Teaching Novice Computing and Programming in the Agentic AI Era
Teaching Novice Computing and Programming in the Agentic AI EraKathi Fisler, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Michael LittmanCommunications of the ACM, 2026(Viewpoint.)AbstractAI programming agents have profoundly disrupted computing education. Rather than treating this as a threat, we argue that it is an opportunity to refocus early curricula. We introduce the ‘‘flaky compiler’’ metaphor to frame what AI programming enables and what it demands of its users.
- ▪Teaching Novice Computing and Programming in the Agentic AI EraKathi Fisler, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Michael LittmanCommunications of the ACM, 2026(Viewpoint.)AbstractAI programming agents have profoundly disrupted computing education.
- ▪Rather than treating this as a threat, we argue that it is an opportunity to refocus early curricula.
- ▪We introduce the ‘‘flaky compiler’’ metaphor to frame what AI programming enables and what it demands of its users.
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| Original publisher | Brown |
| Canonical URL | https://cs.brown.edu/people/sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fkl-teach-nov-agentic-ai-era/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 12 Sep 2026 05:28:18 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-12T05:37:51.071Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-12T05:37:51.071Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | SHMkSNrGnp4D · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Teaching Novice Computing and Programming in the Agentic AI EraKathi Fisler, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Michael LittmanCommunications of the ACM, 2026(Viewpoint.)AbstractAI programming agents have profoundly disrupted computing education. Rather than treating this as a threat, we argue that it is an opportunity to refocus early curricula. We introduce the ‘‘flaky compiler’’ metaphor to frame what AI programming enables and what it demands of its users. We argue that introductory computing courses can and must become early software-engineering courses, with the objective of teaching students to take responsibility for the work they produce with AI. This induces the need for---indeed, demands---research into how to rethink teaching program specification. Comment Accepted for publication.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Brown.
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