The road to COMP4020: Agentic Coding for Conscientious Objectors

8 Apr 26

comp4020

Universities are big places, and they’re full of students (and faculty) with all sorts of desires, moral frameworks, and likes/dislikes. I was talking with a colleague recently about what I’d say to a student who asked about COMP4020 Agentic Coding Studio but was staunchly anti-AI.

The first thing I’d say here is that debates against hypothetical opponents are too easy to win, so that’s not what I’m trying to do here. But I do have a few thoughts about how I’d chat to such a student.

Firstly, I love the Nam Jun Paik quote that “I use technology in order to hate it properly”¹. I often feel like that’s my approach to the tech in my life, and at times that’s how I feel about AI coding tools too. In this vein, my invitation to the student would be to take this course, give the sharpest tools a red hot go, and then decide where they stand. If they decide they never want to use them again, then great—that’ll be an informed decision.

I have the benefit with this course that (for example) CS1 educators don’t—my course isn’t a compulsory course. If students don’t want to take it, that’s fine, and it doesn’t block them getting on with their lives. And technically I’m not going to force any student to do an AI-assisted agentic coding, either. It’s possible to ship 10 prototypes in 10 weeks while rawdogging all the code the old fashioned way, although it’ll take (in my opinion) a lot more time & effort.

So if you’re reading this and you’re an ANU student who meets the pre-requisites (COMP3900/6930) and you are deliberately avoiding unnecessary AI use in your life, I’d still love to have you in the course. I’d love to see how your journey through this course shapes your thoughts about this stuff, regardless of where you end up.

@online{swift2026agenticCodingForConscientiousObjectors,
  author = {Ben Swift},
  title = {The road to COMP4020: Agentic Coding for Conscientious Objectors},
  url = {https://benswift.me/blog/2026/04/08/agentic-coding-for-conscientious-objectors/},
  year = {2026},
  month = {04},
  note = {AT-URI: at://did:plc:tevykrhi4kibtsipzci76d76/site.standard.document/2026-04-08-agentic-coding-for-conscientious-objectors},
}