Prompting Copilot and ChatGPT for Code
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Essential prompting skills for GenAI-enhanced code
Course outcomes
- Learn how to use GenAI in your day-to-day development jobs more quickly and efficiently
- Understand the basics of GenAI prompt engineering
- Gain practical GenAI code generation skills that can help you with dreaded tasks like writing unit tests, adding code comments, and adding commit messages
Course description
Join expert Andrew Stellman to get on the fast track to harnessing the power of AI for smarter, faster, and more creative development. You’ll gain a better understanding of the advantages—and shortcomings—of GenAI chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini and use that knowledge in exercises to write effective AI prompts. You’ll also engineer prompts to generate code, write unit tests, create code comments, and research topics effectively, applying what you’ve learned to your real-world code immediately. By the end of this course, you’ll be able to harness the power of GenAI to enhance your Java and C# development projects.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
- Write AI prompts to generate code
- Generate unit tests, code comments, and useful commit messages with AI
- Use AI as a development research tool
- Understand the advantages and shortcomings of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini as coding tools
This live event is for you because...
- You’re a professional developer (or skilled hobbyist).
- You work with Java or C#.
- You want to become a more effective developer.
Prerequisites
- Login credentials for at least one GenAI chatbot (ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini) if you plan to participate in exercises
- A computer with an IDE like IntelliJ IDEA (Java) or Visual Studio (C#) installed if you plan to participate in exercises
- Experience with Java or C# (or another language if you’re okay with examples in Java and C#)
- Basic understanding of unit testing
Recommended follow-up:
- Read AI-Assisted Programming (book)
- Read Head First C#, fifth edition (book)
- Watch Infrastructure & Ops Superstream: Generative AI Use Cases, Risks, and Tooling (conference video)
- Watch GitHub Copilot Shortcuts (video playlist)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Prompt engineering basics (65 minutes)
- Presentation: Prompt engineering basics; AIs can understand your code
- Hands-on exercises: Ask an AI to generate a class for you; ask an AI to add comments to your code
- Q&A
- Break
Generating new code with AI (55 minutes)
- Presentation: AI as a research tool (it’s better than Stack Overflow); generating new code
- Hands-on exercises: Use an AI to generate code to solve a problem; use an AI to write unit tests
- Q&A
Your Instructor
Andrew Stellman
Andrew Stellman is a full-time software developer and team lead who’s passionate about writing great code. He’s the author of many books and reports published by O’Reilly, including Beautiful Teams, Learning Agile, and five editions of Head First C#. Andrew has been writing books and training people on software development, agile, project management, and other technical topics for over 20 years.