Tag Archive for ‘Programming’

Bryan Lunduke:

To be fair, from a technical perspective, Copilot is an impressive accomplishment. The sheer amount of data that needed to be collected, indexed, and processed (every line of public code on GitHub)… that’s impressive. The A.I. that predicts the code that it thinks you will need… also incredibly impressive.

Just the same, Copilot is such an astoundingly bad idea — on so many levels — that it is truly baffling that it was created at all.

Despite the extensive use of GitHub at Automattic, I don’t know too much about Copilot. But from what I do know, it doesn’t sound good.

This specific bit related to licensing is probably the most concerning to me:

“All public GitHub code was used in training. We don’t distinguish by license type.”

Meaning, if you use Copilot to insert code into your software, you have absolutely no clue what (or how many) licenses are now involved.

GPL? MIT? Apache? BSD? Probably. Others that are likely incompatible (at least in some way)? Almost assuredly.

Looking to ship your software under a specific license? Maybe even as closed source?

Good-friggin-luck.

Is some of your code, which you hosted on GitHub, now being used in other projects without proper attribution or licensing? Maybe? Who knows!

I have a feeling, because of the licensing implications alone, Copilot is dead on arrival.

➝ Source: lunduke.com

Frank Krueger:

Over the past six months I have been working on a new .NET IDE for the iPad, and today I am very pleased to release it on the App Store.

Continuous gives you the power of a traditional desktop .NET IDE – full C# 6 and F# 4 language support with semantic highlighting and code completion – while also featuring live code execution so you don’t have to wait around for code to compile and run. Continuous works completely offline so you get super fast compiles and your code is secure.

It’s a good time to be an iPad user.

(Via MacStories.)

Apple:

Swift Playgrounds brings coding to life with an interactive interface that encourages students and beginners to explore working with Swift, the easy-to-learn programming language from Apple used by professional developers to create world-class apps. Swift Playgrounds includes Apple-developed programming lessons where students write code to guide onscreen characters through an immersive graphical world, solving puzzles and mastering challenges as they learn core coding concepts.

Learning a programming language has been something I’ve put off for many years. When Apple announced Swift, I felt like it could be the right language for me. I guess I’ll know for sure when I get my hands on this app in a few months.

I think this is also a clear sign that Apple is building more robust developer tools for iOS. My guess is we’ll see a full-fledged Xcode for iPad within the next two years.

Computer science professor, Aaron Block:

Every language has its pros can cons and rather than giving you a giant spreadsheet of how each language stacks against Swift, I want to give you a few examples of where Swift really shines in an intro class.

I’ve always been interested in computer programming, but there’s always been something in my way preventing me from learning. I taught myself how to build rudimentary text-based games on my TI-83+ in high school — mostly as a means of telling jokes — but that was a brief period before I fell in love with writing about computers.

My interest in programming hasn’t subsided, but the amount of free time available to me has diminished over the years. Aaron makes a great case for Swift as a first language and if I ever find myself with enough time to learn I’ll certainly look at Swift first.

(Via Guy English.)

The Swift Team:

This new blog will bring you a behind-the-scenes look into the design of the Swift language by the engineers who created it, in addition to the latest news and hints to turn you into a productive Swift programmer.

A little disappointed that they chose to use “blog” rather than “weblog,” but I suppose I’m one of the few holdouts.

Apple clearly thinks that Swift is the future of programming for their platforms and this is another step in the right direction towards convincing developers to adopt it.

Speaking of how apps are made, here’s a new documentary about the people behind the apps by Jake Schumacher and Jedidiah Hurt. With 23 days left for the Kickstarter they’re nearly half way to their goal of $100,000 for the film.

A lot of well-known personalities in the application development community are involved, including John Gruber, Marco Arment, Adam Lisagor, Lisa Bettany, and many more. I can’t wait to see how the finished film turns out.

Craig Mod:

The more you question the more you can refine. The more you can refine, the more potential for delight. And if not to delight — through knowledge or navigation or entertainment or communication — then why make? Why toil?

Peter Welch wrote something amazing. I suggest you read it.