Effective Coding with AI
Effective Coding with AI
Principles for Productive & Safe Agentic Programming
About the Book
It's a new era of software development. Agentic editing has fundamentally changed the craft. New AI-powered programming tools are launched weekly. But there are core, fundamental principles to effectively and safely harness these tools to reach levels of productivity that haven't previously been possible.
AI agents can generate hundreds of lines of code in seconds, build features that would have taken days in mere hours, and tackle tasks across any platform—desktop, mobile, web, or CLI. This unprecedented power comes with unprecedented risk. Agents can introduce subtle bugs, leak sensitive credentials, create unmaintainable code, and generate implementations that look correct but fail in production. The difference between productivity and disaster lies in how you work with these tools.
Written by a developer with 20 years of experience who initially resisted AI but now embraces it, this book distills hard-won lessons into practical, actionable principles. You'll learn how to take responsibility for AI-generated code, verify outputs effectively, structure codebases that agents can work with successfully, and build self-correcting systems that catch problems early. These aren't tips and tricks for a specific tool—they're fundamental principles for the age of agentic editing that will remain relevant regardless of which AI coding assistant dominates tomorrow.
Effective Coding with AI is written in an approachable and digestible format. Each chapter is a standalone principle you can apply immediately, covering everything from testing strategies and feature flags to avoiding merge conflicts and preventing secret leaks. Whether you're skeptical of AI coding tools or already using them daily, these principles will help you harness their power safely and effectively.
Early Access: Effective Coding with AI is an active work in progress. You're buying a work in progress book that will be updated regularly until completed.
AI Usage Disclosure: Generative AI was not used to write any part of this book. AI tooling was used to catch typos and provide feedback on grammar.
License
About the Author
Table of Contents
- The Ground Changing Beneath my Feet
- Tools I Use
- Let’s Get Started
- Early Access
- You Must Understand the Code the AI Writes
- Ask Questions
- Make Small Commits
- Rapid Code Review
- Set Up a Self-Correcting System
- Test Early and Test Often
- Specificity
- Small Tasks
- Write Tests
- Plan Features Thoroughly
- You are Responsible for the Code Agents Write
- Utilize Components & Design Systems
- (On how to avoid merge conflict pain)
- How to Context Switch Effectively
- Two Instances
- Remote Delegation
- Start From Doubt & Verify
- Slow Down
- Be Nice
- Beware Leaking Secrets
- Write Code Without Agents
- Focus on the Fundamentals
- Agents Are More Effective with Functional Programming
- Explicit Code is Better Than Implicit Code
- Simple Code is Better Than Clever Code
- Static Typing Preferred
- Feature Flags
- Configure Your Agents
- Outro
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