I wonder how many of you have tried vibe coding something with an AI tool. If you haven’t, I certainly recommend it. I’ve been a bit amazed with a few of my AI Experiments, including my loading of a lot of inconsistently formatted data into a database for USD$5.

To be clear, there’s plenty of vibe coding that might not be production-ready, but have you ever been handed code from a human developer you didn’t think was production-ready? Or deployed code like that? Certainly, AI could exacerbate the situation, but it can also spark ideas, ease (and speed) development in small ways, and tackle the backlog of things your org needs.

Especially small tools.

How big a concern or help will this be? I ran across an interesting article from a semi-technical person trying to build a text analysis tool. This is the type of thing we may do as database pros, but we wouldn’t have time to service every request for this assistance. There is a mixed bag of success in the piece, and a recognition that software developers have skills and knowledge that AI tools can’t necessarily duplicate in the hands of a non-pro.

However, that’s where I think software engineers and database professionals have to learn to leverage AI tools to become more efficient, prove their worth, and, honestly, get more done without working longer hours. It’s also a place where you might guide users in producing some useful, but less mission critical software for themselves with AI. That might lower the number of requests I get.

To me, that’s the direction I want to go with AI. More productive, less stress, and the same (or fewer) hours.

What do you think AI can do for you? Let us know today.

Steve Jones

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