programming languages play a major role. I will review some of these issues, distinguishing whether programming is taught as part of a holistic curriculum (as in some non-technical high schools) or as a professional tool. I will conclude by stressing the importance of human intervention even in this “automatic programming” process.
Simone Martini (Ph.D. in Computer Science, Pisa, 1987) is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bologna. He has been a visiting scientist at the former Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation, Palo Alto; at Stanford University; at the École normale supérieure, Paris; at the Université Paris 13; at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and at the Collegium – Lyon Institute for Advanced Studies. The author of a textbook on the principles of programming languages, his research has focused on the foundations of programming languages for several decades. After joining the Commission on the History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC), his interests shifted more towards the epistemology and history of programming languages, and towards computer science education.