Vibe Coding: Is It Right For Data Science?

Let's explore the pros and cons of this intuitive, almost telepathic style of interacting with AI for programming tasks

Join Charlottesville Data Science for a casual exploration of "vibe coding" — that intuitive, almost telepathic style of interacting with AI for programming tasks. Is this approach suitable for the rigorous demands of data science? Maybe. Let's explore the pros and cons together! We’ll be gathering in person at 6pm on Thursday, October 9, at the UVA School of Data Science.

In this talk, we'll:

• Walk through the history of vibe coding/programming with AI — from early chatbots to today's nearly-fully-autonomous agents

• Demonstrate Code Puppy, an AI code agent that responds to natural language prompts with a vibe-based approach to problem-solving

• Do a live exploratory data analysis (EDA) with iPuppy-Notebooks, a Jupyter-like notebook integrated with a "Puppy Scientist" agent that will analyze datasets in real time

• Our speaker will even attempt an analysis on a dataset provided by an audience member, provided it can fit on his janky laptop!

• Discuss the weird state of the tech world and how to navigate our changing career landscape together

• Share strong opinions (held weakly!) and encourage you to do the same

Come for the AI puppies, stay for the nerdy discussion! This will be less of a formal presentation and more of a fun conversation among data science professionals, vibe coders, computer nerds, and anyone else who feels like joining!

About the speaker

Michael Pfaffenberger is a Charlottesville-based father of two who currently works for Walmart as an AI Engineer (and part-time backup door greeter). He has spent 15 years deploying AI and ML models into production systems across several different industries. He's also a bit of a computer graphics nerd and is currently enjoying agentic AI.

Other upcoming events around Charlottesville

Tuesday, September 23: Cville AI Explorers is hosting Doug Turnbull at Studio IX for a talk called What AI Teams Get Wrong about Vector Search.

Wednesday, September 24: Charlottesville R Users is holding their first meetup at the UVA School of Data Science. If you’re an R user or just R curious, check them out! Find out more information on their event page.

Wednesday, September 24: The Charlottesville Rust Meetup is holding its first in-person event at UVA’s Clark Hall, featuring a talk from Dr. Brad Campbell about Tock, a Rust-based embedded operating system used in devices ranging from security processors to automotive systems.