The Fifth Elephant
The Fifth Elephant

The Fifth Elephant Pune edition

Call for Proposals

All submissions

Nithya Natarajan

@nithyanatarajan

Krishnaswamy Subramanian

@jskswamy

Stop Generating, Start Thinking: A Clarity-First Approach to AI in SDLC

Submitted Jan 10, 2026

Indicate the track in which your submission fits: Track 1 AI in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Type of submission: Hands-on workshop (1.5 hrs to 3 hrs)

Abstract

Most developers have adopted AI as a code generation tool - prompt, copy, paste, ship. But this creates a hidden problem: code you can’t debug, extend, or explain. When something breaks, you’re back to prompting again because you never understood it in the first place. This dependency trap is the unspoken cost of treating AI as a code vending machine.

This hands-on workshop challenges the default way developers use AI. Through live coding and guided exercises, participants will experience what it means to build code they actually own - not just code they received. We’ll work through a real problem together, and by the end, you’ll walk away with a practical, repeatable workflow that you can apply immediately to your own projects. Less lecture, more doing - real code, real clarity.

Takeaways

  1. A practical workflow - A repeatable approach you can apply immediately to your own AI-assisted development projects.
  2. A shift in perspective - A new lens on what makes a developer effective in the age of AI.

Audience

This session is for

  1. Developers who already use AI tools and want to get more out of them
  2. Anyone who thinks AI might replace them

About Me

I’m a developer who enjoys hard problems - especially the ones that need unraveling before solving. In my 13+ years at Thoughtworks, I’ve worked across the stack - backend, frontend, platform infrastructure - picking up whatever the problem needed. Navigating different languages, frameworks, and domains has taught me that clarity of thought matters more than the technology itself.

What I enjoy most is taking something ambiguous and shaping it into something that works. Lately, I’ve been exploring how AI changes the way we write code - not just faster, but differently. This workshop comes from that exploration.

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