The Qrew is excited to bring voices from our Community into our blog. As both a current customer and former Quickbase staff member, Wes McAda is a long-time member of The Quickbase Qrew. If you have an interesting take or perspective on what's taking place in Tech today, and you are interested in writing a blog like the one below, please email Ben Simon at bsimon@quickbase.com.
There are many AI tools and uses to consider nowadays. There is talk about it making many jobs, from artists to software developers, redundant. As a professional developer and an occasional artist, I have used AI for both.
For example, my goofy, dad-joke loving side gets a kick out of this image:
As a Florida State alum and football fan, and lover of both artiodactyls and beer, just “Yay!”. It is an FSU Efes Ewe, but I capriciously digress. I guess I could have paid an artist to render this, but I probably would not have spent the money on it. AI made this silliness accessible.
AI also makes higher value work easier.
When it comes to software development, I use AI to accelerate front end development work. With proper prompting, I can get code using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that helps me go much quicker. I do not do a ton of front end work, but when I do, I rarely start from scratch anymore. The same goes for my Python scripts, which I sometimes use to get more out of the Quickbase API. More often than not, I use AI to get started. AI can also help provide alternative approaches for jinja templates that one may use in Quickbase Pipelines or formulas for Excel, SQL queries, or Quickbase formula fields. There are issues with the outputs, so users beware that you still need to know a thing or two about the subject matter and your context. One also needs to be careful providing inputs that may compromise confidentiality, security, or privacy. The point is that AI enables productivity so that I can focus on impact.
AI also helps me in ways that other services like Mockaroo or Canva might; I can get downloadable mock data per my specifications or color palettes in hex codes for my colorblind development work. AI helps avoid a tedious task or facilitates my handicap in this case.
One area in which there is professional/personal crossover with AI is writing. Anyone who has coded or developed a Quickbase app is familiar with the struggle of figuring out what to name variables or attributes. However, when writing emails or even something creative like one of my recent haikus, AI helps me with words. AI does not write for me; it helps me write better.
The AI tools that I generally use are Copilot and ChatGPT. I have also created agents in Boomi, but I am in early stages on how to incorporate a trained agent in a workflow yet. I am looking forward to Quickbase’s forthcoming MCP server offering with great anticipation! My expectation is that enterprises will profit greatly from AI agents when we gain greater confidence in AI’s security and can leverage its processing power on premises.
But what interests me most about AI today is how other devs like me are using it. What are some ways others in The Qrew are using AI? Share below!
