Prompts First, Finally Article Swipe

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Brent N. Reeves , James Prather , Paul Denny , Juho Leinonen , Stephen MacNeil , Brett A. Becker , Andrew Luxton-Reilly ·

YOU? · · 2024 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2407.09231

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.

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Type: preprint
Language: en
Landing Page: http://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09231
PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.09231
OA Status: green
Cited By: 3
Related Works: 10
OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4400668371

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OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4400668371

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2407.09231

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Title: Prompts First, Finally

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Type: preprint

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Language: en

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Publication year: 2024

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Publication date: 2024-07-12

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Authors: Brent N. Reeves, James Prather, Paul Denny, Juho Leinonen, Stephen MacNeil, Brett A. Becker, Andrew Luxton-Reilly

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Landing page: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09231

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PDF URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.09231

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Open access: Yes

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OA status: green

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OA URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.09231

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Concepts: Computer science

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Cited by: 3

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Citations by year (recent): 2025: 2, 2024: 1

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Related works (count): 10

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