Tootfinder

Levelpath, which provides AI-powered enterprise procurement services, raised a $55M Series B led by Battery Ventures, bringing its total funding to $100M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/30/next-gen-procurement-platform-…

Next-gen procurement platform Levelpath nabs $55M | TechCrunch
The investment signals confidence in Levelpath's fast growth and its potential to disrupt a market dominated by legacy players.

Tool or Trouble? Exploring Student Attitudes Toward AI Coding Assistants
Sergio Rojas-Galeano
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22900 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.2…

Tool or Trouble? Exploring Student Attitudes Toward AI Coding Assistants
This exploratory study examines how AI code assistants shape novice programmers' experiences during a two-part exam in an introductory programming course. In the first part, students completed a programming task with access to AI support; in the second, they extended their solutions without AI. We collected Likert-scale and open-ended responses from 20 students to evaluate their perceptions and challenges. Findings suggest that AI tools were perceived as helpful for understanding code and incre…

BOOP: Write Right Code
Vaani Goenka, Aalok D. Thakkar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22085 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.22085

BOOP: Write Right Code
Novice programmers frequently adopt a syntax-specific and test-case-driven approach, writing code first and adjusting until programs compile and test cases pass, rather than developing correct solutions through systematic reasoning. AI coding tools exacerbate this challenge by providing syntactically correct but conceptually flawed solutions. In this paper, we introduce BOOP (Blueprint, Operations, OCaml, Proof), a structured framework requiring four mandatory phases: formal specification, lang…

From Generation to Adaptation: Comparing AI-Assisted Strategies in High School Programming Education
Tong Hu, Songzan Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15955

From Generation to Adaptation: Comparing AI-Assisted Strategies in High School Programming Education
This exploratory case study investigated two contrasting pedagogical approaches for LCA-assisted programming with five novice high school students preparing for a WeChat Mini Program competition. In Phase 1, students used LCAs to generate code from abstract specifications (From-Scratch approach), achieving only 20% MVP completion. In Phase 2, students adapted existing Minimal Functional Units (MFUs), small, functional code examples, using LCAs, achieving 100% MVP completion. Analysis revealed t…

As much as I like to hate on #VibeCoding and #LLM s , #claude code helped me ship a bunch of fixes in a #golang codebase I was totally unfamiliar with, within a few hours. I guess it's a case of having the proper experience to steer the tool in the right direction and avoid hallucinations. A power hammer in the hands of an experienced programmer, a rubber hammer in the hands of a novice.

NPUEval: Optimizing NPU Kernels with LLMs and Open Source Compilers
Sarunas Kalade, Graham Schelle
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14403 https://

NPUEval: Optimizing NPU Kernels with LLMs and Open Source Compilers
Neural processing units (NPUs) are gaining prominence in power-sensitive devices like client devices, with AI PCs being defined by their inclusion of these specialized processors. Running AI workloads efficiently on these devices requires libraries of optimized kernels. Creating efficient kernels demands expertise in domain-specific C++ with vector intrinsics and in-depth knowledge of the target architecture. Unlike GPU programming, which has had years to mature, NPU programming is new, with sm…

In Trump’s redistricting push, Democrats find identity with progressives – NBC Los Angeles
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/trump-redistricting-democrats-aggressive-identity-progressives/3765353/

Sources: ABC News, NBC News, and CBS News won't preempt regular TV programming for Trump's June 14 military parade, leaving coverage to their streaming outlets (Brian Steinberg/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/trump-…

Trump Military Parade May Not Get Much Coverage on CBS, NBC, ABC
A spectacular military parade slated for June 14 in Washington D.C. my not get traditional broadcast TV coverage on ABC, NBC or CBS

How Do Code Smells Affect Skill Growth in Scratch Novice Programmers?
Ricardo Hidalgo Arag\'on, Jes\'us M. Gonz\'alez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17314

How Do Code Smells Affect Skill Growth in Scratch Novice Programmers?
Context. Code smells, which are recurring anomalies in design or style, have been extensively researched in professional code. However, their significance in block-based projects created by novices is still largely unknown. Block-based environments such as Scratch offer a unique, data-rich setting to examine how emergent design problems intersect with the cultivation of computational-thinking (CT) skills. Objective. This research explores the connection between CT proficiency and design-level c…

Bob's Confetti: Phonetic Memorization Attacks in Music and Video Generation
Jaechul Roh, Zachary Novack, Yuefeng Peng, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick, Amir Houmansadr
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17937

Bob's Confetti: Phonetic Memorization Attacks in Music and Video Generation
Lyrics-to-Song (LS2) generation models promise end-to-end music synthesis from text, yet their vulnerability to training data memorization remains underexplored. We introduce Adversarial PhoneTic Prompting (APT), a novel attack where lyrics are semantically altered while preserving their acoustic structure through homophonic substitutions (e.g., Eminem's famous "mom's spaghetti" $\rightarrow$ "Bob's confetti"). Despite these distortions, we uncover a powerful form of sub-lexical memorization: m…