Agentic Development Is Forcing Us to Become Better Engineers with Jon Galloway

In this episode, I sat down with Jon Galloway to talk about what agentic development actually looks like in practice inside Microsoft and out in the real world. We explored how AI-assisted software development is changing fast, why prompt-only workflows are maturing into more disciplined engineering practices, and why the best results come from balancing LLMs with deterministic code, scripts, tests, and automation. A big theme throughout our conversation was that AI is pushing teams to get better at the fundamentals many of us have always known we should do more consistently: clearer specs, better documentation, stronger unit tests, better reviews, and more intentional architecture. We also got into practical tooling, including GitHub Copilot, Copilot CLI, VS Code, Visual Studio, Squad-style multi-agent workflows, MCP servers, and where these tools fit for developers versus non-technical users. We zoomed out to compare today’s AI shift with earlier platform waves like cloud and mobile, and closed with grounded advice for developers, enterprises, and everyday users: start small, make it fun, work iteratively, and treat AI like a collaborator that still needs direction, guardrails, and quality checks. Jon Galloway: Jon Galloway | LinkedIn .NET: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/ .NET Rocks!: https://www.dotnetrocks.com/ Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ James Montemagno: https://montemagno.com/ GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot GitHub Copilot CLI: https://github.com/features/copilot/cli Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/ Visual Studio: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/ Squad: https://github.com/bradygaster/squad Brady Gaster: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/author/bradyg/ GitHub Actions: https://github.com/features/actions Model Context Protocol (MCP): https://modelcontextprotocol.io/ Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/ Microsoft 365 Copilot: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot Microsoft Foundry: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ai-foundry/ Microsoft Agent Framework: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/agent-framework/overview/ SharePoint: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/platform/what-is-sharepoint ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/ PowerToys: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys Godot Engine: https://godotengine.org/ Meta Quest 3: https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-3/ Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.com/ Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/