Introducing The Students
- 1 minYesterday I introduced a small group of final year university students on a Comp-Sci course to agentic coding via cursor.
The response was mixed. Some were really excited by the possibility. Some were hostile to the idea. Some were impressed but unconvinced.
Later that night I heard back from two students.
“I’ve cleared my dev backlog in four prompts. I’m writing a full set of unit tests at the moment. Then I’m going to refactor the app to make better use of software patterns.”
And another.
“I tried it out and don’t want to use it again. This will make it not my software.”
I understand the latter perspective. I’m kinda in the same camp to be honest. Writing code is akin to poetry in some ways. You refine an idea into code, trying to express your intentions in just the right way with the perfect words. Its an outlet of sorts for creativity. Outsourcing that to a computer feels icky.
But I’m also a realist.
One who finds writing unit tests boring.
There is a middle ground somewhere in here. As developers, it’s something we should be actively looking for.
Forget the hype around this. Put your preconceived ideas to one side. Sit down with these tools, learn how to use them, and figure out where that middle ground is for you.