Santiago Valdarrama
Also known as svpino, AI education
Santiago Valdarrama, known as svpino, teaches software developers about production AI and machine learning. He began writing code in 1994. He started his practical AI programme in March 2023. The curriculum includes project planning, data, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and retraining. His public essays discuss how language models change programming and the work of developers. In 2025, he also wrote a foreword for Tivadar Danka’s Mathematics of Machine Learning. His February 2026 writing explored possible future forms of code used by agents. His course follows the work from defining a problem to selecting a model, testing its behaviour, serving predictions, and monitoring change after deployment.
Timeline
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1994 onward
A long software career
Valdarrama wrote his first line of code in 1994. He describes himself as a computer scientist, machine learning engineer, and writer.
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Before the course
Learning from production projects
He built systems for organisations in several industries. He uses that experience to explain planning, delivery, and operation.
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March 2023
Starting a practical AI programme
The programme began in March 2023. The curriculum covers project scope, data, model selection, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and retraining. The programme treats AI as an engineering task that continues after a model has produced an initial answer.
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April 2025
Reconsidering AI and programming
In Coding Is Over. Now What?, Valdarrama wrote about changing his view of language model capabilities. He discussed how a developer’s work changes as models help produce software.
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May 2025
Supporting a mathematics teaching resource
Valdarrama wrote the foreword to Tivadar Danka’s book Mathematics of Machine Learning.
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February 2026 onward
Writing about agents and code
The Language of the Future discusses possible changes in how agents represent and generate programs, including cost and readability. He continues to offer the course and publish public writing.
Sources and credits
Photo: Santiago Valdarrama / GitHub profile. License: Not stated by source. Source: github.com. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.