Post by Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica

🏆 Huge congratulations to CWI researcher Jurgen Vinju and his co-author Terence Parr (the creator of ANTLR) for receiving the prestigious 10-Year Most Influential Paper (MIP) Award at the SLE Conference (Software Language Engineering) in Rennes! 🎓✨ They are being honored for their groundbreaking 2016 paper, "Towards a Universal Code Formatter through Machine Learning". A decade ago, Jurgen and Terence introduced CODEBUFF, a revolutionary tool that changed how we think about code formatting (making code clean, structured, and readable for humans without changing how the software actually works). Instead of painstakingly writing hundreds of complex, language-specific rules by hand, CODEBUFF pioneered the use of machine learning to automatically learn and apply formatting styles directly from example repositories. Back then, it was a "drop-the-mic" moment: it proved you couldn't get more elegant with Machine Learning, outperforming the average programmer. Fast forward to 2026, and this 10-year-old paper is more relevant than ever. In our current era of massive Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI, code formatting has become an environmental question. Asking power-hungry cloud giants to format code is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. As Jurgen highlighted in his talk, looking at this through a 2026 lens means embracing Green Computing. By shifting formatting tasks from giant, power-hungry LLMs to tiny, local AI models (one per language), the software industry might achieve massive global energy savings. This innovative approach continues to inspire and is a prime example of research that stands the test of time. Jurgen presented their honorary talk today, reflecting on a decade of universal code formatting. CWI is incredibly proud to see this work recognized on the global stage! 🥂👏 👉 Read the paper here: https://lnkd.in/efwkiieJ #CWI #SoftwareEngineering #MachineLearning #SLE2026 #MIPAward #ResearchImpact #Innovation #ANTLR #CodeFormatting #ComputerScience #GreenComputing #LightweightAI