Best Zero‑Installation Platforms for Teaching AI Pair‑Programming

What is AI pair-Programming?

What is AI Pair-Programming?

It is the new hype in programming. Now, developers think and manage their programming agents. It is a dream that comes true.

Let me show a simple example: go to colab.research.google.com now and log in with your Gmail. Select New notebook, as shown in the following figure.

Click on generate with AI.

Remember, pair-programming is not code generation. AI, here is your smart programming buddy. Let’s do the classical calculator example together in Python. If you ask Colab to write you a calculator in Python, this is code generation. However, if you say, “I want to build a simple calculator in Python, but I’m not sure how to start. I wrote this, but it’s not working:
num1 = input(”Enter number: “)
num2 = input(”Enter number: “)
print(num1 + num2)”

It will think with you and help you debug your code, and give you the option to accept & run its edits or cancel them.

As shown in the following figure, Colab replies:

“You’re off to a great start! The issue you’re facing is that the input() function reads values as text (strings). When you try to add two strings, Python concatenates them instead of performing mathematical addition. To fix this, you need to convert the input strings to numbers (like integers or floats) before adding them. Here’s how you can do it:

num1_str = input("Enter the first number: ")
num2_str = input("Enter the second number: ")

# Convert the input strings to numbers (integers in this case)
# If you need to handle decimal numbers, you can use float()
try:
    num1 = int(num1_str)
    num2 = int(num2_str)
    result = num1 + num2
    print(f"The sum is: {result}")
except ValueError:
    print("Invalid input. Please enter valid numbers.") 

You can continue your conversation with it by asking for it to be simpler or by explaining the try-except. The possibilities are endless.