Introduction: The Developer with AI

All courses / AI Developer / Module 1 / Chapter 1

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Explain the five parts of the working thesis and state the evidence that would show it wrong
• Classify a team's AI tools by usage mode and by degree of delegation, keeping the two axes apart
• Compare what three widely quoted productivity studies measured and why their results do not contradict each other
• Draft an inventory of where AI already takes part in one team's development work

Key concepts

Essential and accidental difficulty

Brooks's distinction between the specification, design and testing of a conceptual construct and the difficulty of representing it in a language and a machine. The chapter argues that generative AI makes the translation into code cheap and leaves knowing what to build, proving it and answering for it.

The working thesis

Five claims of the book: the developer is transformed, not abolished; delegation is graded and has a ceiling; verification becomes the scarce skill and the junior pipeline must be rebuilt; AI may not own; and productivity, quality and competence are claims that need evidence.

Usage mode and degree of delegation

Two different axes. A mode, from Mode 0 Ambient AI to Mode 5 Autonomous production agents, says how the system reaches the developer. A degree, from Level 0 Advisory to Level 4 Autonomous, says how much of the work has been handed over.

A ceiling is not a licence

The level in a delegation profile is the highest degree allowed for a class of work, not an instruction to work at that degree. The Nordvik Region profile DLG-NR-DEV-01 states this as a field of its own.

Inventory of AI in a team's work

The first artefact of the book: a list of every place where code, tests, text or a decision was suggested, generated, reviewed or executed by an AI system, with mode, work class, degree, who approves and who owns. An inventory that finds nothing is more likely incomplete than clean.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. In the two opening cases, what exactly is missing: a record, an owner, or the owner's understanding, and how would you tell the difference in your own team?
2. Which of the five parts of the thesis do you find least convincing, and what evidence would change your view in either direction?
3. Much AI reaches developers as a feature switched on by an update. How should an organisation take a decision about something that has already arrived?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. The chapter sets three productivity studies side by side: a task finished 55.8 per cent faster, more completed tasks in field experiments, and experienced developers working more slowly in their own codebases. What does it conclude?

   1. The laboratory result is the most reliable because its single JavaScript task was controlled, so it should guide planning
   2. The results measure different people, tasks and codebases, so a shape carries over and not a size of effect
   3. The slower result for experienced developers shows that the two positive studies were methodologically flawed
   4. The three should be averaged into one expected productivity gain for planning
   Show the answer

   B. The results measure different people, tasks and codebases, so a shape carries over and not a size of effect
   The chapter says the three do not contradict each other because they measure different people, tasks, codebases and outcomes. What carries over is that the result depends on the task and on the developer's experience of the codebase.

2. According to the chapter, what kind of evidence would refute the second and fourth parts of the thesis?

   1. A vendor report showing that most committed lines in large organisations are generated by AI and pass their tests
   2. A survey in which a majority of developers say that they trust the accuracy of AI output
   3. A single controlled experiment in which an agent completes a task faster than a developer
   4. Independent multi-year evidence that organisations without named owners and generator-independent checks do better
   Show the answer

   D. Independent multi-year evidence that organisations without named owners and generator-independent checks do better
   The chapter names independent, multi-year evidence of better quality, security, delivery and learning without named, reachable owners and generator-independent checks. It labels as speculation that no such evidence exists today.

3. At the start of the year, where do agentic work tools (Mode 3) stand in the two organisations?

   1. At Level 2 Supervised at most: a developer reviews every pull request an agent opens and the agent never merges
   2. At Level 3 Bounded for all generated code at Hansa Mutual and Level 2 Supervised at Nordvik Region
   3. At Level 4 Autonomous in sandboxes at Hansa Mutual and prohibited entirely at Nordvik Region
   4. At Level 1 Assisted in both, since neither organisation allows an agent to open a pull request
   Show the answer

   A. At Level 2 Supervised at most: a developer reviews every pull request an agent opens and the agent never merges
   The table across the usage modes places Mode 3 at Level 2 Supervised: Nordvik's platform engineers draft and never apply change, and Hansa's agents work in a sandbox, open pull requests and never merge.