MERA Code: A Unified Framework for Evaluating Code Generation Across Tasks

Advancements in LLMs have enhanced task automation in software engineering; however, current evaluations primarily focus on natural language tasks, overlooking code quality. Most benchmarks prioritize high-level reasoning over executable code and real-world performance, leaving gaps in understanding true capabilities and risks associated with these models in production. To address this issue, we propose MERA Code, a new addition to the MERA benchmark family, specifically focused on evaluating code for the latest code generation LLMs in Russian. This benchmark includes 11 evaluation tasks that span 8 programming languages. Our proposed evaluation methodology features a taxonomy that outlines the practical coding skills necessary for models to complete these tasks. The benchmark comprises an open-source codebase for users to conduct MERA assessments, a scoring system compatible with various programming environments, and a platform featuring a leaderboard and submission system. We evaluate open LLMs and frontier API models, analyzing their limitations in terms of practical coding tasks in non-English languages. We are publicly releasing MERA to guide future research, anticipate groundbreaking features in model development, and standardize evaluation procedures.

Position of Uncertainty: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Positional Bias in Large Language Models

Large language models exhibit positional bias -- systematic neglect of information at specific context positions -- yet its interplay with linguistic diversity remains poorly understood. We present a cross-linguistic study across five typologically distinct languages (English, Russian, German, Hindi, Vietnamese), examining how positional bias interacts with model uncertainty, syntax, and prompting. Key findings: (1) Positional bias is model-driven, with language-specific variations -- Qwen2.5-7B favors late positions, challenging assumptions of early-token bias; (2) Explicit positional guidance (e.g., correct context is at position X) reduces accuracy across languages, undermining prompt-engineering practices; (3) Aligning context with positional bias increases entropy, yet minimal entropy does not predict accuracy. (4) We further uncover that LLMs differently impose dominant word order in free-word-order languages like Hindi.