Zack Proser

Tackle Generative AI with confidence

The Generative AI bootcamp is the fastest way to get up to speed with the basics, opportunities and challenges of Generative AI, even if you're not technical.

Gen AI

What you will learn

When you are finished with this course, you will understand:

Generative AI

You will be able to speak intelligently about Generative AI, and its many opportunities and challenges

Large Language Models (LLMs)

You will be able to understand and discusss Large Language Models and the role they play in Generative AI

Developer-facing tools

You will understand how Generative AI is appearing in developer-facing tools and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)

Simple but powerful explanations

Not technical? No problem.

I have gone out of my way to ensure this course is accessible even to non-technical folks, using simple language and metaphors across 18+ pages of high-quality content.

I have also linked off to several of my personal long-running chats with ChatGPT4, so that you can see how a Staff developer interacts with GenAI while coding.

Generative AI bootcampGenerative AI bootcamp
Hands-on information
I code for work and for fun nearly every single day. I know which tools are working and which are struggling to find product market fit.
Read my ChatGPT4 chats
In this course, I share several long-running chats I have had with ChatGPT, demonstrating how a Staff developer interfaces with AI for development tasks
Key insights explained simply
You do not need a technical background to benefit from this course. It is designed to be clear even if you are not in a technical role.
Critical opportunities
What I pay for now, what I am still looking for, and what I would pay for in the future.
Serious challenges
GenAI is not a silver bullet and it comes with plenty of challenges. I have experienced all of these directly in the course of building AI apps and pipelines
Insight from an experienced coder
I have been a full-stack open-source developer since 2012, and have worked across the stack doing frontend, backend and infrastructure / cloud development

Information-dense

I have packed the Generative AI bootcamp course with the following types of information:

💡Practical Insights: Things I have figured out from first-hand experience

Reading high-level reports from analysts is helpful, but there is no substitute for first-hand experience. I experiment with and code alongside AI-assisted developer tools each and every day. I'm always experimenting with new workflows and entrants. Expect to find things I have learned the hard way from hands-on experience in Practical Insights.

🔍Focus: The main idea in the current section

To help you understand the key ideas more quickly, I call them out in advance and reinforce them throughout. You'll find these focus widgets throughout, keeping you on track.

⛏️Go Deeper: Links to further reading, videos, and deployed examples

In my various travels and many research experiments, I come across a great deal of primary sources and excellent in-depth content. Wherever there's an option to take a detour and learn more, I'll call out the links in these Go Deeper sections.

🧞Metaphor: Understand complex concepts more quickly with helpful metaphors

In order to facillitate your learning, I include helpful metaphors to demystify complex-sounding concepts.

Introducing your instructor

I eat, sleep and breathe code.

Hi, I'm Zachary, a Staff Developer Advocate at Pinecone.io. Pinecone offers the most performant cloud-native vector database that provides long-term memory for AI applications.

My full title at Pinecone is Staff Developer Advocate (open-source). I build AI applications and pipelines in public to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Pinecone's vector database.

I also maintain our many open-source examples such as Jupyter Notebooks and TypeScript / Next.js applications, which demonstrate machine learning and AI techniques such as semantic search and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).

Zachary Proser
Zachary Proser
Me speaking at Andreesen Horowitz about the distributed semantic search system I built on AWS using Infrastructure as Code.

My track record

Trustworthy information from someone who knows what they are doing

I have been a full-stack open-source developer since 2012. I have built everything from command line tools to web applications, e-commerce sites, and distributed systems.

Along the way, I have specialized in DevOps, Infrastructure as Code and application development and have worked on core teams at Silicon Valley startups such as Cloudflare, Proofpoint, Gruntwork, and Pinecone.

My professional experience

  1. Company
    Pinecone.io
    Role
    Staff Developer Advocate
    Date
  2. Company
    Gruntwork.io
    Role
    Tech Lead
    Date
  3. Company
    Cloudflare
    Role
    Senior Software Engineer
    Date
  4. Company
    Cloudmark
    Role
    Software Engineer
    Date
  5. Company
    BrightContext
    Role
    Software Engineer
    Date
Source repositories
101
Languages used
7+
Years of development experience
12
Pages of high-quality content
18+


Get your piece of the Generative AI boom today.

There are two types of people in AI:

  1. 1. The informed
  2. 2. The left-behind