Nour Nabil

I went to an Arize AI coding meetup expecting engineers; I left thinking “building” just got a lot more inclusive. Yesterday I attended the Arize AI Builders Meetup in NYC, and the session on “Boosting Claude Code performance with prompt learning” was packed with practical ideas. But what stuck with me most wasn’t just the content, it was the mix of people in the room. At the Arize meetup I attended about 2 years ago, most conversations were with deeply technical folks. This time, many people I met were non-engineers who are now building fast with agentic tools like Claude Code. People are moving from idea to working prototype much faster, even without traditional software backgrounds. That feels like a generational shift in who gets to build. Slides from the talk: https://lnkd.in/ew4Tfuts For those of you in non-technical roles: are you already using AI tools to build things directly, or still mostly using them for research/writing? #AI #ClaudeCode #PromptLearning #NYC

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During a recent discussion on how LLMs and agents are changing programming workflows, I realised that one of the deepest shifts we're experiencing is in the theory <-> code iteration itself. Before LLMs, we usually began with a fairly detailed mental model - a theory of how the system should work. The code was an expression of that understanding. When something broke, it meant our theory was incomplete or wrong, so we refined the understanding and rewrote the code. In other words, understanding preceded code. Now, with LLMs and agents, that order has been effectively reversed. With LLMs, we often start with only a vague sense of direction. The LLM generates working code, and our job becomes to understand both the code and the problem space simultaneously. The code leads, and the theory follows. Interestingly, this now leads to us programmers feeling as the slowest cog in the machine. We're used to starting with understanding - where the real cognitive effort happened invisibly, before you ever wrote code. Now, since code comes first and cheaply, we're forced to build understanding afterward, and that mental effort suddenly becomes visible. So next time you get that feeling of being the "slowest cog", remember that it's not that you've slowed down. It's just that the locus of difficulty has now moved - from construction to comprehension. But comprehension remains as essential as ever.

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My talk from AUC's Dev World is now up: https://lnkd.in/gaBNiEsV Some developers just seem to fly when things get hectic — when bugs pop up, deadlines tighten, or priorities shift overnight. What’s their secret sauce? In this talk, I share the habits, mindsets, and workflows that help you move fast without cutting corners or sacrificing quality. You’ll learn how to shorten your debug loop, master your IDE, terminal tricks, and build a mental map of your team’s work to avoid reinventing the wheel. I explore why sometimes slowing down to really understand a problem can actually speed you up, and how small automations and smart documentation can multiply your impact. Whether you’re at a scrappy startup or a big company, junior or senior, this talk is for anyone who wants to get sharper, stay calm under pressure, and deliver better, faster. If you have any more tips, I'd love to hear them.

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