Software Development

I do think AI/LLMs have value, but not as much as the “AI enthusiast crowd” thinks. I like specific concrete examples of what AI can do. I think that treating AI as a pair programmer is one case where it provides value. I don’t have much experience with human pair programming, but I have seen that having multiple people design and review code as it is written can be fantastically productive — and sometimes not. If you are a single developer, you can use AI as your pair programmer by asking it to explain and review code, suggest alternatives, and look for ways to simplify. In this setup, you are still the developer: the AI may write code, but you still need to understand it. Used this way, AI challenges your ideas, helps you learn, and leads to better code. ...

Microsoft regularly asks me to renew my Azure certifications. To do that, I have to answer multiple choice questions about specific Azure services. In most cases an AI/LLM would answer those questions better than I would. In real projects, I look up details when I need them — networking quirks, Azure Container Instances behavior, subnet rules. But certification expect you to memorize these things, even though day‑to‑day work rarely requires it. ...