Naperville Dev - AI Assisted Coding

Presentation from May 1st 2025.

Title:
AI-Assisted Software Development

Sub-title:
Tools and Tips for Getting the Most Out of AI in Software Creation

Description:
Byron will give a 30-minute presentation on the tools and techniques he and his teams at Authentica Solutions are using to embrace the future of software development. As Head of Engineering, Byron will demo what's possible today and share practical, real-world examples of how AI is transforming his company's daily work. Whether you're already using AI in your engineering practice or just getting started, this promises to be a thought-provoking and inspiring session.

Transcript

1. A new era has begun AI Assisted Software Dev Byron Saltysiak
2. About Me - Byron Saltysiak 25+ years in professional software development VP of Engineering at Authentica Solutions (EdTech) Now I enjoy building and talking about AI and LLM based apps https://www.linkedin.com/in/byronsalty/ Today’s slides and related links at: Byronsalty.com
3. Today’s Intuition
4. Today’s Intuition
5. Today’s Intuition
6. Today’s Intuition
7. Today’s Intuition
8. Today’s Agenda > Why Now Case Study Demo Tips & Lessons Learned Closing & QA
9. Why Now - Fast iteration Rise of Agents in Software Development: • Cursor > Windsurf > VS Code & Zed • MCPs (Model-Context-Protocol)
10. Why Now - Agentic IDEs are big
11. Why Now - LLM acceleration LLMs +++ • GPT o1-mini • Claude 3.5 • Claude 3.7 • Gemini 2.5 (In ~3 months)
12. Today’s Agenda Why Now > Case Study Demo Tips & Lessons Learned Closing & QA
13. Lactation Consultant Toolkit app
14. Lactation Consultant Toolkit app
15. Case Study: History Margaret Salty (my wife) identified a gap in the market. Initial Development: 1 weekend (November 2024) Initial Tools: VS Code + ChatGPT Tech stack: Flutter to target iOS and Android
16. Case Study: Today Initial Launch: December 2024 Dev Tools: Windsurf Tech stack: Flutter to target iOS and Android 800+ Apps Sold $4k+ Sales 17 countries
17. Today’s Agenda Why Now Case Study > Demo Tips & Lessons Learned Closing & QA
18. Demo
19. Today’s Agenda Why Now Tools Intro Demo > Tips & Lessons Learned Closing & QA
20. Tips - What AI does well (and doesn’t do well) 👍 Does Well 👎 Falls Short Speed Complex architecture Repetition Long-term context Boilerplate generation Nuanced trade-offs Suggesting alternatives Ownership & judgment
21. Tip 0: Use the IDE AI “Rules” Cursor rules engine is even better
22. Tip 1: Start with Documentation, not Prompts • Don’t just ask AI to build a feature for you. • Do ask AI to document the feature instead. Review the document and iterate, then ask it to implement. • Do add documentation directly into your project with Markdown. Bonus Tip: Mermaid.js is a great addition to markdown documentation.
23. Tip 2: Use Git … more • WIP commits, local branches, etc • You’ll get overly ambitious and completely screw everything up. • Get to a stable spot and commit so you have an easy rollback. Bonus Tip: LLMs are great at weird git scenarios
24. Tip 3: Encapsulation gives AI (and Humans) Focus • Functional style • Use standard libraries / components
25. Tip 3: Encapsulation - the Rules
26. Tip 4: Direct AI to use your test suite • Automate verification of features • You might need to tweak settings to allow some commands.
27. Tip 4: Direct AI to use your test suite
28. Bonus Tip: Lots more here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIAu6WeckQ0
29. Today’s Agenda Why Now Tools Intro Demo Tips & Lessons Learned > Closing & QA
30. Closing
31. Questions?
32. Appendix