Future of Coding Weekly 2025/04 Week 4
2025-04-28 09:41
๐๏ธ FoC 76: Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing ๐ฅ Wanix: The Spirit of Plan 9 in Wasm ๐ฅ What is PLUS times PLUS?
Our Work
๐ Figmata (Data โค๏ธ Figma) via Geert Roumen
Hey all,
I've built a plugin for Figma that allows designers to do more with data visualisation, inspired by the 'Drawing Dynamic Visualisations' but than building on top of the already existing experience and knowledge of designers in Figma. It is using the Figma API to adjust instances of components to represent types of data.
I made two versions for now, one that is build with Monaco to allow the designers to use text to couple data from JSON into a Figma Frame (which was originally a tool I needed myself) and one that is having UI where users can couple data to properties of the elements (which I'm happy to get feedback on this concept; and if there is cool examples in this space let me know).
If you want to read more on the process or want to check it out; see the Medium Article
๐๏ธ Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing via Ivan Reese
Future of Coding โข Episode 76
Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing
With special guest: Felienne Hermans
Hey, everyone? We've had this community for, what, like, 8 years now? We've shared a lot of great links, had lots of discussions. Surely most all of us know the name Turing, know about the Turing test. Heck, those Hollywood tastemakers put "Eggs" Benedict Cumberbatch in a movie called The Imitation Game, and it did numbers ! Turing is top-tier pop culture for our field.
Soโฆ why the hell doesn't anyone ever say, "This paper is proper messed. It's very very very very bad." Because, now that I've read this paper, I'm cursed! If anyone mentions Turing near me, I won't be able to resist the screaming. This lil Alan of all time has taken on an entirely new texture in my life. And if you don't know what you're in for, well, I cannot wait to welcome you into this new baffled, corrupted awareness.
Now, I should say it was truly an honour to have Felienne Hermans, author of one of our all-time favourite papers, A Case for Feminism In Programming Language Design, join us. This episode format โ a guest who discusses a work with us, but not their own work โ is something Jimmy has been encouraging us to try for a while now, and I think it turned out fabulously. And we couldn't have asked for a better first guest โ or a worse first work. Enjoy!
Thinking Together
๐ฌ Walker Griggs
"Should technical candidates be allowed to use AI assistance in an interview?"
I've had the debate many times over the last two years. My initial stance has always been "of course not, I want to evaluate if they actually understand programming fundamentals." My stance here might be softening. Common responses I hear are
- "This is the way people write code now and we should assess candidates in as close to 'real world' conditions as possible"
- "Where is line between syntax highlighting, LSPs, and AI code-completion?"
- "It should be obvious when a candidate doesn't understand the code they're generating"
- "Cursor boosts your output; a productive engineer should always leverage the best tools"
My responses to those points vary from "LSPs don't write the code on your behalf", "code completion operates on syntax and not semantics", and "human-in-the loop reduces critical reasoning." I personally find it difficult to discern meaningful signal around a candidates level of understanding while they tap tab. What do you all think?
Content
๐ not being Technical via Ivan Reese
Here's a lovely, heartbreaking 20-minute read by Cat Hicks about her not being Technical, despite the efforts of Technical people to include her in Technical spaces and encouraging her to adopt that identity. I talk a big game about making an inclusive space for people of various levels of Technical to come participate in dreaming about better computers, but this piece makes me question whether the effort is inherently flawed. A taste:
In my research and writing on how technical identities are both constructed and policed, I gave a round of talks about how I see Contest Cultures in software spaces, naming the routine hierarchical nastiness that we experience under the guise of technical arguments as real and important. In a conference hall, a woman in technical leadership came up to me and held my hand so tightly that it hurt. She struggled to find words, and I understood, because some things are too difficult for words and can only be felt together. I will never forget her. It is because I am not Technical that I can have these moments and I would not trade them for anything. Closely after this I heard from an engineer who told me that my work had named and helped him set a boundary around a years-long experience of pain in his career. These moments also mean everything to me, although there are so many more of the second than the first. As someone who has been known to be a human being myself, sometimes I go home and cry after I deliver a piece of the psychology of software teams. This is hard work. And at the same time to be in this field is to understand that I can provoke this second kind of reaction from a man who never would have offered a job to the me of ten years ago. In the Technical world, men have told me quite openly that who they were twenty years ago would have hated me from the moment I came into their visual range, that they would have believed that they knew everything about my mind without knowing me at all.
๐ฅ What is PLUS times PLUS? via John Christensen
Pretty animations of lambda calculus (and some nice sound design)
๐ฅ Wanix: The Spirit of Plan 9 in Wasm via Mariano Guerra
๐ค
๐ฌ Nilesh Trivedi
Hi all,
Have any of you run into questions where large AI models are missing crucial conceptual knowledge as well as are unable to find it by using Web search as a tool?
In other words, what are some examples of the blind spots of "AI + public Internet"?
I really mean CONCEPTUAL knowledge, i.e. HOW things work in the world, not mere factoids or events. Will likely be super-niche, or some nuance that has not been discussed on the Web, and therefore missing from the training data.
๐จ๐ฝโ๐ป By ๐ @marianoguerra@hachyderm.io ๐ฆ @warianoguerra
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