In winter semester 2024/2025 I ran another edition of the Innovations Project at Lodz University of Technology. This one was different: for the first time I gave students access to AI tools from the start (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Roo Code) and watched how it affected learning. For me it was an experiment – AI as a way to focus on concepts instead of hours of debugging. Students learned to communicate with AI, evaluate suggestions and decide when to accept them.
Stack: Vue 3, Vite, Vue Router, Vuetify/Tailwind, Pinia, Firebase, Vue I18n. I also showed alternatives: Supabase, AWS Amplify, Convex.
Programme: from HTML, CSS and JavaScript basics through Git/GitHub, VS Code and Copilot. Styling – when to use Vuetify, when Tailwind. Pinia for state; AI helped design store architecture. Firebase – Auth, Firestore, hosting, real-time. Vue I18n with translation files generated with AI.
AI tools in practice: Copilot – inline suggestions, learning patterns. Cursor – editing multiple files via change descriptions, refactoring. Windsurf – architectural decisions, spotting security issues. Roo Code – framework-specific patterns and optimisations. Takeaways: benefits are speed and room to experiment; challenges are over-relying on AI, checking security and code quality. Rule: always understand the code before accepting, treat AI like a junior under supervision.
Students built full apps using AI. The difference was clear: those who used AI to support their own thinking did better than those who relied only on suggestions. Prompt engineering turned out to be as important a skill as coding. Code review became critical – with fast generation, judging quality and security is essential.
Challenges: architectural complexity, learning to communicate with AI effectively, convincing students that AI supports rather than replaces thinking. Lesson: success still needs understanding, practice and learning. AI is a tool; the human decides the goal and judges the result.
Thanks to the students and the Innovations Project organisers. I encourage exploring Vue, Firebase and AI tools – together they open a lot of possibilities.
