David Cassel

Maybe it started in February, when programmer and entrepreneur Paul Ford, 51, wrote a guest essay for The New York Times gushing that “the A.I. disruption has arrived.” AI coding tools are getting stronger — and so are the hopes and fears of the programmers they’re displacing. Online, a messy, real-time reckoning is already underway.

What would an AI-first language look like? Last year, a developer in Spain warned that our human-friendly syntax consumed an “excessive” number of tokens — thereby increasing costs — and prevented complex programs from fitting within existing AI context windows.

Attention, any developers hoping to sell their apps to the world’s 3.3 billion Android phones. “Google is changing the way you install apps on your device!” warns the free and open-source Android app repository F-Droid. And it threatens the existence of some alternative Android app stores that are used by millions of people. The New Stack spoke with Marc Prud’hommeaux, a member of the board of directors at F-Droid, who also created the website Keep Android Open.