AI Native Development principles and practices

In this forward-looking session, Patrick Debois — often credited as one of the founders of the DevOps movement — explores what it means to build software in an AI-native world. Drawing from his experience as Principal Product Engineer at Humans & Code, Patrick reframes the conversation around AI in software delivery: this isn’t about simply adding AI to your workflow, it’s about re-architecting how we build, review, and collaborate.

Using the same lens that defined the cloud-native revolution, he shows how teams must now adapt their tooling, processes, and mindset to work effectively with AI agents. Developers are moving from producers to managers, reviewing and guiding what AI generates. This shift introduces new cognitive challenges, demanding better visualizations, adaptive IDEs, and what Patrick calls moldable development environments.

🔹 Key Topics:

What “AI-native” really means (and how it parallels the cloud-native shift)

Developers evolving from code producers to code managers

Rethinking code review for large volumes of AI-generated output

The rise of moldable, context-aware development environments

Human–AI collaboration as the next stage of software engineering