Generative AI Tools for Developers: A Practical Guide

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in the spotlight for a while now, and it’s dividing opinions across the world. While some are enthusiastic about the advances in AI and welcome it, others have raised concerns surrounding job security, ethics, and privacy of users’ data—all of which are valid concerns. Artificial intelligence is by no means a new topic or area of tech, but developers have spent years trying to improve on the technology and introduce new tools that are powered by AI.

In this book, we’ll look at some of the applications of AI we’re seeing today, and how AI can be a very useful tool in our day-to-day work as engineers. Innovations in AI have introduced some obvious benefits, such as efficiency and increased productivity. A nice example is GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered, peer-coding partner that helps engineers improve their standard practices, write better tests, and be more productive. We'll cover:

• An Introduction to AI Chatbots: ChatGPT vs. Bing Chat vs. Bard, which looks at what chatbots are, their history, and the state of chatbots today. We’ll also compare the recently introduced chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard.
• How Generative AI Can Augment the Work of Developers, where we cover how we can harness the power of AI to get started in programming, work efficiently, and continue to grow as software engineers.
• A Practical Guide to AI-powered Pair Programming, where we explore some practical examples of how we can integrate these tools into our day-to-day workflow.

This book is for developers who are interested in using AI tools professionally. It doesn't assume any existing familiarity with AI tools.