Diomidis Spinellis
coolsweng.bsky.social
Diomidis Spinellis
@coolsweng.bsky.social
Professor of software engineering at AUEB and software analytics at TU Delft, programmer, technology author. https://www.spinellis.gr/
(Tech tweets here. Follow @DSpinellis for Greek/Greece tweets.)
I just received an AI-generated GitHub pull-request that incorrectly replaced 450 test code lines with a comment. Be VERY CAREFUL when reviewing out-of-the-blue PRs these days. AI-generated ones are likely to contain difficult-to-spot faults hidden as plausible fixes.

github.com/dspinellis/g...
November 7, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Στις 5 Νοεμβρίου λήγει η διορία της διαδικασίας έκδοσης του Προσωπικού Αριθμού.Με τη γεννήτρια γραμμάτων προσωπικού αριθμού μπορείτε να επιλέξετε εσείς έναν καλό συνδυασμό γραμμάτων για τον προσωπικό σας αριθμό. Θα τη βρείτε στο www.balab.aueb.gr/genpa/
November 1, 2025 at 8:17 PM
I just added a note in the advice for writing LaTeX documents GitHub repository to avoid using the “itemize” environment, when you're describing elements. The “description” environment is better for this purpose.

github.com/dspinellis/l...
October 27, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Fun, fun, fun! I'm running a binary tournament merge to combine 64 SQLite databases (83 GB in total) into one. More details in doi.org/10.1109/MS.2...
October 18, 2025 at 11:27 AM
With all the GenAI buzz we tend to forget the value of 100% correct deterministic tools. Thank you Rust clippy!
September 19, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Google Scholar's lack of an API hinders automation and scientometric studies. In common with all proprietary academic databases, searches are opaque and non-replicable. With the Alexandria3k Python package you can run sophisticated queries on your laptop. dspinellis.github.io/alexandria3k/
August 27, 2025 at 7:39 AM
That's a first! As I write a program's error message, I catch myself thinking whether GenAI will be able to understand it and produce a useful suggestion. (It does.)
August 24, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Many years ago I contributed to #GraphViz code for several new node shapes, including UML notes. Now #ChatGPT advises me how to use them! 😃
August 14, 2025 at 10:28 AM
I'm sure psychologists have a diagnostic name for this disorder.
August 7, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Ever wondered why car ergonomics have gone down the drain as touch screens replaced buttons to drive down costs? This reader comment on an @financialtimes.com article on the topic says it all.
July 9, 2025 at 11:02 AM
My LLM coding interactions taught me that their benchmark results vastly overstate their capabilities. The paper by M. Mancoridis et al. “Potemkin Understanding in LLMs” explains and formalizes my feeling. Benchmarks derived from human tests are unsuitable for LLM assessment. doi.org/10.48550/arX...
June 27, 2025 at 6:12 PM
This week two US courts ruled in favor of AI's use of copyrighted works to train LLMs. How is such a use legal? Should it be legal? Two questions with very different answers. More (and an explanation of the audio cassette's relevance) at www.spinellis.gr/blog/20250626/
June 26, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Wow! The Rust compiler correctly guessed the correct method I should be calling. Helpful and very impressive error handling!
May 29, 2025 at 5:57 PM
In 2023 a fake AI-generated scientific article was falsely attributed to me. I was not the scheme's only victim. My study, just published in the Research Integrity and Peer Review journal, analyzes what going on and who profited from the mass publication of AI-generated articles. rdcu.be/enQqG
May 27, 2025 at 2:44 PM
When you forget to switch the active window from ChatGPT to vim…
May 8, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Shocking! When I said text should wrap at 72 columns, a student asked what a “column” is. With punched cards and fixed-width font line / dot matrix printers fading into history, the idea of a text column doesn't seem to be obvious anymore.
May 2, 2025 at 8:45 PM
ChatGPT seems to struggle with its "Deep research" feature due to difficulties in accessing several web sites. I guess the high-volume of its accesses is causing many sites to block it. These examples are from a single prompt.
April 25, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Correct, but verbose and unreadable ChatGPT (4o) code (in red) vs the human-edited equivalent (in green). (The hex_digits string isn't even used.) Without human code ownership our software risks degenerating into unmaintainable junk.
April 23, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Many sites provide incorrect or incomplete BibTeX entries. I therefore just use the provided DOI and a small shell script to create the BibTeX from it from the definitive data retrieved from Crossref.
April 14, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Can you spot the six errors in this completely bogus GenAI-derived diagram? Read more in my blog entry on the perils of GenAI student submissions.

www.spinellis.gr/blog/20250408/
April 11, 2025 at 6:56 AM
In the past I've had Google Search, Wikipedia, and StackOverflow point me to my own material for answers. Now ChatGPT does the same.
April 4, 2025 at 5:52 PM
As I was watching the Sun within the clouds, I noticed that a part was missing. Through a quick web search I found out I was watching a partial solar eclipse! I took the photo with a non-fancy smartphone.
March 29, 2025 at 12:37 PM
I love the informative error messages that Clippy provides for Rust programs.
March 22, 2025 at 1:06 PM
When a group of disgruntled academic researchers switches its career to Hollywood…
January 13, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Today, in my Java streams lecture I accompanied a unique words example illustrating their use with a presentation of D. McIlroy's critique of D. Knuth's code in CACM's “Programming Pearls column” and an Indiana Jones scene as a parable.
dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQKr...
January 8, 2025 at 7:10 PM