Welcome to the AI Assisted Coding guide

Important

AI is no magic bullet. It is a tool to help you, but you still need to know what you are doing.

This is a guide on how to use AI Assisted Coding to your advantage. It will show you how to use the tools available to you to get the most out of AI.

This guide will cover different aspects of AI Assisted Coding and how to use them to your advantage. We also shortly cover how AI is working. We will look at different approaches to use AI effectively.

Foundations — what AI is and which tools exist

Working with AI — how to prompt, which modes, what workflows

Quality & risks — what can go wrong and how to stay safe

Measuring success

Productivity & Metrics

Hands-on

Practical Workshop

Reference

Resources

AI Assisted Coding VS. Traditional Coding

Traditional Coding

You write the code with explicit instructions. (HOW)
Every rule has to be manually defined.
It’s deterministic and predictable.
Full control over every step and aspect of the code.

AI Assisted Coding

You write the goal of the code. (WHAT)
AI will generate the code to achieve the goal.
Learns from patterns of millions of codebases to generate the best code.
Focus on design (WHAT) and not on the syntax (HOW).

Note

Paradigm shift from “How do I implement this?” to “What do I want to achieve?”

Vibe Coding (aka “generating AI Slop”)

You don’t know how to code
You don’t fully understand the code written by the AI
You implement features without understanding the impact or risks
You don’t know how to debug the code
Send http://localhost:8080/ this to friends and say ‘Hey, check out my new website!’

Example comparison

Traditional Coding:

def factorial(n):
    if n == 0:
        return 1
    return n * factorial(n-1)

AI Assisted Coding:

Prompt: "Write a function to calculate the factorial of a number"