[Golab 2025] The Gopher's Craft in the Age of AI

Talk presented at Golab Florence in October 6th 2025

Transcript

1. The Gopher’s Craft in the Age of AI Daniela Petruzalek Developer Relations Engineer
2. Who am I? Developer Relations Engineer at Google, originally from Brazil 󰎙, but living in the UK 󰏅 since 2019. My background is in backend and data engineering. Have been doing Go development (on-and-off) since 2017.
3. Agenda Act 1: The Gopher’s Craft Act 2: Ways of Working Act 3: The Technology
4. Act 1: The Gopher’s Craft
5. A common Gopher’s trait is to take pride in readability, maintainability and testability of their code
6. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/jensen-huang-advises-against-learning -to-code-leave-it-up-to-ai Published 25/Feb/2024 https://www.finalroundai.com/blog/sam-altman-says-world-wants-1000x-more-software Published 24/Jul/2025
7. The Software Engineer Role is Changing…
8. Vibe coding is a coding approach that relies on LLMs to generate working code by providing natural language descriptions rather than manually writing it
9. What could go wrong? 😅
12. Everyone in this room is capable of cooking, but not everyone in this room is a professional chef
13. Act 2: Ways of Working
14. Does your team write stories like this?
15. A Simple Ticket Template gist.github.com/danicat/854de24dd88d57c34281df7a9cc1b215 - Context - To Do - Not To Do (optional) - Acceptance Criteria
16. A Good Prompt Template Task: what you want to achieve, including context, constraints, etc. References: links to documentation, reference implementations, etc. Testing: example commands with output.
17. Example Prompt Your task is to create a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to expose a “hello world” tool. For the MCP implementation, you should use the official Go SDK for MCP and use the stdio transport. Read these references to gather information about the technology and project structure before writing any code: - https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/blob/main/README.md - https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/basic/lifecycle - https://go.dev/doc/modules/layout To test the server, use shell commands like these: ( echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18"}}' ; echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized","params":{}}'; echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'; ) | ./bin/godoctor
18. RED Write a Failing Test GREEN All Tests Pass REFACTOR
19. Vibe Coding is “TDD on Steroids” RED: Start with a new feature request GREEN: Make it work PURPLE: Make it GOOD
20. Act 3: The Technology
21. Gemini CLI Open source AI Agent that uses the Gemini model family for software development tasks. Can be used standalone or in combination with an IDE (e.g.: VS Code or Zed) github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli
22. Jules Asynchronous coding agent that integrates with GitHub and helps with fixing bugs, creating documentation and adding new features. jules.google
23. My Current Workflow Business Value Technical Certainty High High Low
24. My Current Workflow Business Value Technical Certainty High High Low TOP PRIORITY NOT DOING NEEDS RESEARCH NICE TO HAVE
25. My Current Workflow Business Value Technical Certainty High High Low Gemini CLI + IDE NOT DOING (or Jules) Gemini CLI + Deep Research Jules SYNC ASYNC SYNC + ASYNC ASYNC
26. Go is very well positioned for code generation
27. Code generation and validation
28. genkit.dev/docs/get-started/?lang=go
29. Go SDK for MCP 1.0 Partnership Anthropic and Go Team Version 1.0 just released! 🎉 github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk
30. Go Language Server Support for MCP go.dev/gopls/features/mcp
31. Time for a quick demo!
32. Remember This Prompt? Your task is to create a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to expose a “hello world” tool. For the MCP implementation, you should use the official Go SDK for MCP and use the stdio transport. Read these references to gather information about the technology and project structure before writing any code: - https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/blob/main/README.md - https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/basic/lifecycle - https://go.dev/doc/modules/layout To test the server, use shell commands like these: ( echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18"}}' ; echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized","params":{}}'; echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'; ) | ./bin/godoctor
33. Don't be afraid to interrupt the AI Encourage tool use Have you tried turning it off and on again? Tips for a Successful Experience
34. Want to Try it Yourself? Codelab: How to Build an MCP server with Gemini CLI and Go goo.gle/cli-lab
35. Develop your prompting / story writing skills Prioritise your tasks; use async coding for the less critical ones Actively manage your context window Equip your toolbox with MCP servers Handcrafted code: for what you really care about Takeaways
36. Thank you! Blog: danicat.dev linkedin.com/in/petruzalek