Spring 2027 at Illinois

Now you can.

Learn to build technology by talking to AI. No prerequisites. No prior experience. No code.

CS 199 CPTuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30–4:45 PM3217 EverittDraft syllabus

Reserve Your Spot Early

Spots are limited, and you can't add this section yourself in Course Explorer: you reserve one here, and Geoff adds you. Reserving is a ten-minute conversation with AI about what you'd build if making things were easy: a tool for your club, a game for your roommates, something for your job, a page that finally makes sense of some data you care about. It'll help you sharpen one idea, and you keep a sketch of your first build.

The course is for people who haven't programmed, so they get first priority. A bit of experience, a few hours at a summer camp or a single intro class, still counts as new. Geoff reads every conversation and confirms each spot himself, by email.

Everyone Can Program Now

For seventy years, building anything with a computer meant learning a programming language first, and most people never got past that gate. Now you can. Anyone who can describe what they want clearly, and tell whether they got it, can build working things by talking with AI.

This course starts there. You'll design and build real things, websites, interactive tools, games, visualizations, and you'll never read a line of code. You'll learn the part that's actually hard: saying what you want, looking hard at what you got, and saying what needs to change.

The Details

Section: CS 199 CP, CRN 45351, 3 credit hours
When: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30–4:45 PM
Where: 3217 Everitt Laboratory
Dates: January 19 to May 5, 2027
Prerequisites: None. Open to any undergraduate at Illinois. Students new to programming get first priority.
Getting in: Reserve your spot on this page. Geoff confirms by email and tells you how to register.
Counts toward: No degree, program, or general education requirement. You'd take it because you want to.

The section is force registration: Geoff adds the students who reserved, so trying to add it yourself in Course Explorer won't work. Reserve your spot, and the email confirming it says what to do next.

What We Did Last Fall

The course ran for the first time in Fall 2026. There are no lectures: every class is an activity, and every activity has a public page, posted the day we did it. A few of them:

Your Website. Set up your agent and start a personal site. Live at a real address within two weeks.
Pair Prompting. One of you talks to the agent; the other watches how, live, and keeps notes. Then you swap.
Show and Tell. Everyone shows their site to the room from their own laptop, while the room writes them notes.
Fresh Eyes. A partner looks at your site like a stranger would and says what they see; you change it while they watch.
Eight Sites, Head to Head. Find personal websites worth learning from, then vote on them two at a time and say why.
Built for Us. Invent apps for the people at your table, a new table every round. Then build one for a classmate.

The rest are on Activities. Spring starts the same way and goes wherever that room takes it.

How It Works

A studio. Most class time is building, usually in pairs: one of you works with your agent while your partner watches how it's going and says what they see. Then you switch.
Create, critique, reflect. Build things, decide whether they're good and say why, and notice how you work so you get better at it.
Your own agent. An AI coding agent on your laptop, set up together on the first day and provided by the course. It knows what we're doing in class that day.
Projects people use. A personal website first, then something for a classmate, then something for a community or for you. The goal is something live at an address, with someone besides you using it.
Participation is the grade. Show up and take part and you get an A. Three absences, no questions asked. No exams, no graded projects.

The draft syllabus has all of it, rewritten from fall's around what we actually did.

Questions

I've never written code. Is this really for me?

Yes. That's who it's for. Most of last fall's class had never built anything with a computer, and nobody in the course reads or writes code. If you can describe what you want and tell whether you got it, you have what you need to start.

I've programmed before. Can I take it?

Maybe. The course is designed for people who haven't, so they get first priority, and people with more experience get the spots that remain. A bit of experience, like a summer camp or a single intro class, still counts as new. Reserve a spot and say what you've done; Geoff will let you know. If you get in, you'll be asked to keep your hands off the code: the agent builds, and you decide what to build and whether it's right. People who've coded often find that harder than they expect, and more interesting.

I'm skeptical of AI.

Good. You'll spend the semester finding out what it can and can't do, with your own eyes, and critique is half the course. Using AI is required here; liking it isn't.

Does it count for anything?

Three credit hours, but it meets no degree, program, or general-education requirement. What you leave with is things you built that people use, and a skill nobody else is teaching yet.

Who reads my conversations with the agent?

Geoff does, and they're analyzed with AI to figure out how to teach this. They never determine a grade. The syllabus says exactly how they're used.

What will it cost me?

The agent is provided. You need a laptop you can install software on. A project might eventually want a domain name or hosting, usually a few dollars, and that gets talked about before anyone spends anything.

Get email when there's news. Thinking about Spring 2027? Leave your address and Geoff will write before registration and as the section takes shape: what changed since fall, what to expect, how to get in. A few messages, each with an unsubscribe link.

Questions the page doesn't answer? Email Geoff Challen at challen@illinois.edu.