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AI Coding Assistants: Practices, Assumptions, and Implications
by Sven Apel, Tobias Dick, Kallistos Weis, Alisa Welter
Software development is inherently collaborative, relying on a range of practices and tools to support productivity, code quality, and knowledge sharing. In recent years, AI coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot have been integrated into everyday development workflows and are increasingly positioned as active collaborators rather than passive tools. Their growing use raises fundamental questions about how AI systems reshape development practices: To what extent do interactions with AI resemble collaboration with human peers? Where do they diverge, and how do they challenge established assumptions about learning, coordination, and the division of labor in software development?
In this seminar, students will engage in controlled, hands-on programming sessions under two conditions: pair programming with a human partner and pair programming with an AI assistant. Building on these experiences, students will work in small groups of two to three participants to develop research questions and analyze the data collected during the sessions. Each group will be supported by a dedicated advisor and receive regular feedback throughout the semester. The seminar concludes with a short written report and research presentations in which each group presents their results and reflects on their implications.
The first meeting will take place on Thursday, April 16, at 12:15 PM.
All sessions will take place on-site at the university, room 2.06 in E 1.1 on Thursdays 12:15 PM - 2:00 PM.
Participation in all sessions is mandatory.
Further information will be provided via e-mail after registration.
Registration
Registration for the seminar is mandatory. To distribute students among the available seminars offered by the computer science department, you have to select your preferences for the seminar on the central registration platform for seminars and will be automatically assigned to a seminar according to your preferences.
If you are assigned to this seminar, for organizational reasons, you have to sign up both in the course registration form that will be given above and in the LSF. Deadlines for the LSF (HISPOS) registration will be posted in the LSF (HISPOS) portal. Registration is possible up to three weeks after the topic assignment / kick-off.
Literature
Alisa Welter, Niklas Schneider, Tobias Dick, Kallistos Weis, Christof Tinnes, Marvin Wyrich, and Sven Apel. An Empirical Study of Knowledge Transfer in AI Pair Programming. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), pages 166–177. IEEE, 2025.
Qianou Ma, Tongshuang Wu, and Kenneth Koedinger. Is AI the better programming partner? Human-Human Pair Programming vs. Human-AI pAIr Programming. 2023.
Wenhan Lyu, Yimeng Wang, Yifan Sun, and Yixuan Zhang. Will Your Next Pair Programming Partner Be Human? An Empirical Evaluation of Generative AI as a Collaborative Teammate in a Semester-Long Classroom Setting. In Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S '25). Association for Computing Machinery, 2025.