Teaching a Machine to Code, at NewCrafts Paris 2019

Last week, I spoke at NewCrafts Paris 2019 on the topic of “Teaching A Machine To Code”, a talk I also gave last year at Joy of Coding.

(If you just want the content, it’s up.)

Before I talk about my talk, something really important: NewCrafts is a wonderful conference. I’ve never seen one run so smoothly. It was marvellous to see. Massive credit to the organisers for making it work so well.

Since Joy of Coding, a couple of things have changed. Firstly, the models themselves have evolved, and we’ve become more focused on the models that are likely to deliver—specifically “autofixing” code, and type prediction. We’re focusing on shipping at least the former soon.

Secondly, we’ve achieved much more clarity. Rather than an end goal with very little idea about how to get there, we see a lot of power in the combination of machines working to gather as much data as possible. Humans have always been good at seeing the patterns emerge from information, and we want to get as much of that information into your eyeballs so you can be more effective.

As always, you can read the entire talk contents (except some references to Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I improvised). I hope you enjoy it. Please send feedback!