Welcome to the Cyber Traps podcast.
We are once again here filming live at or recording, live at the cyber or the Inch 360 cybersecurity conference here in beautiful Spokane Washington.
Beautiful day on Gonzaga University's campus.
And today we have Pete with us.
Pete why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.
Yeah, sure.
My name's Pete Tucker.
I I'm a developer for Drip seven.
I've been writing, working for them for I think, five years now.
Right.
helping them put together their system.
And then I'm also, I teach computer science at Whitworth University just up north from Gonzaga.
Yeah.
Excellent.
So, tell us a little bit about what you've been doing with Drip seven.
'cause the idea of it is pretty cool.
Yeah.
My role has been obviously writing the code and so, we've been out trying to get clients.
I've met with a few clients.
I've helped them set up so we could do SSO through saml.
We've set up SCIM so we could do user provisioning.
That's been a lot of my role is that kind of coordinating with users and then obviously fixing bugs as they come and adding new features as they come up.
So, pretty much a little bit of everything.
In the Cub base.
That's what happens when you're working with a startup that is, is figuring things out and figuring out the right customers.
So, talk to me about how you see AI with your day-to-day work and with your students at Whitworth.
Especially since AI is supposed to be an amazing coder.
Yeah, this is a conversation we have often students for sure.
Whether they should use it, how they should use it.
Right now I'm teaching our first semester intro to computer science course, so foundational basic c plus.
Hello World.
We just finished last week and I'm also teaching a prep course for our senior capstone.
So I've got the range first year all the way through fourth year, and I got a junior level class in the middle of all that.
And so for when it comes to AI with my students a lot of the conversations we're having really are based on the course that I'm teaching,
right?
So for the intro course, I really gotta back 'em all and say, no, don't use it at all.
You have to learn the foundational skills.
have to stay away from it.
And we really work hard at that.
If we get to more the senior level, then.
They're working on real projects and so they have the foundational skills.
Now it's a matter of putting together the larger architecture.
And so AI can come alongside that a little bit better.
One thing I did a couple of times last year, I dunno if this is interesting y'all or not, but, I taught our database class a couple of times last and they do a final project.
They do, they, they model the data, then they write the code to interact with the data and build an interface for that.
At the end of that, for after, after they presented their work at the final exam day, I said, for 10 bonus points or whatever have AI come up with a data model for you and then AI's data model to the one you came up with.
And the really cool thing about that was students were able to see because they were.
Sort of experts in what they did.
They were able to see that AI did some things that they hadn't thought of, but there was a lot of things the AI did that wasn't good at all, that wasn't gonna solve the problem.
And that was the thing I wanted them to see, right?
Is that, yeah, ai, if you're naive, if you're just coming into it blind, AI is pretty cool 'cause it does some things you never would've thought of.
Yeah.
if you spend the time on it on your own and you really dig into it.
On your own and do the deep work then you realize, oh, this isn't that great, oh, there were some things that I would, I'm glad I thought of that the AI didn't.
/ So a couple cool things for me is that I'm certainly not a coder myself.
But I do have a Jekyll website and so I have.
Like, I've created that myself.
And 10 years ago I tried to do this and I couldn't figure it out, and I gave up.
And then when AI became accessible to everybody, then I used that to help me figure it out.
And I got up and running and it's now live and it's working and it's working well for me.
And what's interesting is that I, as I've used it to troubleshoot and find like fix bugs and things like that.
Sometimes I can tell when it gets caught in a loop and it just goes through and like, says, okay, try this, and this, and it.
None of those things work because it's wrong from the beginning.
And my problem is I don't know what's actually wrong.
And that's where having that foundation is so important and it's really dangerous to use it for something that you don't know well enough to be able to say, this is where it's wrong.
Whereas in other areas, like with writing.
I can use it for writing and I can, I know that everything I write is better than what it does because I understand.
I wouldn't write like that.
No, that's a really good analogy, isn't it?
You're already experienced at writing, you can see the problems and you can fix what you need to fix.
And if you're just getting this big, massive machine and it looks like a bunch of gibberish, it's awful hard to figure out where it's wrong.
a good point.
Yeah.
It's really fascinating.
So I like your approach of.
Of not, is issuing it completely, but also like making sure the beginners have that basic understanding of the foundation.
Yeah.
And then how do you use it in your day-to-day work?
Is, do you
yeah, of course.
Right.
It's there, it's a like else.
It's like I, yeah, I use a compiler, of course I
Yeah, I use it, with Gyp seven for sure.
When I was trying to manage and figure out SCIM and SSO, for example, right?
I was as a lot of documentation that I gotta dig
through just to work and some of the stuff I knew and some of the stuff I didn't know and, aI was really good at coming alongside of me and saying, okay, here's the structure you're about to get when they make, when you make your call, here's the structure that's gonna come back after that call.
And it helped me figure out how to get there For sure.
Yeah.
And that's one of the things that, that I find so amazing, especially tackling something new with new documentation.
Being able to load that in and say, alright, I need to do this very specific thing.
And and then it can go find it for you basically and say, here's how you would implement that.
That kind of stuff is really remarkable.
And so time saving and energy saving, because while you may learn some other things through that process of figuring that out on your own, you don't always need to learn those things to accomplish the things you're trying to do.
yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
If you just need that one little piece out huge document, AI is great, but if you need the context around it, it can find it.
But you're gonna miss some things don't go do the harder work.
So you're right.
You've gotta learn how to balance that.
Yeah.
How do you make that decision yourself on whether to do the short and easy, fast route, or do the thing that takes longer, but helps you have a better understanding?
I think in the ideal, and I don't always do this, I don't wanna sound like
Yeah.
kind of, that kind of good, but in the ideal, I'll find the thing I need quickly and start to work with it.
But then as I'm working with it, then I've gotta start branching out and learn working, reading around that and learning the context around it.
So a process rather than a decision.
Do I go deep or I just take the shortcut?
Yeah.
So it's like, you can't say specifically like, this is what I do every time, because sometimes I need to just get that one piece Other times.
I may realize that I need a little bit more and that's okay too.
Yeah.
And you know, getting back to my students at Whitworth too, right?
As I these are the decisions I need them to learn how to make.
can't tell them what the right decision is.
to experience it and say, yeah, I should have done it the harder way or wow, I should have just done it the easy way and moved on.
But though you have to learn how to do that.
That's something I can't just, here's the right answer.
Yeah.
That's so fascinating.
Okay.
Well, Pete, this has been awesome.
Thank you so much for taking the time and appreciate you coming to inch 360 this year.
Yeah,
fun.
I appreciate having me.
This was fun.
Yeah.
Good.