"Someone in the c-suite was sold on the premise that it is acceptable to funnel silly money to a third party in exchange for eroding the negotiating position of workers - present and future ones" more like it

In all seriousness, the whole thing about vibe coding looks like we're speedrunning a couple of decades' worth of lived experience with model-driven engineering in a few months, down to the same lessons (eventually) learnt. Fascinating

youtu.be/_2C2CNmK7dQ?... too early?

And check the notes of the production company about how the whole thing came together. Looks like classical tooling is here to stay too? Maybe the research community should take notes

The only problem, of course, will be communicating this decision effectively to students. I mean, can you imagine the evaluations?

And then, of course, there's this classic to commemorate the occasion youtu.be/DUlj48Rvp1c?...

Second day has been... let's go with interesting, but not for the reasons one usually expects. Session on sustainability and energy efficiency chaired by yt was well attended and the interaction with the audience was constructive

And local beer is not half bad either (the lager option, the pilsner seems to be too weak for my taste)

Summary of the first day, with the caveat that I stayed well away from the AI track: some really nice works on architecture of cloud native systems, including those on energy consumption. Hot tip: if you go to the conference website and check the program, most authors have added preprint links

On the same topic, a cynical person would point out that the current message of human-centering of AI4SE from an early/established researcher in AI4SE could be read as a strong indication that they've seen the limits of the whole approach and decided they need a way out/forward. But not me, no

On a related note, mad respect also to the first keynote speaker for actually picking papers from other researchers as examples of where the SotA is instead of doing the usual run of greatest hits from their own group. I can almost forgive him for not touching on any of the baggage of LLMs. Almost

Opening session had the chair of the steering committee telling people that they are hear to listen more than speak (respect) and one of the founding researchers of the _whole field_ asking people to look for him and tell him what they do so he stays informed (also respect). So far, so good

And now, the man himself thanking the audience before the show starts

Any chance there will be slides you can share on this one, or are you planning to pull up a bill from a client, put it up on the screen, and then spend 3' getting increasingly bewildered as you walk the audience through it?

At the same time, somebody needs to remind the sound engineer that just because this is a sold out concert it doesn't mean they have to put out all wattage they have available to the point of the PA struggling with it

In full action mode. Good performance and sound, drums could have been a tad louder/fuller