Showing items from Software Engineering

Will AI Replace Developers?

Since the release of Github Copilot and Chat-GPT, I see many posts and tweets about how AI will or are replacing humans in different tasks. Many have also said that this disruption will come to the developer, which touches me in particular. I have been thinking a lot about this. Will AI replace my job? How?

Personally, I am a user of Chat-GPT and of GH Copilot. Currently, it does not feel like it could replace me, but feels like having a very capable and fast junior developer helping me with menial tasks:

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How to specify features when dealing with textual DSLs

Today I will be discussing how to do specify features when dealing with textual DSLs. There is nothing more soul draining than a feature that takes forever to implement because the scope is not well defined. The problem is that there is no standard way to specify a language without diving into grammars and formal semantics. Grammars and formal semantics are precise, but precision and clarity are complementary concepts, the more you get of one, the less you get of the other. Contrary to standard applications, you cannot just write a use case for a language feature. However, here I’m a proposing a different way that I explain the following paragraphs. I believe that having a standardized way of specifying features is a big time saver for an organization.

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A tale of two tools

Recently I had two epiphanies in the tooling I use.

The first one happened as I was tired of my development environment being too slow when I was developing on Windows. I have a very powerful Mac Book Pro with a lot of RAM and an SSD hard disk, I did not spare any money on my main working tool. For my virtualization needs I was using Virtual Box, the free virtualization software from Oracle. I considered Boot Camp as the obvious choice to have the maximum raw power, but two things discouraged me:

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What happens to open sources project who lose their main sponsor

I recently read the Xtext framework is seriously needing contributions or its future is at risk. The GitHub issue of the problem dates from March 2020, so the problem is old and I just learned about it. This is a serious problem with open source software that I’ve seen repeats and repeats. I saw the exact same thing happen to Play Framework, another project I used a lot.

The script is the following:

  • Company X starts an Open Source project to innovate in some domain
  • Company X maintains the Open Source for a while, until they pivot, lose interest or something else
  • Company announces that it will give the project back to the community and simply maintain it as part of their paid consulting services

I want to be clear that I do not judge the companies for doing this. Companies are there to make money, and if open an source project is not giving them a good ROI, then it is their call to abandon it to stay in business. The only thing that I feel companies have to do is being transparent about their intentions and if possible lead the transition process towards the new

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