Coding Chats

AI-assisted software engineering: challenges and opportunities

Coding Chats

Show Notes

Coding Chats episode 57 - Owain Lewis and John Crickett explore the role of AI in software engineering, discussing the integration of AI into production systems and the challenges faced by AI engineers. They delve into the nuances of AI application, from building scalable systems to the importance of human oversight in AI-driven workflows.

Chapters 00:00 Defining the Role of AI Engineer 03:13 Exploring Large Language Models (LLMs) 06:15 Use Cases for LLMs in Business 09:22 The Non-Deterministic Nature of AI 12:12 AI in Software Engineering: The Future 15:11 The Role of AI in Code Review 17:53 The Bottleneck of Requirements Gathering 20:38 Leveraging AI Throughout the Software Lifecycle 29:53 Leveraging AI for Efficient Documentation 30:47 AI in API Design and Review 32:22 Spectrum Driven Development with AI 34:06 The Role of Requirements in Software Engineering 40:05 The Future of Programming Languages and AI 49:54 Understanding Context and Prompt Engineering 56:38 Exploring Related Content

Owain's Links: Substack: https://newsletter.owainlewis.com/subscribe AI Engineer: https://skool.com/aiengineer

John's Links: John's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett/ John’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johncrickett John's Twitter: https://x.com/johncrickett John's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.social

Check out John's software engineering related newsletters: Coding Challenges: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/ which shares real-world project ideas that you can use to level up your coding skills.

Developing Skills: https://read.developingskills.fyi/ covering everything from system design to soft skills, helping them progress their career from junior to staff+ or for those that want onto a management track.

Takeaways AI engineering involves building software with AI, focusing on production systems. AI engineers bridge the gap between AI model builders and software developers. Understanding AI's unique paradigm is crucial for effective system architecture. AI should be used minimally and where it makes sense, not everywhere. Human oversight is essential in AI-driven workflows to ensure reliability. Large language models (LLMs) are a significant focus in current AI trends. AI can enhance business processes through automation and natural language interfaces. AI's role in software engineering includes improving code quality and efficiency. AI tools can amplify both good and bad engineering practices. Experimentation and building real projects are key to learning AI engineering.

More from Coding Chats

Oct 22, 2026

Coding Chats Episode 83 - In this episode, VB from OpenAI’s developer experience team explains why he thinks plan mode is obsolete and how coding agents have shifted from step-by-step instructions to outcome-driven, long-running work. We cover how to write a good agents.md, why tests still matter when agents write the code, spec-driven development, and why cloud agents may be the future of dev tooling.

Oct 15, 2026

Coding Chats Episode 82 - John talks with Dave Westgarth, head of delivery at a Databricks consultancy. Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery manager, and whether either needs to be technical.They also look at how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, John argues there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.

Oct 8, 2026

Coding Chats Episode 81 - Ben Howdle talks to John Crickett about being a first time CTO in a start-up. Ben, author of The First CTO, shares what changes when you move from building technology to leading a technical team: the pressure, the trade-offs, and the realization that writing code is only part of the job.Drawing on startup experience and lessons learned the hard way, Ben discusses how to balance quality against runway, manage people, and communicate technical decisions in terms that founders and other non-technical stakeholders can understand. He also explores why resourcefulness, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity matter so much—and why CTOs often spend more time selling ideas than they expect.Whether you’re stepping into your first CTO role or leading a technical team at an early-stage company, this conversation offers candid insights into the realities of technical leadership.

May 28, 2026

Coding Chats Episode 80 - start-up advisor Alexander Berkovich shares his expertise on building successful start-ups, hiring strategies, CTO roles, and the importance of communication between technical and business teams. Discover practical tips for navigating the challenges of early-stage companies and how to align technical excellence with business goals.

May 21, 2026

Coding Chats Episode 79 - Richmond Alake, Director of AI Developer Experience at Oracle, joins John to discuss agent memory — how AI agents store, retrieve, and adapt to information. He argues that developers building memory on flat files are naively reinventing the database, and that once you factor in concurrency, security, and scalability, a proper database is inevitable. The conversation covers the full memory stack and how Oracle's AI database keeps embeddings and data together without shipping sensitive information to external providers.

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