Programmer Puzzles

The Missing PHP Global   Friday 21 December

A global variable is a global variable and that's all there is to it. But if you write PHP code to be used by other people, you might want to consider that this isn't always the case. Can you see where our puzzle is going wrong with its globals?

News

Robotic Present Delivery   Monday 24 December

 Is this a glimpse of a future in which robots will help Santa deliver the presents? Quite possibly as all these robots are currently under development. But if you watch to the very end you'll see what can go wrong.

A Better B-Tree in Hekaton   Monday 24 December

Microsoft Research has been releasing details of how Hekaton, the in-memory database that will ship with the next version of SQL Server, is achieving up to 100x performance increases.

Top 10 US Web Brands of 2012   Sunday 23 December

It is hardly a surprise that Google is the top Web brand in the United States during 2012 or that Facebook came second. But these figures from Nielsen still hold some surprises.

Who Needs Hardware When You Have An Arduino Simulator   Sunday 23 December

The Raspberry Pi was created to get people programming and the Arduino is a great way to learn about physical computing but perhaps both approaches are wrong - at least initially. What about using a simulator instead?

Darpa's Mule Looks Useful   Saturday 22 December

We seem to be heading towards the robotic future ever faster. Now Darpa's robotic mule seems to have joined driverless cars and robot vacs - it looks useful. In this video you can see it following a solider, carefully picking its way through difficult terrain and even righting itself when it falls over.

OpenNI 2.0 - Another Way To Use Kinect   Saturday 22 December

PrimeSense, the company who invented the Kinect hardware, has just released Version 2 of its OpenNI SDK and it's a major revision. What does it have to offer the Kinect or depth camera programmer?

Microsoft Kills Expression Suite   Friday 21 December

Microsoft has announced that the Expression suite of design tools is no more. It has been removed from sale immediately and it has been placed on a maintenance only status until it reaches its end of life. However it's not all bad news...

MCSD Is Back - But Different   Friday 21 December

The latest set of  Microsoft Developer certifications have now been announced. MCSD stands, as it did before, for Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer and can be earned in three specialisms.

Apple's Patents Crumble - Pinch Zoom Rejected   Friday 21 December

Another Apple patent has been rejected by the patent office.  This time it is a key one in its war with Android, pinch to zoom.

Keeping Windows 8 Apps safe   Thursday 20 December

Microsoft has posted more advice on how to prevent your Windows 8 Modern UI apps from being hacked, though you might feel the information isn’t that helpful.

Microsoft Santa Or Google Santa   Thursday 20 December

Is this Christmas holiday going to be a Google or Microsoft one for Santa? And what's NORAD got to do with it anyway?

History

Charles Babbage   Wednesday 26 December

Today we celebrate the birth of Charles Babbage, the man who in the 19th century invented calculating machines that, although they were never realised in his lifetime,  are rightly see as the forerunners of modern programmable computers. This is the story of his life, his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine.