Unlocking Developer Potential: Leveraging GenAI to Double Coding Productivity

In my last post, I broached the hot topic of developer productivity—should it be measured, and if so, why and how? Today, I’d like to spin things around a little bit and look at the topic from a different angle: how do we help developers boost their productivity without burning them out or sacrificing everything that makes a talented, experienced developer so valuable to the enterprise?

In 2024, the most important answer your organization should be thinking about is generative AI. Hands down. While there are other ways to help your coders get more accomplished, GenAI tools are taking the industry by storm, and for good reason: in Cprime’s experience, we’re seeing engineering teams more than doubling and in some cases tripling or quadrupling their productivity while maintaining excellent quality and letting the developers focus more on being creative problem solvers.

Here’s one way GenAI is blowing up nearly every industry:

Leveraging GenAI as a Junior Developer

The old adage often holds true: two heads are better than one. When two coders collaborate effectively, they can complement each other, bounce ideas back and forth, and reach more creative solutions. They may even get things done faster. And, it’s an excellent opportunity for more experienced developers to mentor new coders—supervising as the newbie puts some miles on their keyboard—and help them learn and grow.

The GenAI tools available today—with more coming out seemingly daily—take this concept to a whole new level, allowing coders to collaborate with the AI. Not only are the AIs thoroughly educated on the various coding languages, best practices, and DevOps protocols; they’re also tied to massive large language models (LLMs) and GenAI engines, making them easy to communicate with and capable of generating wholly new solutions and recommendations in seconds.

So, you can quite literally “complement each other, bounce ideas back and forth, and reach more creative solutions” without another human coder sitting next to you. Thinking about the senior and junior developers scenario, these tools offer every developer the opportunity to focus on the conceptual and problem-solving aspects of the code being created while letting their talented “protege” handle all the routine, nuts-and-bolts keyboard crunching that takes such an inordinate amount of time.?

So, the human and the AI maximize the value delivered by focusing on what they do best. That’s fantastic, in so many ways. But it’s also a potential trap.

Beware!

It’s not as simple as handing your teams a tool and sitting back to watch the numbers skyrocket. It’s easy to get wowed by all the amazing things AI can do and lose track of those areas where it really isn’t performing that well. Or to start over-relying on it as some sort of silver bullet. That’s not what it is. It’s just as easy to waste time, effort, and money on implementing AI and see no results.

What we’ve found is that there’s a right way to use AI tools for coding, and a right way to implement them into your teams’ processes. And if you don’t do things the right way, you risk missing the mark, and potentially watching your competition race past.?

So, let’s take a look at the right way to use and implement GenAI tools to double developer productivity and future-proof your enterprise.

Top Tips for Using GenAI Tools for Coding?

To get the maximum benefit from these AI tools without falling into those traps, our AI experts working with clients recommend following some important tips.? DM me for other top tips!

To maximize the benefits of these tools, it's essential to adopt certain best practices. Here are a few that will make a world of difference:

1. Simplify First and Refactor for Improved Code Quality - Often, you’re starting with something that hasn’t been cleaned up in a long while. Utilize AI to refactor code into smaller, more atomic functions, enhancing maintainability and quality. Best practices include asking AI for simplification and breaking down large functions before modifications.
2. Ask the AI “Explain This Code to Me” - AI can serve as a valuable learning tool by explaining code and context, especially in unfamiliar domains. Hit the ground running when facing a block of legacy code, or someone else’s work.
3. Ask the AI “Why Am I Getting This Error?” - Use AI as a "brainstorming buddy" for exploring potential causes of errors during integration testing, guiding the debugging process.
4. Your Code Comments Have Never Been So Comprehensive and Effortless - AI can generate comprehensive and effortless code comments, enhancing code readability and maintainability.
5. Don’t Just Accept the First Answer AI Offers You; Make It Work - AI can provide different solutions upon repeated queries, aiding in iterative development. It's crucial to rephrase or repeat questions for alternative solutions.

Throughout the development process, providing clarity to AI tools—and continually validating the tool’s responses—is paramount. Make full use of the AI to reduce busy work, double-check your conclusions, brainstorm new solutions, and automate repetitive chores. But don’t expect the tool to do your job for you—it doesn’t work like that.?

By adopting these kinds of best practices, developers can leverage Generative AI tools more effectively, enhancing their coding efficiency and quality.?

For more expert tips our consultants have pulled together, hit me up in the comments and we’ll talk!

How will YOU keep up?

There’s no arguing the need for your development teams to start leveraging generative AI quickly and effectively, right now. Every day that goes by, your competition gets faster and more efficient because they’ve taken action. Of course, it’s never smart to invest in a tool, drop it on your teams, and expect adoption, much less quantifiable success and ROI. Investing in AI-powered coding tools is no different.?

At Cprime, we’ve always promoted a holistic approach to tech implementation. And that’s also how we’ve helped our clients get the most out of their investment in AI coding tools. If you’d like to explore a holistic approach, I’d love to show you Cprime CodeBoost?, our full-service GenAI-powered coding productivity solution. In less than 10 weeks, you won’t just be up and running, you’ll be doubling your current development productivity, guaranteed!?

Questions? Put them in the comments. I look forward to hearing from you!