I felt the same when I used Python to rewrite some broken/incompatible C code. It didn't save on performance, but it did reignite that hacker mindset with a clear to write language. I show students my Flask sets up and I can see the light bulbs firing off in their brains.
The older languages may be artifacts of our era of code, but I'm excited to see what the next wave of documented prompting vibe coding will bring.
I might finally understand what the heck my students' code is doing HA!
IT can be beneficial for making your initial assessment, but you'll need to dig deeper for something meaningful. For example, I recently used Gemini's Deep Research to do some literature review on educational Color Theory in relation to PowerPoint presentations [1]. I know both areas rather well, but I wanted to have some links between the two for some research that I am currently doing.
I'd say that companies like Google and OpenAI are aware of the "reputable" concerns the Internet is expressing and addressing them. This tech is going to be, if not already is, very powerful for education.
Taking a Gemini Deep Research output and feeding it to NotebookLM to create audio overviews is my current podcast go-to. Sometimes I do a quick Google and add in a few detailed but overly verbose documents or long form YouTube videos, and the result is better than 99% of the podcasts out there, including those by some academics.
If anyone is interested in some other ways non-traditional learning anthologies have been applied to CS education, I will shameless promote my paper [1] on typing exercises as an interactive worked example. I'm drawing my influence from martial arts, but the same "show-mimic-modify" mechanic is there in my opinion. I even use music, dance, and cooking as additional examples on where this type of learning is very prominent.
As an example of this in the wild a few years ago I attended an online course teaching HTML, CSS and a sprinkle of JS where most attendees had their first encounter with a source code editor there. One person used to retype over and over work they've already done in a previous session, sort of like karate katas in a way. At the time it felt a bit silly to me but in hindsight it totally made sense.
For something in a similar vein but more short form there's HackerType:
I once rebuilt an internal employee directory tool, and added the ability for people to add an emoji below their name.
Before that, hardly anyone used the internal directory, which is probably why I inherited it (I was the stig). After the feature was added, people went nuts and used it all the time. I feel bad for the guy who runs it now, as I understand he is bombarded with feature requests from the employees.
Obligatory mention of Hypnospace Outlaw, a game where you play a moderator of a 1990s AOL-style internet (right down to the tiled backgrounds and flame gifs) and uncover a mystery.
When I saw the video I wondered how many layers of refraction you could achieve while maintaining coherent images. The pixelated style they should might be the easiest use to develop this from.
