AI can write code, and it writes it well. So what remains worth teaching?
UC Berkeley computer scientist John DeNero joins Sarah and Taiyo to make the case for computational thinking — abstraction, decomposition, and the intuition that tells you when an output is wrong — as general education rather than vocational training. Along the way: why programmers get more out of AI coding tools than non-programmers, what an agent actually is, and why a CS degree is becoming less like a trade and more like a discipline.
DeNero is the Giancarlo Teaching Fellow in Berkeley’s EECS department and co-developer of two of the largest courses on campus, Data 8 and CS 61A. He’s also the author of Composing Programs and co-author of Computational and Inferential Thinking. We caught him at the National Workshop for Data Science Education, where he’d just told a room full of educators that students aren’t okay – and then spent an hour explaining why he’s still optimistic.
The conversation starts with a practical question about intro CS and ends somewhere neither of us planned: a defense of ambiguity, and why a language in which every sentence meant exactly one thing would be a world with no drama.
🎧Listen to Episode 16 and Subscribe:
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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
🎓 John DeNero: https://denero.org
📘 Composing Programs: https://composingprograms.com
📘 Computational and Inferential Thinking: https://inferentialthinking.com
📄 61A-Bot Report (Zamfirescu-Pereira, Qi, Hartmann, DeNero, Norouzi — SIGCSE 2025): https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.05600
🎧 Ep08 with Eric Van Dusen on Berkeley’s Data 8 model: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/mrt-8/
🎧 Ep15 with C. Edward Watson on curriculum reform: https://calearninglab.org/2026/07/24/ep-15/
🎧 Ep09 with Jon Sack on science education after ChatGPT: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/mrt9/
📄 Full transcripts available on Substack: https://calearninglab.substack.com/s/my-robot-teacher-podcast
🌐 More about the show:https://www.myrobotteacher.ai
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My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue and produced by editaudio.
Video Editing by Starline Hodge, Audio Editing by Megan Hayward, and our Production Manager is Kathleen Speckert.
My Robot Teacher is funded by the California Education Learning Lab, incentivizing innovation in teaching and learning in California’s public higher education.