Research behind the course
Vibe Coding 101 was designed from a review, carried out in September 2026, of how other courses teach AI-assisted programming, what the evidence says about learning with AI, what goes wrong in vibe-coded software, and which tools are free. An update in October 2026 re-checked every tool and added the studies, incidents and courses published in between; together with a review of the course itself, it shaped the October 2026 revision.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| Why the Course Looks Like This | Start here. Each design decision in the course, the evidence behind it, and where it shows up. Its October 2026 update maps each change in the revision to its evidence. |
| Teach the Loop, Not the Tool | The full research report, "Teach the Loop, Not the Tool" (about 9,000 words, 160+ sources). |
| Free Tiers Shrink While Evidence Demands Friction | The October update, "Free Tiers Shrink While Evidence Demands Friction" (25 September – 21 October 2026): new learning studies, the year's incidents, every TOOLS.md row re-checked, and five tiers of recommended fixes. |
| University and College Courses on AI-Assisted Programming, "Vibe Coding", and Agentic Software Development (2024 to Sept 2026) | Notes on university courses: Stanford CS146S, CMU 15-113 and 17-316, UChicago, Utah, Michigan, UCSD, Northeastern, Harvard CS50 and others. |
| Online, Industry, MOOC, Bootcamp and Cohort Courses on Vibe Coding and AI-Assisted Coding (2025 to Sept 2026) | Notes on about 40 online, industry and cohort courses: DeepLearning.AI, Anthropic, Google/Kaggle, Microsoft, Coursera, Maven, Campus × Replit and others. |
| Teaching and Practicing AI-Assisted Programming / Vibe Coding: Evidence, Practitioner Consensus, and Risks (2023 – Sept 2026) | Education research, productivity studies, practitioner workflows, and security and safety incidents. |
| Free and Low-Cost AI Chat Assistants, Browser App Builders, and Student Programs for a "Vibe Coding 101" Course (as of 25 September 2026) | Free and basic tiers of chat assistants and browser app builders, student offers, privacy and age rules. |
| Free and cheap tools for "Vibe Coding 101": AI IDEs, CLI agents, free LLM APIs, and free hosting/backends (verified 2026-09-25) | Free and basic tiers of AI editors, terminal agents, LLM APIs, hosting and databases; AGENTS.md and MCP support. |
October 2026 notes
Each of these records only what is new since the September notes above, or what those notes missed.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| Evidence, Incidents and Practitioner Guidance Update for Vibe Coding 101 (25 Sep – 21 Oct 2026, plus earlier-2026 items the baseline missed) | New learning studies (recall, ownership, AI-off maintenance, a large AI-tutor trial), productivity and code-security evidence, the 2026 incidents behind the new case studies, standards and practice updates, and legal and policy changes. |
| University and College Courses on AI-Assisted Programming / Vibe Coding / Agentic SE: What Is New, 25 Sept – 21 Oct 2026 | Fall 2026 university courses: Stanford CS146S weeks 2–4, Michigan EECS 498's hackathon and Elephant-Goldfish Model, CMU 15-113's fall survey, new non-major studios and the SIGCSE 2027 program. |
| Online, Industry, MOOC, Bootcamp, Cohort and Vendor-Academy Courses on Vibe Coding: What Is New (25 Sept to 21 Oct 2026), Plus Fresh Learner Feedback | New or updated online and vendor courses (GitHub Copilot app for Beginners, DeepLearning.AI's cloud-to-local course, Anthropic Academy) and fresh learner reviews. |
| Tool changes since 25 September 2026: row-by-row verification of TOOLS.md (checked 21 October 2026) | A row-by-row re-check of TOOLS.md on 21 October 2026, with dated changes to watch. |
How to read the notes
- Every fact carries a link and, where available, a date. Facts about tools were checked on 25 September 2026 (September notes) and 21 October 2026 (October notes) and will go stale. The course keeps current numbers only in Tool Handout.
- Notes mark third-party or search-snippet sources and flag conflicting sources. The reports' "gaps" paragraphs list what could not be verified.
- The notes were compiled with AI research assistants and then synthesized. Treat them as a well-sourced starting point, and follow the links before relying on any single claim.