How to Develop Your AI Coding Skills with Azure Enablement Show (Part One)

Add AI Skills to Your Developer Toolbox 

In this new era of artificial intelligence (AI), the demand for skilled AI developers has never been greater. The Azure Enablement Show aims to empower you, the curious coder and innovative creator, by sharpening your skills in the vast domain of AI. Start your AI skilling journey—How to Develop your AI Coding Skills (Part One). 

The Azure Enablement Show brings together experts and enthusiasts to shed light on the myriad aspects of developing and refining AI coding skills. With a blend of discussions, tutorials, and real-world scenarios, the show demystifies the nuances of skilling for new Azure technologies that cover coding and generative AI in a bite-sized and engaging format. As part of this two-part series, Azure Skilling Expert, Natalie Mickey and I discuss why developing AI-enabled apps is a crucial skill for developers and share some educational resources to get you started, whether you’re new to AI development or looking to expand your knowledge into developing generative AI features for your Azure workloads. 

Benefits of Developing AI Coding Skills 

In today’s digital landscape, AI is everywhere, transforming the way we work, live, and interact. For developers, there are numerous benefits to learning how to use AI, especially when it comes to app development.  Skilling-up offers many benefits including: 

• Optimization: Knowledge of AI can streamline many processes, offering greater efficiency and innovative approaches to building and scaling apps. 
• New Opportunities: AI can enable data analysis, visualization, prediction, decision making, leaving a lot of room for creativity. 
• Competition: Developers who learn these crucial skills will have a competitive edge in the workforce. 

Get Started with the Fundamental Skilling Resources for AI Development

For those at the beginning of their AI journey, Microsoft covers core concepts and principles of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and how they’re implemented in Azure. It’s part of the preparation for the Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals certification, aimed at validating your knowledge of AI and Azure services together. This course is available for free on Microsoft Learn, our online learning platform, where you can go through interactive modules that include videos, quizzes, and hands-on experiences. 

Generative AI Skilling Resources 

A recent Azure Tech Community blog, "Take your generative AI skills to the next level with Azure," outlines several generative AI resources including our Generative AI for Beginners course. This is a 12-course learning series on GitHub will help get you up to speed. By going through this program, you can get started from the very beginning of generative AI and then deep dive into how to build and innovate your Azure-based Apps with generative AI.  

Where to Find These Skilling Resources? 

Microsoft offers a wide range of resources for people at the start of their AI journey and those who are more interested in AI skilling. Check out the AI Learning Hub on Microsoft Learn which includes links to different collections, learning paths, videos, hands-on challenges, and of course, announcements on our latest AI technology. 

Also, be sure to check out the next Azure Enablement Show episode, How to Develop your AI Coding Skills (Part Two), where we’ll explore the training resources available for developers on building AI-enabled apps.