Coding with Agentic GenAI Tools: A Senior Software Developer's Workflow

Invited by the University of Victoria’s Digital Scholarship Commons, I presented a live, hands-on session exploring how senior developers actually use agentic AI coding tools in their day-to-day workflow.

What I Covered

The session centered on a live demonstration of Claude Code — Anthropic’s agentic coding CLI — adding real functionality to a web application in real-time. Rather than slides and theory, the audience watched an end-to-end feature go from planning to shipped code using AI-assisted development.

Key Topics

• Agentic AI in practice: How tools like Claude Code differ from autocomplete-style assistants — they plan, execute multi-step tasks, and operate across entire codebases.
• End-to-end feature development: Walking through the full cycle: requirements → planning → implementation → testing → documentation, with AI handling the heavy lifting under developer supervision.
• Automated documentation generation: Demonstrating how agentic tools can generate and maintain documentation as a natural byproduct of the development process.
• Best practices and guardrails: When these tools shine, when they fail, and why coding experience is essential to use them safely. AI doesn’t replace judgment — it amplifies it.
• Tool comparison: A practical comparison of Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and Cursor — what each does well, where they fall short, and how to choose the right tool for the job.

Q&A Highlights

The session wrapped with an open Q&A where attendees asked about adoption strategies, the learning curve for agentic tools, and how these tools change the skills developers need going forward.

About the Event

This talk was organized by Rich McCue at the Digital Scholarship Commons at the University of Victoria. The session was open to UVic students, faculty, and staff, delivered virtually over Zoom.