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Zero To Mastery

Understand AI-Assisted Software Development: Become a 10x Developer

via Zero To Mastery Path

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Overview

Learn to think like a Software Developer while using AI to exponentially increase your effectiveness and efficiency as a developer. Build real knowledge and use strategic workflows to plan, generate, review and improve production-ready code.
  • The proper mental model to level-up your Software Development skills in the AI Age
  • Plan software features with AI assistance and guide AI through structured implementation workflows
  • Build and author reusable Agent Skills with engineered context for more efficient work
  • Review and correct AI-generated code while avoiding dependency, security, and quality pitfalls

Syllabus

  •   Section 0: Introduction
    • Introduction
    • Setup: You and Your LLM
    • Exercise: Meet Your Classmates and Instructor
    • Understanding Your Video Player
    • Set Your Learning Streak Goal
    • Course Resources
  •   Section 1: A Proper Mental Model of LLMs
    • Introduction
    • LLMs and Grammar
    • Conceptual Aside: Vectors
    • Attention and Attending
    • Conceptual Aside: Determinism vs. Non-Determinism
    • Determinism and the Digital Age
    • Conceptual Aside: Programming Language Grammar
    • Prediction and Statistics
    • Confabulation and Unreliability
    • Conceptual Aside: Reasoning Models
    • Conceptual Aside: Agents
    • Conversation and the Dangers of Anthropomorphization
    • Let's Have Some Fun (+ More Resources)
  •   Section 2: Context "Engineering" and Management
    • Introduction
    • Pattern Matching and Navigating the Embedding Space
    • Is Context "Engineering" Engineering?
    • Project Context
    • Technical Context
    • Context Refresh and Drift
    • Immediate Context
    • Task Context
    • Clean Human Code
    • Agents and Context
    • Unlimited Updates
  •   Section 3: Prompt "Engineering"
    • Introduction
    • The Anatomy of an Effective Prompt
    • Task Decomposition
    • Roles and Personas
    • Specificity and Constraints
    • Examples of Expected Behavior
    • Session Context
    • Course Check-In
  •   Section 4: Planning Process
    • Introduction
    • Markdown
    • Brainstorming
    • Business Rules and Constraints
    • Documentation
    • Implementation Planning
    • Implementation Planning Checklist
    • Implement a New Life System
  •   Section 5: Agent Skills
    • The Context Problem
    • Conceptual Aside: Context Window
    • The Lighthouse Model of LLMs
    • Context Window Size
    • Conceptual Aside: System Prompt
    • Context Rot
    • Skills
    • Conceptual Aside: Markdown
    • The Anatomy of a Skill
    • Frontmatter
    • Instructions
    • Scripts
    • Assets
    • How Agents Integrate Skills
    • Conceptual Aside: Progressive Disclosure
    • Discover the Skills on the Filesystem
    • Load the Metadata
    • Match Tasks to Skills
    • Activate the Skill
    • Execute and Access
    • Skills in Action
    • Skill Authoring
    • Authoring the Metadata
    • Good Context
    • Domain Expertise
    • New Capabilities
    • Good Context: An Open Source Education
    • Repeatable Workflows
    • Interoperability
    • Finding Skills
    • Skill Project
    • Create a Skill
  •   Section 6: Implementation
    • Introduction
    • Task Decomposition
    • Rules
    • Code Constraints (Types, Tests, and Patterns)
    • The Model Context Protocol
    • Agent Skills
    • Agent Orchestration
  •   Section 7: Integration
    • Introduction
    • Human-In-The-Loop
    • AI-Assisted Debugging
    • Iterative Refinement and Not Breaking What's Working
    • Team Collaboration: When AI is a Team Member
  •   Section 8: Verification and Quality Control
    • Established Patterns
    • Introduction
    • Explainability
    • Systems Integration
    • Edge Cases
    • Performance
  •   Section 9: The Pitfalls of AI, LLMs
    • Introduction
    • Hallucinations
    • The Limitations of AI Training Data
    • The Echo Chamber Effect
    • Cognitive Load
    • A Stranger to Your Codebase
    • Maintainability
    • Context Switching
    • Cognitive Laziness and Maintaining Your Skill
    • Losing the Joy of Coding
    • Don't Imitate, Understand!
    • Exercise: Imposter Syndrome
  •   Section 10: Practical Tooling in AI
    • Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) and Completions
    • Introduction
    • Conversations
    • Agents and Iteration
    • Hype
  •   Section 11: Capstone Project
    • Introduction
    • Planning
    • Your Turn: Planning
    • Implementation
    • Your Turn: Implementation
    • Integration
    • Your Turn: Integration
    • Quality Control
    • Your Turn: Quality Control
  •   Section 12: Where To Go From Here?
    • Conclusion
    • Thank You!
    • Review This Course!
    • Become An Alumni
    • Learning Guideline
    • ZTM Events Every Month
    • LinkedIn Endorsements

Taught by

Tony Alicea

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