AI for Programmers

A 2-5 Day Hands-On Workshop

Bruce Eckel and Cody Bontecou

Daily schedule: 9AM - 1PM 3 sessions/day: 20min lecture + 1 hour exercise
Monday
Day 1
Foundations
Tuesday
Day 2
Frameworks & Constraints
Wednesday
Day 3
Workflow Integration
Thursday
Day 4
Patterns
Friday
Day 5
Applied Practice
9:00

10:20
Lesson 1
Foundations & Setup
Lesson 4
Working Within the Framework
Lesson 7
Code Review & Documentation
Lesson 10
AI-Assisted Refactoring
Modernizing legacy patterns
Lesson 13
When AI Fails + Security
Limits, verification & privacy
10:30

11:50
Lesson 2
Code Explanation & Learning
Lesson 5
Overconstraining the AI
When it helps, when it hurts
Lesson 8
LLMs in Your CI Pipeline
Lesson 11
API Integration & Pipelines
Scripting & chaining prompts
Lesson 14
Team Adoption Strategies
11:50

1:00
Lesson 3
Context Engineering
Getting consistent, quality output
Lesson 6
Generating Readable Code
Lesson 9
Prompt Libraries & Templates
Reusable patterns for teams
Lesson 12
Cross-Language & "Not My Stack"
Lesson 15
Internal Tool Sprint
Prototype a tool that solves a real problem

Meet Your Instructors

Bruce Eckel

Author & Consultant

Author of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++, Bruce has spent decades teaching programmers to think differently about code. He brings that same perspective to AI—helping developers build intuition rather than just following recipes.

Cody Bontecou

Developer & AI Practitioner

A hands-on developer who's been integrating AI into daily workflows since the early GPT days. Cody focuses on practical patterns that work—from prompt engineering to building custom AI-powered tools that actually ship.

Workshop Questions

Who is this workshop for?

It is designed for working programmers and engineering teams that want practical ways to use AI in existing development workflows, not a general introduction to programming.

How long is the workshop?

The curriculum can run for two to five days. The full schedule uses three sessions per day from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, with short lectures followed by hands-on exercises.

What does the course cover?

The 15 lessons cover foundations, framework constraints, review and documentation, refactoring, security and failure modes, context engineering, CI, APIs, team adoption, reusable prompts, and cross-language work.

What will participants build?

The applied sprint asks each participant to scope, build, and demonstrate a useful internal tool such as a deployment script, parser, generator, automation, or data transformer.

Who teaches the course?

Bruce Eckel, author and programming educator, teaches with Cody Bontecou, a developer focused on practical AI-assisted software workflows.

How do I ask about a workshop?

Email Bruce Eckel or Cody Bontecou with your team size, preferred duration, and the workflows you want to improve.