October 29, 2025

How the Beer Driven Devs use AI

This week, Matt and Liam crack open a couple of their favourites and dive into how AI is changing the way we build, learn, and work.

The discussion starts with a quick aside on .NET MAUI’s comeback story before veering into a full-blown chat about AI: where it’s thriving, where it’s floundering, and what it means for developers today.

They cover:

🧠 Why AI is a great learning tool, but a lousy replacement for real expertise

👨‍💻 Why coding assistants excel at tasks you already understand

🔧 How AI speeds up boilerplate but still stumbles on real problem-solving

🎮 The humbling world of AI game art (spoiler: it’s not the tool, it’s the artist)

📸 A photographer’s analogy for promptcraft and technical mastery

🤖 The future of agentic AIs — co-pilots that red-team each other before handing work back to you

💼 Why developers won’t be replaced by AI, but will need to become better delegators

🏗️ How AI might reshape offshore work, and what “good management” looks like in a world of coding agents

🧩 The three-step mantra: make it work, make it right, make it fast

Along the way, Matt shows off his AI-assisted DIY handheld gaming PC project (which may or may not have exploded 💥), Liam reflects on using AI to co-write fiction, and both share candid takes on where AI genuinely helps versus where it just gets in the way.

The conversation wraps with a philosophical note: maybe AI won’t take our jobs, maybe it’ll just give us new ones we can’t yet imagine.

🍻 Tonight’s Drinks:

Matt – Lagavulin 16 🥃

Liam – Young Henry’s Newtowner 🍺

🔗 Tonight’s Links:

Data and Drams – Sarah Kenyon’s podcast

Scott Hanselman & Mark Russinovich on AI-assisted coding

CNC Dan (Dan McKenzie) YouTube Channel

V0 by Vercel

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Cheers! 🍻

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By Matt Goldman & Liam Elliott