07/24/2025
Over the past couple of weeks, Community Engaged Documentation and Research (CEDaR) hosted a 3-part series of workshops on “Vibe Coding” for a non-technical audience: how can non-developers use AI tools to generate executable code? CEDaR lab supervisor Dante Cerron gave workshop participants an introduction to fundamental coding skills, elements, and tools, and a chance to consider the potential pitfalls of working with AI to develop code.
Designed for beginners or people with limited experience in coding, this workshop series was intended for practical exposure to the basics of coding. They focused primarily on learning foundational tools, command lines, and features involved in the process. Participants saw that even with AI involved, errors are inevitable, and Dante led the group through the course of identifying these flaws in code, as well as learning about the ins and outs of debugging.
The workshop attendees worked together to set up their computer workspaces to collaborate with ChatGPT, and in the workshop we addressed the challenges involved in working with AI, including how the model makes assumptions on context without communicating them, or how it can generate code based on flawed examples found on the internet.
