Why Software Engineers Should Not Dismiss AI as a New Tool Today

Software development is your craft.

AI is a new tool for you to use.

The effectiveness of any tool comes down to the technique of the person using it. To get the most out of your tools you have to learn how to use it well. That’s when the magic happens.

Don’t dismiss AI today just because it occasionally gets things wrong.

Answer this question. In two years, will there be more AI or less AI in your job?

It should be painfully obvious, there will be more.

This new tool is here to stay.

Learning a new tool takes time. To unlock the potential of a new tool you need to learn how to use it well. To learn something well, you need to practice.

Start practicing how to use AI today. You’ll be further along than our colleagues who dismiss it and refuse to adapt.

Tools are one thing, using it correctly is what matters.

Add the tool of AI to your craft.

Right now is an amazing opportunity to start evolving into an Augmented Engineer by adapting to AI before everyone else is forced to.

Actionable Next Step: This week, take one byte sized task, perhaps one function you need to write and ask AI to do it for you.

Practice breaking down the problem into clear inputs and outputs, then specify what language you want it written in, and ask AI to generate the function and some tests.

Example Good Prompt: “Write a Python function to connect to a MySQL database using the pymysql library. The function should take database credentials (host, user, password, database name) as arguments and return a connection object. It should also handle exceptions for connection errors and print a relevant error message.”