Last year, Intel, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology, announced the creation of an automated engine designed to learn what a piece of software intends to do by studying the structure of the code and analyzing syntactic differences of other code with similar behaviour. Justin Gottschlich, principal scientist at Intel commented:

“The goal of the effort “is to democratize the creation of software. When fully realized, machine programming will enable everyone to create software by expressing their intention in whatever fashion that’s best for them, whether that’s code, natural language or something else.”

OpenAI GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) also can be employed to automatically generate computer code. Vincent Tabora also commented:

“A development manager could start things off in the project using a tool with GPT-3 features to build the foundation of the application. By this, I mean the skeleton from which the rest of the application will be built upon. The manager can simply type their requirements and the tool will generate what the manager wants. This saves project requirements for additional staff who would otherwise be responsible for building the initial application. After the skeleton has been generated, more advanced developers can come in with the rest of the project requirements to complete the application.”

Along with creating new applications, AI for coding may also smooth the way for moving applications and systems to modern platforms. In a recent interview, Maja Vuković, an IBM Fellow at the company’s Watson Research Center, explained how a client was struggling with millions of lines of code, and her team was able to employ AI to assist in migrating the code to new platforms. She relates:

“Their mission-critical application has ballooned to over 1.5 million lines of code. Decades of adding migrations combining different systems. Moreover, this evolution of the code happened by multiple development teams, some of which moved out to different roles or are not even in the organization anymore. And there may not even be any documentation left.”

It took the company’s IT team more than two years of struggling with the legacy code, with no results, Vuković says.  Not only did AI help the IBM team recommend suitable business-function-driven microservices.

“We can also use AI to help generate code for target microservices, further simplifying the time. It saves time and effort for the developers. It can also tell you where the gaps are, what else needs to be done to make those microservices fully executable. This simplifies and accelerates the entire application refactoring process tremendously — our clients have thousands of applications in their portfolio.”

This demonstration project was for one application with 1.5 million lines of code that took two years to do manually, Vuković emphasizes.

“Imagine if you had to modernize thousands of applications. You want to compress that time from a multi-year effort to something that you can do in months, or weeks.”

Along these lines, IBM launched an initiative called CodeNet intended to facilitate the application of AI to code snippets, she says. Her team is making more than 14 million samples of code available as part of the open-source dataset available on GitHub. The project is intended to provide for code what ImageNet, with its database of 14 million images, provided developers and researchers with identified image.

As the tech community grows rapidly, all developers must catch up with the latest trends related to programming. Wheater there is a new coding language, new development methods or an updated tools that smoothen software delivery… Developers should be informed about everything. And what is the fastest way to catch up with all these innovations?!

Well… Social media is a great way to collaborate on developments, meet other developers, share open-source projects indeed. So, today, we want to talk about YouTube. Sharing is so popular that a lot of developers spare some time to share their projects, their professional lifestyle, and feelings. And if you are wondering which developers’ channels you should follow, here is a list of Youtube channels that may trigger your interest.

Eddie Jaoude (19.7K subscribers) @eddiejaoude 

Eddie is a Full Stack open-source software engineer with 15+ years of experience. Eddie posts about his open-source projects and tips to get into coding. Check his channel.

Aaron Jack (229K subscribers) @_aaronjack

Aaron is a freelance Software Engineer from San Francisco. He founded Freemote Bootcamp and speaks about programming languages tips and trends on his Youtube channel.

Mayuko (440K subscribers) @hellomayuko 

Mayuko is a former Silicon Valley engineer. After working for Netflix and Intuit, she became a content creator on Youtube. She publishes about mental health, career path, and programming languages. Check her channel.

Maya Bello (7.38K subscribers) @maya_loves_code

Maya aims at inspiring her subscribers to learn how to code with various coding tutorials and tech content. Go to her channel.

ForrestKnight (292K subscribers) @ForrestPKnight

ForrestKnight films what he codes. He shares his coding techniques, speaks about computer science and Data structures. Go to his channel.

TechLead (1.02M subscribers) @techleadhd‍

Patrick Shyu is an Ex-Google/ex-Facebook tech lead. He actively shares his opinion of the tech trends, coding stacks, as well as his personal financial experiences. Check his channel. 

Andy Sterkowitz (291K subscribers) @andysterks 

Andy is a self-taught developer. He shares his story of how he became a developer along with coding tips and tech content. Go to his channel.

Beacoder (7.3K subscribers) @coderbea 

Previously interned at Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa, and Twitter, Bea posts videos about her previous internships, giving tips on where to get started to become a software engineer. This channel is ideal for dev newbies.

Ben Awad (323K subscribers) @benawad

He is an amazing open-source software developer, who makes videos about React, React Native, GraphQL, Typescript, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Python, etc. He is the guy behind DogeHouse, although this project is closed now, he made it pretty famous. You can visit his channel.

Kalle Hallden (515K subscribers) @kallehallden

He is an amazing YouTuber with amazing production quality, If You want to learn from examples, then this channel is recommended by me to everybody. He also make reviews about gadgets you may need as a software developer. Check his YouTube channel.

There you are, 10 active youtube channels! Each one is unique simply because these developers don’t have the same approach to software and because their content strategy is different. They all tell a different story!

It’s been reported that Microsoft is taking elements of Windows 10X to use in Windows 10 – after 10X got shelved – and that the Sun Valley redesign will make extensive use of rounded corners, plus floating menus, aiming to achieve a more modern look overall (based on Fluent Design concepts), complete with a raft of refreshed icons and animations. In terms of porting stuff over from Windows 10X, the most recent leak indicates that the Action Center design from 10X could be brought across – or at least it’s present, albeit hidden, in recent preview builds of Windows 10.

The advert for a Program Manager in the Windows IXP (Interactive eXperiences Platform) team in the US (Redmond), which was spotted by Windows Latest, states that Microsoft is “now on a multi-year journey to revolutionize the Windows UX platform by delivering best interactive experiences, showcasing cutting-edge hardware”.

Big things are expected from the ‘Sun Valley’ interface revamp which is expected to arrive with the 21H2 update towards the end of the year, based not just on a multitude of leaks, but also on the kind of language seen here which Microsoft has used in the past, too.

Windows Latest also points to another job listing, which has since been taken down, that enthuses about a “multi-year journey to re-imagine this platform with the goal of enabling the best interactive experiences on Windows”.

The current updates are only available to about 100,000 owners of 2021 model year F-150s, Mustang Mach-Es and the upcoming Bronco, but Ford plans to spread the tech across its entire lineup as models are updated. It plans to make 33 million vehicles with the capability by 2028.

According to Alex Purdy, the company’s connectivity business director, updates can fix software glitches in the vehicles’ computers and will be able to make recall repairs, offer new features and cut warranty claims. In addition, there are about 80 different computers in Ford’s most sophisticated vehicles that control everything from the infotainment centre to brakes and transmission shifts.

Ford already has sent out an update to fix a lighting issue that drained batteries. One of the next updates will be a new version of Amazon Alexa that allows vehicles to communicate with the home assistant without the use of a smartphone. Ford also will roll out touchscreen drawing software and simple games for the Mach-E electric SUV.

Alex Purdy said software can identify potential problems in vehicles and fixes can be sent out if the software can solve the problem. “That fix can be done remotely, it doesn’t require you to go into a dealership,” he said.

Nowadays more than 6 million vehicles have the modems and collect vehicle data, but only those with the latest generation of electrical systems can get full over-the-internet updates. According to Ford, vehicles equipped for its new “Blue Cruise” hands-free driver-assist system will get the software needed to run it over the internet.