Most engineers are using AI coding tools without understanding what they actually are and it's costing them. Microsoft Certified Trainer Rob Bos has trained thousands of engineers on AI tooling, and he sees the same gaps in fundamentals show up again and again, regardless of seniority. This is what you need to know:
Whether you're skeptical of AI tools or already living in agent mode, these are the fundamentals that separate engineers who get real value from those who get burned by the hype.
Connect with Rob:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bosrob
References:Token tracker: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RobBos.copilot-token-tracker
Dev survey: https://www.activestate.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ActiveState-Developer-Survey-2019-Open-Source-Runtime-Pains.pdf
Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:43 - The #1 Thing Engineers Get Wrong About AI
00:02:09 - How Much LLM Theory Do You Actually Need?
00:03:58 - Why Pair Programming Is Still the Best Way to Learn AI
00:05:26 - Why Rob Skips Tab Completion and Lives in Agent Mode
00:07:03 - The "AI Doesn't Increase Productivity" Debate
00:08:29 - Why Your Real Job Was Never Writing Code
00:09:14 - The 2-Hours-of-Coding Problem No One Talks About
00:11:02 - More Code = More Pressure on Your Review Process
00:12:21 - Why AI Magnifies Existing Technical Debt
00:13:39 - The Customer Who Couldn't Start AI With Developers Yet
00:15:11 - The Future Engineer: Reviewer, Not Writer
00:17:00 - Convincing the AI Skeptic Who Tried It Years Ago
00:19:17 - LLMs Explained Without Visuals (Attention & Semantics)
00:22:41 - Why Prompt Engineering Actually Matters
00:24:20 - From Zero to Hero: The 6-Month Learning Curve
00:26:18 - Is This Confrontational for 20-Year Veterans?
00:29:30 - Becoming a Better Engineer by Thinking in Systems
00:31:26 - Will AI Stop Working as Innovation Slows?
00:34:26 - The Lost Art of Pair Programming with AI
00:35:44 - Tribalism in AI Tools (And Why It's Pointless)
00:37:33 - Tool Agnostic: Start With the Foundations
00:39:40 - Is the IDE Still Relevant?
00:40:50 - The Bluescreen Story That Changed His Mind
00:41:47 - The Hidden Environmental Cost of AI Coding
00:44:15 - 36 Million Tokens in 30 Days: What Does It Mean?
00:45:47 - Running LLMs at the Edge to Cut the Footprint
00:46:48 - Why You Should Be Allowed to Wait Five Minutes Longer
00:47:05 - Outro
#githubcopilot #aicoding #softwareengineering