VentureBeat: PolyCoder is an open source AI code-generator that researchers claim trumps Codex

VentureBeat: PolyCoder is an open source AI code-generator that researchers claim trumps Codex. “…while research labs like OpenAI and Alphabet-backed DeepMind have developed powerful code-generating AI, many of the most capable systems aren’t available in open source. For example, the training data for OpenAI’s Codex, which powers GitHub’s Copilot feature, hasn’t been made publicly available, preventing researchers from fine-tuning the AI model or studying aspects of it such as interpretability. To remedy this, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University — Frank Xu, Uri Alon, Graham Neubig, and Vincent Hellendoorn — developed PolyCoder, a model based on OpenAI’s GPT-2 language model that was trained on a database of 249GB of code across 12 programming languages.”

InfoWorld: GitHub previews enhanced code search

InfoWorld: GitHub previews enhanced code search. “Among the enhancements is a new code search engine built in Rust, oriented toward searching code and speed. In the technology preview, the search index covers more than five million of the most popular public repositories. Searches also can be made on private repositories if a user has access.”

Phys .org: High time to open up ecological research

Phys .org: High time to open up ecological research. “Share the code and data behind the research please. It’s easy, but it will have a major positive impact on progress and trust in science. That is the clear message from a new paper in PLOS Biology. An international team of ecologists found that currently, only about a quarter of the scientific papers in their field publicly shares computer code for analyses. ‘To make the science of ecology more transparent and reproducible, sharing is urgently needed.’”

The Conversation: Why all children must learn code

The Conversation: Why all children must learn code. “Coding language develops the software that can effectively deal with problems and challenges – for instance, because of coding, people who couldn’t get a bank account can now keep, send and borrow money using mobile phones. It’s an important skill to have as countries develop. In the past four decades, several studies have assessed the effect of learning code on primary school children – usually between the ages of six and 13. In each case, the findings show that it is beneficial to children, irrespective of their career path later on in life.”

Slate: The Lines of Code That Changed Everything

Slate: The Lines of Code That Changed Everything. “Culturally, code exists in a nether zone. We can feel its gnostic effects on our everyday reality, but we rarely see it, and it’s quite inscrutable to non-initiates. (The folks in Silicon Valley like it that way; it helps them self-mythologize as wizards.) We construct top-10 lists for movies, games, TV—pieces of work that shape our souls. But we don’t sit around compiling lists of the world’s most consequential bits of code, even though they arguably inform the zeitgeist just as much.”

Hongkiat: Codemade is a Pinterest-Style Tech Project Sharing Site

New-to-Me and nifty, from Hongkiat: Codemade is a Pinterest-Style Tech Project Sharing Site. “This site feels like an engineering lover’s best friend. If you have a passion for writing code and building physical projects you will love Codemade. You can search projects by name or by feature using the top search bar. You can also search by popularity or organize projects based on technology.”