Webinar – Beyond AI Coding
About Course
The Systems Thinking Skills Developers Need Next
AI can write code now. The real question is whether we can still understand, test, change, and extend what we are building.
This session is for developers, technical leaders, and teams who sense that AI coding is only the beginning.
You will learn how to move from building features with AI to composing coherent, testable, changeable systems.
My goal is not to give you a bag of tricks. My goal is to help you see differently.
AI changes everything, but maybe not in the way most people think.
The question is no longer, “Can we get AI to produce working code?” Increasingly, the answer is yes. The deeper question is: can we still understand what we are building?
Can we change it? Can we test it? Can we extend it without fear? Can we preserve the learning embedded in our systems instead of casually regenerating it away?
I believe this is the central challenge for developers in the age of AI.
We have been here before. Agile and DevOps both began with humane, powerful ideas: sustainable pace, technical excellence, fast feedback, collaboration, shared responsibility, and continuous learning. But too many organizations turned those ideas into mechanisms for squeezing more work out of developers. The result has cost our industry dearly: brittle systems, burned-out teams, and mountains of legacy code.
AI gives us another chance. Maybe our last best chance to reclaim craft in software development.
Not because AI will replace the need for craft, but because it can finally give us the leverage to practice craft at a higher level. AI can help us move faster, but speed alone is not the goal. If we use AI only to produce more features, we will accelerate the creation of legacy code. If we use it to deepen understanding, improve feedback, and compose better systems, we may reclaim what software development was always meant to be.
Software is more than engineering. It is a form of expression. It is how we shape ideas into living systems.
In this webinar, we will explore the shift from building features to composing systems with AI.
We will look at two ways of seeing software:
Mechanism asks: what steps make this work?
Microcosm asks: what world are we modeling, and how does it behave?
Both matter. Mechanism gets us moving. Models help us understand. But if we stop when the mechanism works, we miss the deeper opportunity. Working code is not enough. Code must be organized in a way that makes future change affordable.
For managers, the essential question is:
What will the next meaningful change cost?
For developers, the north star is testability:
How straightforward is it to verify this behavior?
That one question reveals a great deal. If behavior is hard to test, it is usually hard to understand. If it is hard to understand, it is hard to change. If it is hard to change, the system will become expensive, fragile, and frustrating no matter how quickly we generated the first version.
We will also explore why legacy code has value. It is not just old code. It embodies learning: customer discoveries, edge cases, business rules, operational knowledge, and hard-won judgment. When we treat existing systems as disposable text, we risk throwing away the organization’s secret sauce.
AI will give us superpowers. We cannot yet imagine the full extent of what that will mean, just as early personal computer users could not imagine today’s world from recipe files and spreadsheets. The possibilities are enormous, and many of the most important ones have not revealed themselves yet.
We are at the beginning of something very big.
The question is whether developers will shrink into prompt operators or grow into systems thinkers.
About the Instructor
David Scott Bernstein is a software developer, author, trainer, and founder of The Passionate Programmer and To Be Agile. He has trained more than 10,000 professional developers in Extreme Programming, test-first development, domain modeling, design patterns, and the practices that make software easier to understand and change.
David is the author of Beyond Legacy Code and co-author of Prompt Engineering for Everyone with ChatGPT. His current work explores how developers can collaborate with AI while preserving craft, agency, and the human judgment required to build meaningful systems.
About AI Collaboration Labs
AI Collaboration Labs are experiential learning sessions where professionals work directly with AI and each other to explore new ways of thinking, creating, and collaborating.
These Labs are not about memorizing prompts or chasing tools. They are designed to help people develop judgment, confidence, and practical mental models for working effectively with AI in real-world professional contexts.
Next Steps
Join this session if you want to move beyond AI coding tricks and begin developing the systems thinking skills that will matter most next.
AI can help us build faster. The opportunity is to understand more deeply, compose more thoughtfully, and expand what is possible.
This webinar is available for private sessions. Contact me for details.