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Engineer Explains: Prompts Are a Programming Language

ShiftMag

Code assistants and generative AI are changing the game for writing code.



Matheus Guimares, Senior Developer Advocate at AWS, explains how to use prompt engineering and agentic workflows to make your job as a software engineer easier.

He says prompts may be written in natural language, such as English, but software developers should consider them as part of a programming language used to interact with generative AI.

This video is a part of ShiftMag’s video series, Engineer Explains.

We’ve asked experienced engineers to share how they would explain some basic and some less basic tech terminology to different tech job titles or at three levels of experience — from junior developer to CTO.

More videos from the Engineer Explains series:

AI Engineering

Test Driven Development

Refactoring Legacy Code

Agile Software Development

Career Tips for Tough Times ft. ‪Pragmatic Engineer‬

OpenTelemetry and Observability 2.0

Feature Flags Explained

JAMstack Explained

Observability Explained

Large Language Models Explained

DevOps Explained

DevRel Explained

Network APIs Explained

Verifiable Credential Explained

Mob Programming Explained

Machine Learning Explained

RUST Explained

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