After exploring the foundations of coding and its impact in our daily lives in the first article, today we continue the analysis with an exclusive interview with Mike Pell, Envisioneer and Director at Microsoft Garage. Pell shares his vision for the future of coding, the integration of artificial intelligence, and how innovative tools like GitHub Copilot are transforming the software development landscape.
Microsoft Garage is a Microsoft initiative that fosters innovation and experimentation, offering developers, designers and researchers the freedom to explore ideas outside of traditional projects. “The Garage” is not just a physical space, but a true innovation lab where technology enthusiasts can bring cutting-edge solutions to life.The main goal is to encourage creativity and continuous learning, allowing employees to experiment without the pressure of getting a commercial product right away.In this dynamic environment, Mike Pell represents a key figure. “The word Envisioneer,” he explained, “is made up of two parts: Envisioning, which means imagining, looking into the future and thinking of interesting ideas, and Engineer, because I know enough about engineering to be able to bring these ideas to life very quickly.”
Being an Envisioneer, then, means combining creative vision with the technical skills needed to turn these ideas into tangible realities. This combination of imagination and engineering skills makes his or her role not only challenging, but deeply rewarding.Mike Pell and the Microsoft Garage team thus support many Microsoft customers in developing new ideas and implementing innovative projects. “It’s a really rare opportunity for me to be able to help them imagine new ideas and figure out how to implement them quickly,” Mike said.
La sede di Microsoft Garage
During our meeting, I asked Mike Pell what was the best way to approach artificial intelligence, especially for those who are new to it. Pell answered simply and clearly, “The best way to get started is just to get started.” He went on to explain, “I always tell people not to take courses or tutorials, but to open Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT or whatever AI they prefer and ask questions, as if they were asking them of a trusted friend or colleague.”
This hands-on approach, according to him, makes learning more natural and effective than more traditional, structured methods. “I think you can go a lot farther and learn a lot more just by having a normal conversation with AI, rather than trying to take a course and learn how to be a great prompt engineer from the beginning,” he said. “These are very valuable skills and it’s good to learn more about prompting, but the best way to start is to interact directly with these systems.”
According to Mike Pell, it is important to start experimenting with AI by asking simple questions, without worrying about immediately becoming an expert in creating perfect instructions. Prompt engineers, in fact, are professionals who know how to phrase questions in the best way to get accurate and useful answers from AI, but Pell advises not to overcomplicate life from the start.
For those who already have expertise in this area, however, Mike believes it is easy to stay up to date, despite the fact that it is an ever-changing field precisely because it is constantly in the spotlight. “Keeping up to date can be easy, just start following interesting people and groups that talk about artificial intelligence. AI is constantly in the spotlight, so it’s not hard to find new articles about what’s going on, but I also think it’s good to keep an eye on some of the leaders in the field to see what they’re talking about.”
Mike Pell believes that artificial intelligence has started a real revolution in the world of programming. “Well, as you and I have discussed, there has been a significant evolution from the old days, when to program you needed to have all the reference books for the programming language you were using in front of you, and it was hard to find examples.Then things changed: examples became much more accessible, and people started doing basic searches on the Web to find small code snippets or examples of working programs to test.Next, there was a sort of rise of online forums, where programmers could ask questions and get answers from other developers, becoming one of the most common ways to seek support.Then, with the evolution of search engines, such as Google and Bing, which began indexing all these conversations, it often became faster to do a search than to manually scan through all the forum content.Recently, the landscape has changed once again with the arrival of tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and other AI assistants. Now, as you program in your own development environment, you don’t just get code snippets or answers to questions, but active support and real-time assistance, whether it’s writing code or spotting bugs.It’s been a real revolution to move from the days when you needed physical manuals to the days when you can get such advanced assistance directly as you code.”
In addition, I asked Mike how, in his opinion, GitHub Copilot has positively affected project development at Microsoft. This tool is transforming the way we write code: it is not just an automated prompter, but a real assistant that speeds up development and reduces errors. Integrated into development environments such as Visual Studio Code, Copilot leverages advanced algorithms to understand the context of the work and propose targeted solutions, allowing developers to focus more on the creative and strategic aspects of their projects.
Delving deeper, Pell shared, “In coding, a lot of time is spent creating things from scratch. We all look for examples and try to use templates to start from, but what Copilot has done in GitHub is that it has made it possible to generate a bunch of code very quickly so we don’t have to do it manually. We were all used to searching for these examples and copying and pasting, whereas now GitHub Copilot can help us generate some directly.”
GitHub Copilot has significantly increased productivity within Microsoft. In the past, a large portion of time was spent searching for code examples or manually writing common solutions. With Copilot, blocks of code can be generated quickly that are then refined and integrated into projects, saving valuable time. However, he stressed the importance of human oversight: despite automation, human involvement is critical to ensure the safety and quality of the code produced.
In foto: Mike Pell
“You still need to check the generated code; you still need the human component in the loop. You still have to pay attention to what’s been done and make sure it’s right and does everything you expect, but there’s such a time savings in doing some of the basic things. Just like many other things we do with AI, being able to have such an immediate start and save so much time from the beginning is a huge advance.”
According to Pell, artificial intelligence is not a threat, but rather a tool to enhance one’s capabilities. AI can automate boring and repetitive tasks, allowing us to focus on creativity, which always remains an indispensable element in our work. This positive approach encourages programmers to harness the potential of AI to expand their skills and achieve new professional goals.
“Artificial intelligence will help automate some very tedious tasks, but the part that will never disappear is creativity. That’s the key.So remember that if you’re going into fields like data science or computer science, or a field where you feel AI might affect your work, don’t look at it as a threat, look at it as a way to enhance your capabilities.To get new ‘superpowers’ that you might never have achieved because it wasn’t an area you were interested in or weren’t very good at. And now you have a fantastic, trusted co-pilot to accompany you and help you do all these new things.It’s a very exciting time.”
Looking ahead, Mike Pell is incredibly optimistic about the prospects for coding and artificial intelligence. “These are really exciting times we are living in. In all the time I’ve worked in the computer industry we’ve never had so many innovations at once. It seems like every day there are new advances that we weren’t sure would ever happen. And now they are almost a given, we almost expect the impossible to become a reality. So I like the fact that there is so much innovation, so much experimentation and so much progress in such a short period of time. It’s going to be very exciting to see what happens, and you probably can’t even imagine how far it will go.”
Pell predicts increasing collaboration between developers and AI tools will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible, opening up new opportunities and radically transforming the way we live and work.
The interview with Mike Pell reinforces what was discussed in the first article: coding is not a passing fad, but a fundamental skill that is constantly evolving thanks to technological innovation.For readers of Coding Space, the message is clear: investing in learning coding and adopting new AI technologies is a sure path to a professional future full of opportunity and innovation. Mike Pell reminds us that despite the challenges, human creativity and ingenuity will always remain at the heart of technological evolution.
Many thanks to Mike Pell for sharing his time, experience, and vision with us. His perspective offers valuable insights on how to address challenges and exploit opportunities in the era of artificial intelligence and advanced coding. His testimony is an inspiring example of how the combination of vision, engineering, and openness to innovation can lead the technology sector into a promising future full of possibilities.
The article The future of technology: interview with Mike Pell of Microsoft Garage comes from TheNewyorker.
