Detailed Notes
In the latest Building Better Developers podcast season, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche dive deep into the fascinating world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on developers’ habits. In this episode, the focus isn’t just on using AI but on leveraging it to enhance productivity, creativity, and problem-solving capabilities.
*Read More*... https://develpreneur.com/ai-habits-to-embrace-for-efficiency-and-growth/
*Episode Challenge:* Building Habits with AI
This episode's challenge encourages developers to explore AI daily:
1. Identify a problem or task—whether coding, debugging, or planning. 2. Use an AI tool to suggest solutions or assist with the task. 3. Evaluate and refine the AI’s suggestions to learn how to maximize its effectiveness.
The goal isn’t to rely entirely on AI but to build a habit of thoughtfully integrating AI into workflows. Over time, this practice will help developers identify areas where AI can save time and effort without compromising quality.
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
*Additional Resources*
* ChatGPT (https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/) * Microsoft Copilot (https://copilot.microsoft.com/) * Leverage AI To Solve Problems In New Ways (https://develpreneur.com/leverage-ai-to-solve-problems-in-new-ways/) * Use Cases For AI – Interview With Chris Barkhurst (https://develpreneur.com/use-cases-for-ai-interview-with-chris-barkhurst/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] we're going to go and hit record there we hit record as far as you know we've been we just hit record we were not here I'm going to move my mic out of the way a little bit say sensitive now I can talk again and it actually hears me uh let's see so we want to do AI this should be fun so actually we need to just let AI generate the entire episode I actually heard about that the other day where there was uh the dignation podcast they were actually asking talking about that they're like what we need to do is just up like something that just says create me a podcast CU there is something it's called uh what is it called it's like um shoot it's like cows on fire or something like that I can't remember what it is but it's a site where they generate they have they generate music based it's AI generated music just based on stuff and it's songs and lyrics and stuff like that and it's like ai's gotten to that point I wonder if it's like because they so there is a um there is a podcast if you go Google it or whatever your favorite search searching is there's apparently a podcast out there that was created entirely by AI it's like two or three people talking about whatever it is that they're talking about and uh it's an entire podcast on it so I was like shoot we should have just aied this podcast and just said use in the form of the developer or podcast you know create a do a podcast episode on AI and how it's evil and needs to be stopped and see what happens we'll probably have like Terminators at our door the next day but yeah it's worth it so all right comments before we dive in uh it's actually funny though you you mentioned that there are so we'll do the bonus stuff early this time because that kind of led into an interesting conversation I had with Renee there are tools like descript like even grammarly is now getting to where it's like you type something it just autog generates it or you give it some topics but the tools that are out there are actually getting very powerful and very useful um Apple intelligence chat GPT I mean it's still uh what is it open AI or API um still or open AI is still to me probably the leading Pusher of most AI generated content uh but even like the Google commercials I don't know if you've seen recently about people having conversations with Gemini how real is that and how much of that is like the Amazon commercial where they were like hey Alexa during the Super Bowl it went down and you have all these actors speaking through microphon it was yeah actually we were talking about this at a at lunch the other day with the our developer lunch is that uh we're actually talking about a couple of those and Gemini apparently has gotten pretty darn good uh with some of these things and that uh I haven't I don't use it I use chat GPT every s just cuz my stuff my needs are pretty straightforward it's usually like write me some code that does this because I sort of know what it is and then I can just I use it that a lot of times because I know it's going to take me you know 100 lines of code and it's going to take me 30 minutes to like think through it versus this is something I'm better off just looking at it fixing it you know change the names whatever I need to do to make it like work how I need it to work and then I'm off and running um but apparently these things have gotten pretty good and particularly it is it is a toy of some sorts but I do think it's something that is um something we need to be aware of as we move forward because I think there are some very good values in AI particularly with some of the things that like scraping for example web scraping I think is going to take a whole another level of you know step up when you can start applying that so you can say well does this you know does this look like the name of somebody where or use AI to say find the owner's name the business owner's name if you go to this page which is a business idea I just thought of I got to go like like blank that out but it's things like that there's a lot of uses of AI people are just figuring it out it's just like Google when it started people had no idea they're like searching until you're like i' I've used Google as AI for years I have not done like you know fast food you know New York I will say I do full sentences and ask Google questions for years and I get really good responses back it'll be like what is a really good fast food restaurant in New York you know that provides chicken sandwiches and at a decent price or something like that I'll like I'll ask a full-on question and it'll give me a pretty solid you know result set or it'll say you're smoking stuff stop you know I don't do that but it's never it's going to give me something and it's just one of those things once you realize that the more you can the more keys you can give it the better it's going to give you a response back and it it is overwhelming at times where it just autogenerator me I'm like I don't want all of that stuff I don't want you to fix my word I don't want you to finish my sentence I want this because you guessed wrong AI uh and I've had to shut like grammarly off a couple times and some things like that and it's it drives you because it's like it's doing something like no this is a word it is spelled correctly go away stop changing it and fixing it for me and those kinds of things but yeah it's uh that's some bonus stuff is look if you're not playing with AI you need to you need to at least have an an exposure to it it is going to be around for quite a while everybody big is is betting on it there are jobs that are just if you can spell AI you can get the job on at this time so if you can't you pick a different podcast you guys are all laughing because you can all spell AI or it's like the what is the old uh you know the yell of somebody's falling off of a cliff where it's like I because it always I think it was a I or something like that anyways we digress all right back to the old well hello and welcome back we have already gone off the rails but we are back building better habits building better developers this is the develop andure podcast this episode we're going to talk about Ai and this is not just to be cleared an AI generated podcast now I have to introduced myself I am Rob Broadhead I'm one of the founders of developing or building better developers I'm also a founder of ARB Consulting where we are a boutique consulting firm we come in help companies find the best way to use technology to build maybe that includes like maybe the people side of it maybe help you build a a technology team a software development team make sure that your processes procedures software all that good stuff is there through simplification automation integration we find ways through all of those shuns to help you reduce technology sprawl and make the best use out of your technology now in this season of habits we've had challenges along the way and of those challenges I've talked quite a bit of particularly the to-do list and the Pomodoro pieces I want to say honor is one that it has really been helpful to keep that at sort of like more Forefront in my mind it is very helpful to have as we said early on we had the seven days like look at what you're doing and in the seven days do some sort of automation this has been something that I've continued to do and it does keep me on a regular basis thinking about like what am I doing how am I doing can I do this better more importantly can I automate this or in some cases can I remove it entirely because it's really a waste of time because I could you know automate it and just it it gets done or you know things like that so that's one that I've been really happy with that's a challenge that I think has really helped me move the ball forward as well is to keep in mind on a regular basis where can I automate my life my work the things the tasks that I am doing on a regular basis good thing and bad thing good thing is last week or to I have been like full busy that is always good I like my job I like to be like getting up in the morning when I'm know like I gotta go I got to get stuff done I got crap I got to do today the bad side of that is that is totally blown up like my sleeps sleep schedule and stuff like that now my internal clock always has me getting up at the same time doesn't matter what day of the week it is unfortunately it also doesn't matter when I went to bed so if I go to bed at 8:00 p.m. or 2 a.m. or 5 a.m. I wake up at 5 a.m. basically so I better make sure I have enough bandwidth to get some sleep in before my body says hey it is time to get up now I can groggy put myself back to sleep for a little bit but guess what minutes later my body's like hey you fell asleep you need to get up it's not a lot of fun but what is fun is getting the introduction from Mike every time so go ahead and give your non-generated VI AI introduction everyone yes we are not robots uh my name is Michael Mage I'm one of the co-founders of developer Nur I'm also the founder of Envision QA whereas the title of the company implies we Al offer lots of quality assurance testing services to help companies that either don't have a QA department or or are having trouble with buggy software or software that just doesn't quite work the way it needs to and they need some help getting back on track that's where we come in we help you improve your quality assurance of your software be it through manual automation or integration testing goals uh a lot of the things I've been focusing on recently have been kind of working on my planning and scheduling to kind of get back on track a little bit with kind of where I'm going with things uh especially with our last discussion on agile I've been trying to work through trying to make sure that I'm following the ceremonies correctly doing the planning properly and really trying to prepare for those meetings so it's kind of a combination of uh planning and scheduling and meeting prep making sure that I'm showing up on time for the meetings I'm focused and I'm present during the meetings uh good and bad good I've been focused on our uh goals and our challenges to build better habits um bad side of things uh like you I've been getting a little bit busier so I have to be a little more thoughtful as to what I'm working on right now to stay on track so I've been kind of going off the rails a little bit in a couple different directions losing sleep like you said but overall more good than bad this week so let's talk about Ai and do it in a Noni generated way which is sadly enough how a lot of people do this uh these days is you'll have stuff they'll say like here's how you use Ai and they're basically just like throwing some stuff at and go look here I could AI can do my job now ai as we we actually threw some stuff in the also just throw out go check out the YouTube channel we do have a lot of information out there and you will understand why sometimes we come into this and we're a little bit like Punchy before we've even started because sometimes the pre-show gets a little bit like out there or maybe we're just out there all the time but AI I think the problem with AI is or with using Ai and I think this is where we're going to where we're going to go with the The Challenge and where we're going to build a habit is using it as a tool that can help you do better what you are already doing I don't think AI well yes if you're not a coder AI can generate code if you're not an artist it can generate art we'll call it at that because everybody's seeing yes there is some there are some AI art generators that sometimes the art is very good it's it's exactly what you need sometimes it is horrible and so you have to know the difference now it's the same thing with uh if you're writing like grammarly and some of these tools that are really good about applying rules like grammar rules spelling rules and things like that those are perfect with AI because it's usually going to give you a pretty good feel for that because if you can the whole point is if the AI has the right rules the right constraints around the configuration around what you're trying to generate it's going to do a pretty good job because what you're really doing is you're just automating a task that you do and so if you can tell it how to do the task then it's going to be but then it's an automation for you basically at that time that's why code is a really nice example because you just you know you can put out comments and say I need to do this I need to this do this do this do this in this language in this style blah blah blah and it'll generate something out now it's probably not necessarily it's not always going to work but if you know what you were going to build anyways now you're just checking somebody else's work you're making some changes to it and you're able to move forward the same thing with writing and this is where like I think the the biggest thing I've seen that is useful with this lately uh and there are a lot of areas is actually in uh summations of sorts so for example we when we go through we use zoom for our stuff when we get done we get a summation of what is what we said what we cover so it's really great particularly if you're using this for meetings that you can come back and go okay well what was this meeting about without having to look look at the recording again you can get a summation and say well this is really what everybody talked about and how they went with it it may not be perfect but it will give you an idea and then it's something where you're like oh I need to go back and like dig into that or cool it covered it got me the couple of points that I wanted it to get same way is there are tools out there like descript and things like that that will take an audio piece and convert it into using AI they will convert it into text and so it does give you a better the the additionals of AI give you a better way to convert because it's doing some of the smarts that in the past you would have had to done do so for example it can take a conversation and it's going to know because it's got some smarts to it things like that it's going to know for example like Rob and Michael are the two talking and it's going to be able to tell because of the differences in the voices just as you do in your head it's going to say you know Rob said this Michael said that Rob said Michael was wrong Michael said I know I'm always wrong I'm sorry I made a mistake okay maybe not like that but unless it's unless it's an evil AI you got to watch out for that because sometimes the the AI might beat down on you a little bit because we all know Terminators out there somewhere but the point of this is there is a lot of there's a lot of promises about AI like there have always been just like there have been Promises of a lot of new technology over the years but there is a lot of reality that is there we have bigger machines bigger processors more memory more data that's available and particularly when you're finding tasks that would be Monumental for you to do because they're very repetitive or very rote you probably can get AI to do that for you and get through and automate what you would have done so I think that's where instead of artificial intelligence maybe you think about as like automation intelligence then you're going to see where I think we're really going to be able to let leverage it and use it to do our jobs better as opposed to treat it as a crotch to do our job for us now I am not going to use AI as a crutch I'm gonna actually use Michael so he can continue this conversation thoughts yeah so that last thing you touched on immediately made me think of Dragon Naturally Speaking that software has been around since the '90s and how it typically worked really kind of simulates what AI is today you download the software you install it you have to sit there and go through a whole bunch of recordings uh well of word things on the screen you have to speak it it records what you say and essentially you're training the tool to be able to understand your voice and be able to dictate what it is that you're saying now of course today we've got better tools like that we got descript zoom and all these other tools but all that came from that concept that idea what it is is you are giving it you have to train it you have to give it some rules in order for it to get it right now ai has already spent a good deal of time before these apps even became available to the public going through scraping millions of websites out there looking at different documentation looking at different topics different ideas categorizing all this and essentially what it did is it built this very procedural database driven chat system so you type in a topic and it's going to go search very quickly through all of its libraries based on all these rules and regurgitate back some content that today now really seems like it's reading your mind it's very quickly giving you back very reliable uh and very uh consumable information now how does that really work in our jobs in the real world like how can we use this well as developers because there's so many different sites out there we've got GitHub we got stack Overflow there's all these great sites that have code out there uh especially if you are a Microsoft fan and you use co-pilot they've already scraped most of stack Overflow for code and content so if you search a topic and uh co-pilot chances are you're essentially searching stack Overflow and it's going to give you a very quick summary of probably something someone has already answered without you having to go through all the time and steps of reading all the different things on stack Overflow I'm a big tester I like writing test cases and I've actually found that chat GPT although IBM's working on a great tool and um not red hat um who's the ones that do py uh intell oh jet brain yeah um they are their AI is getting pretty good for code as well so between them and chat GPT nowadays if you just need help building a stu remove all the boilerplate crap that you need to put to just get started if you literally go out to chat GPT or most of the AI tools between intell J and chat GPT type hey build me a project for a web page for like python boom here's a St export it you've got a project you're up and running in Java world Spring and like eclipse and intell they've been doing that for years you can now go into most of those projects and say hey I need a project for X you click a button it automatically builds you the stub most of the project and if you're lucky you can even say hey include examples and boom you actually have a working project you just need to tweak well AI can take that one step further because these AI tools have scraped most of the web chances are someone has done something close enough to what it is you're looking for that a typical Google search that gives you multiple sites to look for in any of the AI tools will actually give you some code examples that may work out of the box or will give you enough of an idea that you can either go Google based on what you see to go dig a little bit deeper or ask AI or train the AI tool oh that's not quite right I'm really looking for this and granted I will say a year ago after your third or fourth AI search the responses got garbage I mean you started getting really lost in the weeds today though if you spend about 10 to 15 minutes really refining your search through Ai and communicate back and forth it will start understanding what it is you want you have to make sure you tell it when it's wrong otherwise it's going to keep giving you more of those responses but it's just like Google search it's like I go out I like search for bathtubs oh I don't want bird baths so mine is bird bath and you basically just have to understand the tools that you're using and get really good at it the last little tip I'll throw out is testing now my company really focuses on testing and quality assurance if you do zero testing or you really have developers that just don't know how to test or don't like writing unit test make them use an AI tool just to write simple tests it may not be perfect but it something is better than nothing when it comes to software testing I have to agree completely and honestly it's it's usually going to be in testing and things like that those kinds of automated processes are it's not going to be just something it sometimes it's actually a very substantial something and it saves you a substantial amount of time so it is actually very impressive I will throw out there another one that I have used that from a code point of view that has gotten really good really quickly is whisper it's Amazon's version of this all of these tools are available if you use Visual Studio code I think all of those are plugins that you can use otherwise if you use whoever's you know most idees now that have got some sort of Plugin or module you can find it for these test it out these are things that sometimes do become a little bit frustrating because they will like just blow out a whole bunch of code when you didn't want it to and then you wonder why you suddenly had 4,000 lines of code generation you're like I don't remember typing that and that's why so you may have to like undo and some stuff like that but that is the key to these things is like these work these are getting better and if you either teach the tool basically and give it some inter some some sort of interaction and help it to give you you know help it to get a better solution then you will end up with sometimes a very solid solution uh and if not at least something that puts you further down the the line of being ready to give your solution array now before we get into challenges I do want to mention it was January 4th of this year funny enough that which is 2024 you can go back and you can find out our interview with uh Chris barkhurst and we talked about Ai and some very good uh conversations about like how his company was using AI to do some things that are maybe a little bit out of the the ordinary uh but also I think very telling about what AI can do for us now now from The Challenge point of view and the building a habit The Habit here is this challenge is actually going to be pretty easy go to whichever AI you can just you know go to a search engine and find an AI tool you know if you want to just chat GPT great but if you want to use a different one great go to their site or hook them up you know connect in and just one time a day take a problem that you're looking at particularly if it's something that's got you like when you hit a pause where you're like you're writing some code you're like how do I solve this little problem take that problem write it up throw it in the in the AI and see what comes out it may be junk but it may be exactly the solution you need and it maybe just saved you an hour or two something like that now I don't think it's going to help you with configuration issue problems which is the ones that eat up more time for me than anything else but you never know it may give you exactly the thing that you need particular if you say why doesn't this work and you give it to it sometimes AI will literally point you exactly to hey you forgot to do this or it'll give you a list of things to say did you check this did you verify that did you do this thing just a lot of ways to break you out of your mindset and your mold because AI is going to give you something a little different and a lot of times just that thinking outside of the box will help you move on to the next step so use it as something like you know as a as a way to help you along the way as opposed to a crutch where you're like I'm just going to throw it over the wall and see what AI gives me instead work your way through enough or say well I think this is how I'm going to solve it give it to AI you're going to be a you're going to get a much much better response and probably something that's much more useful based on that sort of like if you shoot us an email at info developer.com you will get more useful episodes in the future at least to you because you will give us feedback and we will make sure that that is part of what we take into account as we do future episodes and right now we're bumping up against the year in speci special for 2024 we will come in and we'll wrap up this season in 2025 and then there'll be a new season which you will probably be shocked but if you followed us for any period of time you will know that we haven't even figured out what that's going to be yet so you can influence future seasons of develop andur if you send us an email or leave us a comment wherever whether you're watching this on YouTube out at the developing or Channel there whether you wherever it is that you get your podcast you can leave us something there you can go out and we've got a form on the developer.com site you can hit we've got a Facebook page we've got uh at develop preneur on Twitter we're out there and luckily there's not a lot of develop preneurs so you probably will find us if you on uh Alexa then you just you have to call us building better developers because she doesn't understand developing because her AI was not there when we got started with all of this stuff but I digress that being said I want to wrap this one up so go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time I almost ended the entire call right there all right so I think we got our bonus in before still recording I know I'm like we got our we got our bonus in so yeah you guys thought you were going to get something special but no I knew what we I sort of know what I'm doing uh just this is I think digressing completely as just like one last little bit of bonus material when you are on a zoom call and you are sharing your screen make sure you realize you're sharing your screen and make sure you stop sharing before you start doing other stuff I've now had that happen a couple of times to maybe to me once or twice but definitely some other people where it's like I don't think you realize that you're still sharing your screen especially if you're not paying attention to the meeting and you're off like you know looking at cat videos on YouTube or whatever it is you happen to do it's like I don't think you're paying attention to this business discussion we're having so little helpful hint there as always one other one to that yep because you kind of touch on something towards the end with the challenge if you are a beginning developer where you aren't really experienced too much in a lot of different languages or even your core language be careful using AI to have it solve your problem if you're going to use the AI for the challenge also Google or use a search engine for the same problem so ask AI hey why am I getting this problem but then turn around and use the search engine and ask the same thing compare the two because AI might send you down a very bad Rabbit Hole whereas if you just do them side by side you might see oh this is completely wrong this is right or okay it's on the same part just to kind of give you an even ke uh till you get more comfortable with the language or the tools that you're using this is also a great use of a place to use linters and things like that so you can go whatever you get in you can just sort of do a sanity check and it will it will help you out and where that maybe is not following the standards for that language or or how it would you know maybe the best approach or something or if there's a security issue or something like that it can help you out with that that being said we're going to wrap this one up and let you get out there after this we have holiday specials for a little bit so you enjoy as we're getting to the end of the year we'll talk to you a little bit more about that uh let us know any challenges you have hopefully continue these things even through the holiday season yes you can take a day or two off but get back into those because we will find that I think we'll find on the other side of this when we get into January New Year's resolutions and all that stuff habits are going to be great to build and that's why we're here for you have a great one we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
we're going to go and hit record there
we hit record as far as you know we've
been we just hit record we were not here
I'm going to move my mic out of the way
a little
bit say sensitive now I can talk again
and it actually hears
me uh let's see so we want to do AI this
should be fun so actually we need to
just let AI generate the entire
episode I actually heard about that the
other day where there was uh the
dignation podcast they were actually
asking talking about that they're like
what we need to do is just up like
something that just says create me a
podcast CU there is something it's
called uh what is it called it's like um
shoot it's like cows on fire or
something like that I can't remember
what it is but it's a site where they
generate they have they generate music
based it's AI generated music just based
on stuff and it's songs and lyrics and
stuff like that and it's like ai's
gotten to that point I wonder if it's
like because they so there is a um there
is a podcast if you go Google it or
whatever your favorite search searching
is there's apparently a podcast out
there that was created entirely by AI
it's like two or three people talking
about whatever it is that they're
talking about and uh it's an entire
podcast on it so I was like shoot we
should have just aied this podcast and
just said use in the form of the
developer or podcast you know create a
do a podcast episode on AI and how it's
evil and needs to be stopped and see
what happens we'll probably have like
Terminators at our door the next day but
yeah it's worth it so all
right comments before we dive
in uh it's actually funny though you you
mentioned that there are so we'll do the
bonus stuff early this time because that
kind of led into an interesting
conversation I had with Renee there are
tools like descript like even grammarly
is now getting to where it's like you
type something it just autog generates
it or you give it some topics but the
tools that are out there are actually
getting very powerful and very
useful um Apple
intelligence chat GPT I mean it's still
uh what is it open AI or
API um still or open AI is still to me
probably the leading Pusher of most AI
generated
content uh but even like the Google
commercials I don't know if you've seen
recently about people having
conversations with Gemini
how real is that and how much of that is
like the Amazon commercial where they
were like hey Alexa during the Super
Bowl it went down and you have all these
actors speaking through microphon it was
yeah actually we were talking about this
at a at lunch the other day with the our
developer lunch is that uh we're
actually talking about a couple of those
and Gemini apparently has gotten pretty
darn good uh with some of these things
and that uh I haven't I don't use it I
use chat GPT every s just cuz my stuff
my needs are pretty straightforward it's
usually like write me some code that
does this because I sort of know what it
is and then I can just I use it that a
lot of times because I know it's going
to take me you know 100 lines of code
and it's going to take me 30 minutes to
like think through it versus this is
something I'm better off just looking at
it fixing it you know change the names
whatever I need to do to make it like
work how I need it to work and then I'm
off and running um but apparently these
things have gotten pretty good and
particularly it is it is a toy of some
sorts but I do think it's something that
is um something we need to be aware of
as we move forward because I think there
are some very good values in AI
particularly with some of the things
that like scraping for example web
scraping I think is going to take a
whole another level of you know step up
when you can start applying that so you
can say well does this you know does
this look like the name of somebody
where or use AI to say find the owner's
name the business owner's name if you go
to this page which is a business idea I
just thought of I got to go like like
blank that out but it's things like that
there's a lot of uses of AI people are
just figuring it out it's just like
Google when it
started people had no idea they're like
searching until you're like i' I've used
Google as AI for years I have not done
like you know fast food you know New
York I will say I do full sentences and
ask Google questions for years and I get
really good responses back it'll be like
what is a really good fast food
restaurant in New York you know that
provides chicken sandwiches and at a
decent price or something like that I'll
like I'll ask a full-on question and
it'll give me a pretty solid you know
result set or it'll say you're smoking
stuff stop you know I don't do that but
it's never it's going to give me
something and it's just one of those
things once you realize that the more
you can the more keys you can give it
the better it's going to give you a
response back and it it is overwhelming
at times where it just autogenerator me
I'm like I don't want all of that stuff
I don't want you to fix my word I don't
want you to finish my sentence I want
this because you guessed wrong AI uh and
I've had to shut like grammarly off a
couple times and some things like that
and it's it drives you because it's like
it's doing something like no this is a
word it is spelled correctly go away
stop changing it and fixing it for me
and those kinds of things but
yeah it's uh that's some bonus stuff is
look if you're not playing with AI you
need to you need to at least have an an
exposure to it it is going to be around
for quite a while everybody big is is
betting on it there are jobs that are
just if you can spell AI you can get the
job on at this time so if you can't you
pick a different
podcast you guys are all laughing
because you can all spell AI
or it's like the what is the old uh you
know the yell of somebody's falling off
of a cliff where it's like
I because it always I think it was a
I or something like that anyways we
digress all right back to the
old well hello and welcome back we have
already gone off the rails but we are
back building better habits building
better developers this is the develop
andure podcast this episode we're going
to talk about Ai and this is not just to
be cleared an AI generated podcast now I
have to introduced myself I am Rob
Broadhead I'm one of the founders of
developing or building better developers
I'm also a founder of ARB Consulting
where we are a boutique consulting firm
we come in help companies find the best
way to use technology to build maybe
that includes like maybe the people side
of it maybe help you build a a
technology team a software development
team make sure that your processes
procedures software all that good stuff
is there through simplification
automation integration we find ways
through all of those shuns to help you
reduce technology sprawl and make the
best use out of your
technology now in this season of habits
we've had challenges along the way
and of those challenges I've talked
quite a bit of particularly the to-do
list and the Pomodoro pieces I want to
say honor
is one that it has really been
helpful to keep that at sort of like
more Forefront in my mind it is very
helpful to have as we said early on we
had the seven days like look at what
you're doing and in the seven days do
some sort of
automation this has been something that
I've continued to do and it does keep me
on a regular basis thinking about like
what am I doing how am I doing can I do
this better more importantly can I
automate this or in some cases can I
remove it entirely because it's really a
waste of time because I could you know
automate it and just it it gets done or
you know things like that so that's one
that I've been really happy with that's
a challenge that I think has really
helped me move the ball forward as well
is to keep in mind on a regular basis
where can I automate my life my work the
things the tasks that I am doing on a
regular basis good thing and bad
thing good thing is last week or to I
have been like full busy that is always
good I like my job I like to be like
getting up in the morning when I'm know
like I gotta go I got to get stuff done
I got crap I got to do
today the bad side of that is that is
totally blown up like my sleeps sleep
schedule and stuff like that now my
internal clock always has me getting up
at the same time doesn't matter what day
of the week it is unfortunately it also
doesn't matter when I went to bed so if
I go to bed at 8:00 p.m. or 2 a.m. or 5
a.m. I wake up at 5 a.m. basically so I
better make sure I have enough bandwidth
to get some sleep in before my body says
hey it is time to get up now I can
groggy put myself back to sleep for a
little bit but guess what minutes later
my body's like hey you fell asleep you
need to get up it's not a lot of fun but
what is fun is getting the introduction
from Mike every time so go ahead and
give
your non-generated VI AI
introduction
everyone yes we are not robots uh my
name is Michael Mage I'm one of the
co-founders of developer Nur I'm also
the founder of Envision QA whereas the
title of the company implies we Al offer
lots of quality assurance testing
services to help companies that either
don't have a QA department or or are
having trouble with buggy software or
software that just doesn't quite work
the way it needs to and they need some
help getting back on track that's where
we come in we help you improve your
quality assurance of your software be it
through manual automation or integration
testing goals uh a lot of the things
I've been focusing on recently have been
kind of working on my planning and
scheduling to kind of get back on track
a little bit with kind of where I'm
going with things uh especially with our
last discussion on agile I've been
trying to work through trying to make
sure that I'm following the ceremonies
correctly doing the planning properly
and really trying to prepare for those
meetings so it's kind of a combination
of uh planning and scheduling and
meeting prep making sure that I'm
showing up on time for the meetings I'm
focused and I'm present during the
meetings uh good and bad good I've been
focused on our uh goals and our
challenges to build better habits um bad
side of things uh like you I've been
getting a little bit busier so I have to
be a little more thoughtful as to what
I'm working on right now to stay on
track so I've been kind of going off the
rails a little bit in a couple different
directions losing sleep like you said
but overall more good than bad this week
so let's talk about Ai and do it in a
Noni generated way which is sadly enough
how a lot of people do this uh these
days is you'll have stuff they'll say
like here's how you use Ai and they're
basically just like throwing some stuff
at and go look here I could AI can do my
job now ai as we we actually threw some
stuff in the also just throw out go
check out the YouTube channel we do have
a lot of information out there and you
will understand why sometimes we come
into this and we're a little bit like
Punchy before we've even started because
sometimes the pre-show gets a little bit
like out there or maybe we're just out
there all the
time but AI I think the problem with AI
is or with using Ai and I think this is
where we're going to where we're going
to go with the The Challenge and where
we're going to build a habit is using it
as a tool that can help you do better
what you are already doing I don't think
AI well yes if you're not a coder AI can
generate code if you're not an artist it
can generate art we'll call it at that
because everybody's seeing yes there is
some there are some AI art generators
that sometimes the art is very good it's
it's exactly what you need sometimes it
is horrible and so you have to know the
difference now it's the same thing with
uh if you're writing like grammarly and
some of these tools that are really good
about applying rules like grammar rules
spelling rules and things like that
those are perfect with AI because it's
usually going to give you a pretty good
feel for that because if you can the
whole point is if the AI has the right
rules the right constraints around the
configuration around what you're trying
to generate it's going to do a pretty
good job because what you're really
doing is you're just automating a task
that you do and so if you can tell it
how to do the task then it's going to be
but then it's an automation for you
basically at that time that's why code
is a really nice example because you
just you know you can put out comments
and say I need to do this I need to this
do this do this do this in this language
in this style blah blah blah and it'll
generate something out now it's probably
not necessarily it's not always going to
work but if you know what you were going
to build
anyways now you're just checking
somebody else's work you're making some
changes to it and you're able to move
forward the same thing with writing and
this is where like I think the the
biggest thing I've seen that is useful
with this lately uh and there are a lot
of areas is actually in uh summations of
sorts so for example we when we go
through we use zoom for our stuff when
we get done we get a summation of what
is what we said what we cover so it's
really great particularly if you're
using this for meetings that you can
come back and go okay well what was this
meeting about without having to look
look at the recording again you can get
a summation and say well this is really
what everybody talked about and how they
went with it it may not be perfect but
it will give you an idea and then it's
something where you're like oh I need to
go back and like dig into that or cool
it covered it got me the couple of
points that I wanted it to get same way
is there are tools out there like
descript and things like that that will
take an audio piece and convert it into
using AI they will convert it into text
and so it does give you a
better the the additionals of AI give
you a better way to convert because it's
doing some of the smarts that in the
past you would have had to done do so
for example it can take a conversation
and it's going to know because it's got
some smarts to it things like that it's
going to know for example like Rob and
Michael are the two talking and it's
going to be able to tell because of the
differences in the voices just as you do
in your head it's going to say you know
Rob said this Michael said that Rob said
Michael was wrong Michael said I know
I'm always wrong I'm sorry I made a
mistake okay maybe not like that but
unless it's unless it's an evil AI you
got to watch out for that because
sometimes the the AI might beat down on
you a little bit because we all know
Terminators out there
somewhere but the point of this is there
is a lot of there's a lot of promises
about AI like there have always been
just like there have been Promises of a
lot of new technology over the years but
there is a lot of reality that is there
we have bigger machines bigger
processors more memory more data that's
available and particularly when you're
finding tasks that would be Monumental
for you to do because they're very
repetitive or very rote you probably can
get AI to do that for you and get
through and automate what you would have
done so I think that's where instead of
artificial intelligence maybe you think
about as like automation intelligence
then you're going to see where I think
we're really going to be able to let
leverage it and use it to do our jobs
better as opposed to treat it as a
crotch to do our job for us now I am not
going to use AI as a crutch I'm gonna
actually use Michael so he can continue
this conversation
thoughts yeah so that last thing you
touched on immediately made me think of
Dragon Naturally
Speaking that software has been around
since the '90s and how it typically
worked
really kind of simulates what AI is
today you download the software you
install it you have to sit there and go
through a whole bunch of recordings uh
well of word things on the screen you
have to speak it it records what you
say and essentially you're training the
tool to be able to understand your voice
and be able to dictate what it is that
you're saying now of course today we've
got better tools like that we got
descript zoom and all these other tools
but all that came from that concept that
idea what it is is you are giving it you
have to train it you have to give it
some rules in order for it to get it
right now ai has already spent a good
deal of time before these apps even
became available to the public going
through scraping millions of websites
out there looking at different
documentation looking at different
topics different ideas categorizing all
this and essentially what it did is it
built this very procedural database
driven chat system so you type in a
topic and it's going to go search very
quickly through all of its libraries
based on all these rules and regurgitate
back some content that today now really
seems like it's reading your mind it's
very quickly giving you back very
reliable uh and very uh consumable
information now how does that really
work in our jobs in the real world like
how can we use this well as developers
because there's so many different sites
out there we've got GitHub we got stack
Overflow there's all these great sites
that have code out there uh especially
if you are a Microsoft fan and you use
co-pilot they've already scraped most of
stack Overflow for code and content so
if you search a topic and uh co-pilot
chances are you're essentially searching
stack Overflow and it's going to give
you a very quick summary of probably
something someone has already answered
without you having to go through all the
time and steps of reading all the
different things on stack
Overflow I'm a big tester I like writing
test cases and I've actually found that
chat GPT although IBM's working on a
great tool and um not red hat um who's
the ones that do py uh
intell oh jet brain
yeah um they are their AI is getting
pretty good for code as well so between
them and chat GPT nowadays if you just
need help building a stu remove all the
boilerplate crap that you need to put to
just get started if you literally go out
to chat GPT or most of the AI tools
between intell J and chat GPT type hey
build me a project for a web page for
like python boom here's a St export it
you've got a project you're up and
running in Java world Spring and like
eclipse and intell they've been doing
that for years you can now go into most
of those projects and say hey I need a
project for X you click a button it
automatically builds you the stub most
of the project and if you're lucky you
can even say hey include examples and
boom you actually have a working project
you just need to tweak well AI can take
that one step
further because these AI tools have
scraped most of the web chances are
someone has done something close enough
to what it is you're looking for that a
typical Google search that gives you
multiple sites to look for in any of the
AI tools will actually give you some
code examples that may work out of the
box or will give you enough of an idea
that you can either go Google
based on what you see to go dig a little
bit deeper or ask AI or train the AI
tool oh that's not quite right I'm
really looking for
this and granted I will say a year ago
after your third or fourth AI search the
responses got garbage I mean you started
getting really lost in the weeds today
though if you spend about 10 to 15
minutes really refining your search
through Ai and communicate back and
forth it will start understanding what
it is you want you have to make sure you
tell it when it's wrong otherwise it's
going to keep giving you more of those
responses but it's just like Google
search it's like I go out I like search
for bathtubs oh I don't want bird baths
so mine is bird bath and you basically
just have to understand the tools that
you're using and get really good at it
the last little tip I'll throw out is
testing now my company really focuses on
testing and quality
assurance if you do zero testing or you
really have developers that just don't
know how to test or don't like writing
unit test make them use an AI tool just
to write simple tests it may not be
perfect but it something is better than
nothing when it comes to software
testing I have to agree completely and
honestly it's it's usually going to be
in testing and things like that those
kinds of automated processes are it's
not going to be just something it
sometimes it's actually a very
substantial something and it saves you a
substantial amount of time so it is
actually very impressive I will throw
out there another one that I have used
that from a code point of view that has
gotten really good really quickly is
whisper it's Amazon's version of this
all of these tools are available if you
use Visual Studio code I think all of
those are plugins that you can use
otherwise if you use whoever's you know
most idees now that have got some sort
of Plugin or module you can find it for
these test it out these are things that
sometimes do become a little bit
frustrating because they will like just
blow out a whole bunch of code when you
didn't want it to and then you wonder
why you suddenly had 4,000 lines of code
generation you're like I don't remember
typing that and that's why so you may
have to like undo and some stuff like
that but that is the key to these things
is like these work these are getting
better and if you either teach the tool
basically and give it some inter some
some sort of interaction and help it to
give you you know help it to get a
better solution then you will end up
with sometimes a very solid solution uh
and if not at least something that puts
you further down the the line of being
ready to give your solution array now
before we get into challenges I do want
to
mention it was January 4th of this year
funny enough that which is 2024 you can
go back and you can find out our
interview with uh Chris barkhurst and we
talked about Ai and some very good uh
conversations about like how his company
was using AI to do some things that are
maybe a little bit out of the the
ordinary uh but also I think very
telling about what AI can do for us now
now from The Challenge point of view and
the building a
habit The Habit here is this challenge
is actually going to be pretty easy go
to whichever AI you can just you know go
to a search engine and find an AI tool
you know if you want to just chat GPT
great but if you want to use a different
one great go to their site or hook them
up you know connect in and just one time
a day take a problem that you're looking
at particularly if it's something that's
got you like when you hit a pause where
you're like you're writing some code
you're like how do I solve this little
problem take that problem write it up
throw it in the in the AI and see what
comes out
it may be junk but it may be exactly the
solution you need and it maybe just
saved you an hour or two something like
that now I don't think it's going to
help you with configuration issue
problems which is the ones that eat up
more time for me than anything else but
you never know it may give you exactly
the thing that you need particular if
you say why doesn't this work and you
give it to it sometimes AI will
literally point you exactly to hey you
forgot to do this or it'll give you a
list of things to say did you check this
did you verify that did you do this
thing just a lot of ways
to break you out of your mindset and
your mold because AI is going to give
you something a little different and a
lot of times just that thinking outside
of the box will help you move on to the
next step so use it as something like
you know as a as a way to help you along
the way as opposed to a crutch where
you're like I'm just going to throw it
over the wall and see what AI gives me
instead work your way through enough or
say well I think this is how I'm going
to solve it give it to AI you're going
to be a you're going to get a much much
better response and probably something
that's much more useful based on that
sort of like if you shoot us an email at
info developer.com you will get more
useful episodes in the future at least
to you because you will give us feedback
and we will make sure that that is part
of what we take into account as we do
future episodes and right now we're
bumping up against the year in speci
special for 2024 we will come in and
we'll wrap up this season in 2025 and
then there'll be a new season which you
will probably be shocked but if you
followed us for any period of time you
will know that we haven't even figured
out what that's going to be yet so you
can influence future seasons of develop
andur if you send us an email or leave
us a comment wherever whether you're
watching this on YouTube out at the
developing or Channel there whether you
wherever it is that you get your podcast
you can leave us something there you can
go out and we've got a form on the
developer.com site you can hit we've got
a Facebook page we've got uh at develop
preneur on Twitter we're out there and
luckily there's not a lot of develop
preneurs so you probably will find us if
you on uh Alexa then you just you have
to call us building better developers
because she doesn't understand
developing because her AI was not there
when we got started with all of this
stuff
but I digress that being said I want to
wrap this one up so go out there and
have yourself a great day a great week
and we will talk to you next
time I almost ended the entire call
right there all right so I think we got
our bonus in before still recording I
know I'm
like we got our we got our bonus in so
yeah you guys thought you were going to
get something special but no I knew what
we I sort of know what I'm doing
uh just this is I think digressing
completely as just like one last little
bit of bonus
material when you are on a zoom call and
you are sharing your screen make sure
you realize you're sharing your screen
and make sure you stop sharing before
you start doing other
stuff I've now had that happen a couple
of times to maybe to me once or twice
but definitely some other people where
it's like I don't think you realize that
you're still sharing your screen
especially if you're not paying
attention to the meeting and you're off
like you know looking at cat videos on
YouTube or whatever it is you happen to
do it's like I don't think you're paying
attention to this business discussion
we're having so little helpful hint
there as always one other one to that
yep because you kind of touch on
something towards the end with the
challenge if you
are a beginning developer where you
aren't really experienced too much in a
lot of different languages or even your
core language be careful using
AI to have it solve your problem if
you're going to use the AI for the
challenge also Google or use a search
engine for the same problem so ask AI
hey why am I getting this problem but
then turn around and use the search
engine and ask the same thing compare
the two because AI might send you down a
very bad Rabbit Hole whereas if you just
do them side by side you might see oh
this is completely wrong this is right
or okay it's on the same part just to
kind of give you an even ke uh till you
get more comfortable with the language
or the tools that you're using this is
also a great use of a place to use
linters and things like that so you can
go whatever you get in you can just sort
of do a sanity check and it will it will
help you out and where that maybe is not
following the standards for that
language or or how it would you know
maybe the best approach or something or
if there's a security issue or something
like that it can help you out with that
that being said we're going to wrap this
one up and let you get out there after
this we have holiday specials for a
little bit so you enjoy as we're getting
to the end of the year we'll talk to you
a little bit more about that uh let us
know any challenges you have hopefully
continue these things even through the
holiday season yes you can take a day or
two off but get back into those because
we will find that I think we'll find on
the other side of this when we get into
January New Year's resolutions and all
that stuff habits are going to be great
to build and that's why we're here for
you have a great one we will talk to you
next time
[Music]