Agentic Vibe Coding from the Terminal
Prof. Tim Oates, UMBC
1-2:30pm ET, April 3, 2026, ITE 325b and online
Large language models have become surprisingly capable coding partners - not just for autocomplete, but for turning a rough problem statement into runnable code, tests, and iterative improvements. In this talk I'll give a short, technical overview of why coding assistants work (internet-scale code + documentation pretraining, instruction tuning, and feedback loops), and where they predictably fail (ambiguous specs, hidden requirements, brittle dependencies, and "confidently wrong" outputs).
Most of the session is live, terminal-based demos using Claude Code. We'll start from plain-English requirements and iteratively produce working implementations: scaffolding a small project, generating tests, debugging failures, refactoring for clarity/performance, and adding documentation. Along the way I'll highlight practical workflows: "spec-first prompting", test-driven prompting, using the assistant to explain unfamiliar code, and using constraints to keep changes small and reviewable. The goal is for faculty and students to leave with repeatable patterns for using coding assistants effectively - without outsourcing understanding or sacrificing correctness.
Dr. Tim Oates is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He received B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1989, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1997 and 2000, respectively. Prior to coming to UMBC in the Fall of 2001, he spent a year as a postdoc researcher in the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. In 2004 Dr. Oates won a prestigious NSF CAREER award. He is an author or co-author of more than 200 peer reviewed papers and is a member of ACM and AAAI.