Ryan Peterman

Imagine you're spending all this time

getting better at programming and you think that maybe programming will be useless in the future, you know, if an anxious student comes to you and says, I don't know if I should be learning computer science, what would you say?

In today's environment, we can relatively confidently say these tools empower us and they don't replace fully yet.

But I think a lot of people are worried about, okay, but what if it gets...

even better.

Like, what if that 90% becomes 99%?

Or, you know, maybe it becomes 100%.

Then I think people get scared.

But, you know, it's hard to say exactly in the future.

You talked about the enrollment rates and I have this little screenshot because you had written this, I think this paper from a long time ago about redesigning CS50.

And you kind of, I'll put this overlay this in the video, but you know, there's this trend of kind of enrollment rates going up and then they tank with the .com bubble.

And then they went up as well because of some adjustments that you've made.

Right now, we're kind of in this, you know, AI is really shifting things.

If you were to continue this graph forward, is enrollment and interest in computer science declining because of the AI?

you're in a unique position because you teach the in-person Harvard class and then you also do the massively online version as well.

And I think it's an interesting case study because some people have the opinion that the important part of college is actually not the education.

And it feels like this in-person version versus the online one is kind of proof of that, which is that you could not go to Harvard but get a world-class education, yet the outcomes are very different.

So I'm curious your thoughts on going to college versus getting the world-class education for free.

You've taught so many years of this same material.

What is the most difficult concept that you see people consistently having trouble?