News

MIT Finds Overflow Bugs   Wednesday 08 April

It is the oldest bug - overflow has dogged any attempt to create a good program ever since we started writing code. Now MIT has an improved system to find overflow bugs by examining code.

LibreOffice Moving To The Cloud - But How?   Wednesday 08 April

How would you move an office suite like LibreOffice to the cloud? My guess is that you might start to think about how you could convert it into a native JavaScript or asm.js program that ran mostly in the browser. No, that's not it.

How Secure Is Android? Very Secure   Wednesday 08 April

In the past Android has had a poor reputation for security but this may be undeserved as a new report from Google spells out in detail.

Picat 1.0 - Is Logic Programming Making A Comeback?   Tuesday 07 April

Picat is a newish language that has just reached a version 1.0 release. It has some interesting features, but the fact that it supports logic programming is the most important.

New Visual Studio 2015 Product Range   Tuesday 07 April

Microsoft has revamped the Visual Studio range, going from four to three versions, and will be including storyboarding in all the versions. 

Massive Study On MOOCs   Monday 06 April

Researchers and Harvard and MIT have produced statistics about the first two years of the edX platform including its Computer Science courses.

Selling The DARPA Robotics Challenge   Monday 06 April

If you think that the DARPA Robotics Challenge is going to be a quiet academic sort of thing, then DARPA for one doesn't agree. If you view the latest promo video you might think you had fallen into an episode of robotwar. 

This Android Easter Egg Is A Lollipop   Sunday 05 April

Easter eggs what do you think about them? Are they a joke too far? An unprofessional waste of time? Users love them, but management hates them.

Microsoft 40 Years Today   Saturday 04 April

Microsoft was founded on April 4th, 1975. Today the company, reputedly the third most valuable in the world, turns 40.

April MOOCs - Focus On Data Science   Friday 03 April

Each new month brings new MOOCs and re-starts of existing ones presenting an ever widening choice. With one exception our selection of Computer Science classes for April are on data science.

WebStorm 10 Released   Friday 03 April

WebStorm, the JavaScript web development IDE from JetBrains has just been released in its 10th version with more language supports, faster performance and new features.

Forget The Apple Watch - Get The One You Really Need   Thursday 02 April

Programmers aren't generally the showy types, but when it comes to smart watches our choice goes well beyond stupid chunks of wrist jewellery of the sort Apple produces. We have our very own smart watch and what's smart is us, not the watch!

Replace By Fee - Bitcoin Modifications   Thursday 02 April

When we think of the Bitcoin algorithm, we tend to concentrate on the proof of work and how it allows the block chain to be built in a decentralised way. However, the algorithm is so much more and as people find alternative ways of working with Bitcoin, there might be a need to change it. 

Google Android Apps On Chrome Is Open To Everyone   Thursday 02 April

It is a mystery why Google has two operating systems - Chrome OS and Android. Now there are signs that the two are moving closer together as you can run Android apps on Chrome. 

Professional Programmer

How Jazz Ruined Programming   Thursday 02 April

It's an unlikely culprit. Why blame a style of music for all our troubles? It really is a question of style, programming style. 

The Core

Android Adventures - UI Graphics A Deep Dive   Tuesday 07 April

If you want to be a really good Android programmer, not only do you need to know how to create a UI, but also how the UI is created. To be really confident in what you are doing, you need to understand some of the inner workings of the Android graphics system. This is also essential if you want to modify the UI in code and work with menus.

Updated for Android Studio 1