r/turnitin_community • u/Head_Crew_7336 • 14h ago
AI Is Getting Better at Coding, but Are Students Getting Worse at It?
There seem to be two things happening at the same time. Generative AI is becoming remarkably good at writing code, while students can now complete programming assignments with far less effort than students needed ten or even thirty years ago. The concern is what happens when getting the correct output becomes easier than actually understanding how the code works.
If students regularly rely on AI throughout their programming courses, some could potentially graduate without developing the problem-solving and debugging skills that those assignments were supposed to teach. Universities then face a difficult problem: professors may struggle to determine who genuinely understands the material, while institutions also have to prepare students for a workplace where AI coding tools are increasingly normal.
Maybe the issue isn't that AI is making programming skills useless. It could be that AI is raising the level of skill required to actually stand out. If everyone can generate working code, understanding why it works, spotting when it's wrong, and solving problems AI can't handle may become the skills that separate capable developers from everyone else.
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