The Era of Learning Programming Through Program: Challenges and Potential of ChatGPT in Revolutionizing High School Programming Education

Abstract

In the digital age, the importance of programming education has become increasingly prominent. Due to the open nature of programming languages, many tools and systems designed to support programming education in the past have been limited in their ability to effectively assist in the learning process. However, the emergence of generative AI, exemplified by ChatGPT, has demonstrated remarkable natural language processing capabilities and a vast repository of knowledge, overcome previous limitations and offering unprecedented potential for advancing programming education. ChatGPT has shown near-teacher-level proficiency in providing content, debugging, refining, evaluating, implementing, and even creating programs. This signifies that we are on the cusp of an era where programming can be learned through interaction with advanced AI. However, there is still a lack of substantial research on evaluating the benefits of integrating ChatGPT into programming education. Therefore, this paper aims to illustrate, through practical examples, how the introduction of ChatGPT can impact programming education, the potential challenges it may present, and how we can prepare to embrace this new era of learning programming through AI.