AI Tooling in Software Development: Smarter Prompts for Smarter Code

For our May Software Crafters Leeds Meetup, Codurance is excited to collaborate with Lhasa for an interactive session exploring the real impact of AI tooling in software development.

Join us at Lhasa’s office in Granary Wharf House, Leeds, for an evening of hands-on challenges, insightful discussions, and networking.

We’ll explore a topic that’s becoming increasingly central to modern software engineering: Prompt Engineering, when working with AI assisted development tools.

As AI becomes more integrated into our workflows, from code generation and refactoring to test creation and documentation, knowing how to communicate with these tools can be the difference between a helpful assistant and a confusing mess.

The Challenge
You'll work as part of a team and tackle a coding challenge that will be introduced at the event. We will ensure that each group contains at least one person who has an AI assisted development tool installed on their device.

During the event, you’ll be encouraged to assess what makes a good prompt and we will share some practical techniques to get more out of tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor and others.

Afterwards, we will bring the groups back together and assess the results, reflecting on the importance and impact of using good quality, well formatted prompts. Each group will be encouraged to share their experiences at the end of the exercise, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to take away something tangible and useful.

Agenda
5:30 – 5:50 PM | Arrival, drinks, and food
5:50 – 6:00 PM | Welcome and introductions by Codurance and Lhasa
6:00 – 7:30 PM | Practical challenge
7:30 – 8:00 PM | Wrap-up and reflections

Who Should Attend
This meetup is open to developers, engineers, and tech professionals across all industries, whether in the private or public sector, who are curious about AI’s role in software quality and development practices.

Facilitators
Tech leaders from Codurance and Lhasa will guide the session, offering their expertise and insights along the way.

Equipment
Please bring your laptop along with you, and if possible, try to ensure you have installed an AI assisted tool such as Github Copilot, Cursor, JetBrains AI etc.

The specific tool isn't too important and if you don't manage to do this, that's fine as not everyone will be coding using an AI Tool