2023.05.01 - The future of programming

Title: 2023.05.01 – The Future of Programming

No‑Code in 2023 & Ten Things About AI & Transformers & Brutalist Websites & 仁者无敌 (the benevolent are invincible)

This Week’s Highlights

The future of programming: Research at CHI 2023 https://austinhenley.com/blog/futureofprogramming2023.html
The prestigious CHI conference is happening this week, and I’m jealous I can’t be there. Instead I’m digging through the proceedings and reading every paper that touches on programming—many of which involve AI. Here are a few that stood out. Related: How AI coding companions will change the way developers work.

30th anniversary of licensing the Web for general use and at no cost https://www.w3.org/blog/2023/04/30th-anniversary-of-licensing-the-web-for-general-use-and-at-no-cost/
Today marks 30 years since the World Wide Web was released into the public domain, free for everyone, on 30 April 1993 by CERN. This quiet act, championed by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners‑Lee, has had consequences far beyond what anyone imagined: a free Web has reshaped our lives. Related: Internet in a Box.

Brutalist Websites https://brutalistwebsites.com/
With its rugged look and disregard for comfort or ease, Brutalism can be read as a younger generation’s reaction against today’s light, optimistic, and frivolous web design.

Why No‑Code in 2023: Addressing the Top 7 Concerns https://research.aimultiple.com/why-no-code/
This article tackles the worries business leaders have about no‑code solutions, aiming to remove barriers to flexibility and resilience.

A Gentle Introduction to Islands https://deno.com/blog/intro-to-islands
These “just‑right” sites are a headache for frameworks: you can’t statically generate them, yet bundling an entire framework for a single image‑carousel button is overkill. What can we do? Give them islands.

Deep Reads

Ten Things About AI https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2023/04/27/ai-questions/
The question that virtually the entire tech industry—and the world—has been wrestling with is: what happens next? With all due respect to ChatGPT and its peers (who would likely answer confidently), the question isn’t answerable yet. Still, it helps to look at the current generation of AI through smaller questions to gauge its possibilities and portents. There are many more, but here are ten areas worth exploring. Related:

• Talk: The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
• The future of generative AI is niche, not generalized
• AI For Hardware Design with Copilot
• New ways to manage your data in ChatGPT
• How can we build human values into AI?

Transformers from Scratch https://e2eml.school/transformers.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35697627
Transformers were introduced in a 2017 paper as a tool for sequence transduction—converting one sequence of symbols to another (e.g., English → German translation). They’ve also been adapted for sequence completion—given a prompt, continue in the same style. Transformers have quickly become indispensable for research and product development in natural‑language processing. Related:

• The Illustrated Transformer
• 【原创】理解ChatGPT之剖析Transformer内核

A Decade‑Long Architecture Refactor for Multi‑Platform Unity: QQ Adopted Electron https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ubwXiY-FWVOMv0qA4bsvUQ
Based on the QQ NT architecture, this is QQ’s first unified codebase for Windows, macOS, and Linux. One codebase now runs on all three platforms, delivering identical appearance, interaction, and performance, which improves the user experience.

Rebuilding a Featured News Section with Modern CSS: Vox News https://ishadeed.com/article/rebuild-featured-news-modern-css/
In this article I rethink how to build Vox.com’s featured‑news section and test whether modern CSS helps. Do we need container queries? Fluid sizing? That’s the goal—thinking aloud while building a seemingly simple layout.

CLI Tricks Every Developer Should Know https://github.blog/2023-04-26-cli-tricks-every-developer-should-know/
Learn tips, tricks, and tools for mastering the command line from GitHub’s own developers.

The State of Serverless GPUs https://www.inferless.com/serverless-gpu-market
A deep dive into latency, variability, billing models, user experience, and advanced capabilities—offering comprehensive findings and guidance for choosing the ideal serverless GPU solution.

Some Mistakes I Made as a New Manager https://www.benkuhn.net/newmgr/
I struggled unusually hard to become a manager, flopping three times before it stuck, mostly because I kept making the same errors. Since then I’ve helped grow my team and mentored others into management, seeing many similar rough patches. Here’s a curated selection of my biggest blunders and the strategies that helped me mitigate them.

If Someone’s Having to Read Your Docs, It’s Not “Simple” https://justsimply.dev/
When I write technical docs I keep slipping the word “just” in, despite my strong feelings about it. I think it’s because I’m eager to share my enlightenment. It’s exciting that my code might help others, and I want to convey that enthusiasm. A light edit lets you keep the excitement, drop the condescending tone, and improve clarity.

Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly (review) https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/agile_good_hype_ugly.html
An Agile mindset is portrayed as essential for modern software development, and anyone who thinks differently is said to be doomed—according to fans. Critics are appalled by such zeal, and heated debates often follow, especially when people with little practical experience join in.

Fresh Finds

Fly.io ❤️ JS – Fly.io is a great place to run full‑stack applications.
Editable: an extensible rich‑text editor framework that focuses on stability, controllability, and performance
Announcing Babylon.js 6.0 – a powerful, beautiful, simple, and open game‑engine and rendering library

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.