A new Shift-M podcast episode no. 51 with Michael Kay, the editor of XSLT 2.0 and 3.0, the author of Saxon (Java XSLT processor) and a very popular StackOverflow author. Watch it!

N12: Новое черно-белое интервью.

The next guest at Shift-M podcast will be Michael Feathers, the author of a great book Working Effectively with Legacy Code. We will most probably talk about software maintainability, legacy, old code, etc. What would you ask him?

I just published a new episode of the podcast, this time with Aino Corry, an expert in Agile and specifically its retrospective meetings. Watch it!

M187: Two months ago I bought a new MacBook Pro. After a month of waiting, I received it. My frustration was huge. I returned it to Apple and got the money back. Here is why. Watch it!

There is a new episode no. 53 of Shift-M podcast, this time with Adam Tornhill who is a creator of CodeScene.com, a cloud service where you can check the quality of your code and spot places where your technical debt is the largest and a author of Your Code as a Crime Scene book. Watch it.

A new post on my blog: Fallacies of AI Driven Coding. It's about AlphaCode and Codex, who claim that AI/ML can write software code. I say it can't and will never be able to... if we continue the research in this direction.

Just for our academic research purposes, I've build a small collection of scripts to measure popularity of some programming languages. Here is how it looks now: https://yegor256.github.io/plum/ If you know what other metrics we can collect per language, please suggest by submitting an issue here. Also, if you want to help and implement more metrics or add more languages to the collection, you are most welcome.

M188: AlphaCode recently announced that its ML model can write code as good as an average programmer. I don't think it's writing and I don't believe in this approach we will ever be able to get anything meaningful aside from pure marketing speculations. Watch it.

I added an interesting metric to the Fibonacci calculator implemented in C++, Java, Go, Haskell, Lisp, and Rust. Pay attention to the last column: it's the number of CPU cycles required to calculate the 32nd Fibonacci number. The difference between different implementations and languages is so huge.

Would be great if you can contribute and add implementations in other compiled languages, maybe Kotlin or sometime more exotic like Self of Smalltalk.

Also, there is a bug with rust/recursion — it's optimized too much :) Maybe you know how to fix?

У нас есть отдельный чат про политику, сейчас самое время к нему присоединиться, товарищи: @szdne

I need your help in writing a one-page survey: microprocessor architecture, trends and tendencies of the last 20 years. It has to be extensively supported by references to academic publications. I'm ready to pay (via Bitcoin).

N13: новое черно-белое интервью, о насущном и наболевшем, на YouTube.

Let me remind you, I'm hiring senior and mid-level full-time on-site developers into my team: Java, C++, Rust, and Go. Among other things, we are making a revolutionary new programming language, a new polyglot static analyzer, and a storage of binary artifacts. You will work in a large company making bright and cutting-edge open source projects. Isn't it a dream job? Text me: @yegor256

I'm looking for a full-time DevRel (developer relations), who will help us organize conferences, meetups, hackatons, and webinars for programmers both in Russia and worldwide. Do you know anyone who might be interested? The candidate has to be fluent in English and full of enthusiasm. Please, send them my way: @yegor256.

M189: When you write an academic paper or a patent together with your co-workers, who of them becomes your co-authors? All of them? Some of them? Who decides? In this video I'm asking for your help in defining the formula. Watch it.

I was invited to present a lecture to 15-16 y.o. children who live and study in a Russian school ("интернат" in Kazan). It will happen in two weeks, I will publish it on YouTube. I've never done this before, and I'm a bit scared. What do you think the lecture should be focused on: motivating them, educating, something else?

Видео здесь (2 часа)

New post on my blog, this time about bug reporting and why many of us keep doing it wrong: Bugs Occam's Razor

M190: When you report a bug, try to make it as simple as it's possible. When you accept a bug, ask the reporter to make it as simple as possible. Somebody has to do this work of minimization of a bug. I suggest this work is done by reporters. Watch it.