The ESP32 S3 has WiFi, but getting from a simple connection to a web site is a matter of using the supplied client class. This is an extract from Harry Fairhead's latest book on programming the ESP32 using C and the Arduino library.

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Making parallel code easier to use is an important development, but making it easier also means you can use it without realising what you are getting into. Unless we can find a way of making parallel code both easy and safe you are still going to have to take care - even with the easy-to-use Parallel For. Find out more in this extract from my book, Deep C#: Dive Into Modern C#.

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JetBrains Academy has published the results of a worldwide survey that set out to discover current trends in computer science education and the challenges involved in studying computer science. It also has interesting insights into how the use of AI Assistants varies across regions.

Google has announced an updated version of Gemini, saying that Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental will "enable even more immersive and interactive applications", along with new coding agents that can take actions on behalf of the developer.

Cloudberry is the open source equivalent of Greenplum.
Now it is fostered by the Apache Foundation as it acquires incubating status.

Ruby on Rails 8 has been released. The new version comes preconfigured with Kamal 2 for application deployment, a new proxy called Thruster, and a trio of SQLite database-backed adapters named Solid Cable, Solid Cache, and Solid Queue.

A veritable treasure trove of assorted how-to recipes for PostgreSQL, stored as a Github repository, has been started by Nikolay Samokhvalov, well known in the PostgreSQL world.

Kafka 3.9 has been released. The team says this is a major release and the final in the 3.x line. It This will also be the final major release to feature the deprecated Apache ZooKeeper mode. Kafka is a distributed streaming platform that can be used for building real-time streaming data pipelines between systems or applications.

If you are looking for a programmer present this holiday season, there is one book, or set of books, that should be top of any list... Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming.

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edX is offering a 30% discount on selected courses and program bundles until December 19th. We look at  AI-related certifications that could boost your resume in 2025.

The holiday season is a good time to learn about computers - you have the time. But where to start? Our advice is to ignore the pudding and go for a Pi.

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OpenSilver 3.1 has been released. This version adds a drag-and-drop XAML designer for Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a new modern UI theme, and expanded support for WPF features. The open-source alternative to Silverlight is capable of running large, complex legacy applications, as well as newly written C# and XAML applications.

Rust 1.83 has been released with improvements to the handling of code running in const contexts.

Author: Charles Fox
Publisher: No Starch Press
Date: May 2024
Pages: 560
ISBN: 978-1718502864
Audience: General
Rating: 4
Reviewer: Harry Fairhead
No, not architecture via a computer - the architecture OF computers.

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This book reveals what you can do with the ESP32's GPIO lines together with widely used sensors, servos and motors and ADCs. After covering the GPIO, outputs and inputs, events and interrupts, Harry Fairhead gives you hands-on experience of PWM (Pulse Width Modulation), the SPI bus, the I2C bus and the 1-Wire bus, the UARTs and, of course, WiFi. To round out, Harry covers direct access to the hardware, adding an SD Card reader, sleep states to save power, the RTC, RMT and touch sensors. He also devotes a chapter to FreeRTOS which takes us into the realm of asynchronous processing.

This book guides the reader, as if looking over the shoulder of an expert, through situations that are likely to arise in data analysis projects. Will Ayd and Matt Harrison cover topics ranging from fundamental data manipulation tasks to advanced techniques for handling big data, and visualization. This latest edition covers pandas 2.x onwards. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced data analyst, this book offers a wealth of practical recipes to help you excel in your data analysis projects.

This book dives deep into the world of programming, exploring the lives of the groundbreaking pioneers who built the foundation of modern computing. From Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, and Dennis Ritchie, Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) shines a light on the figures whose brilliance and perseverance changed the world. The book provides a rich human history filled with technical insights for developers, examining the coding breakthroughs that shaped computing at the bit and byte level.