News

Oracle Proposes That NetBeans Move To Apache   Wednesday 14 September

NetBeans is often regarded as the also ran in the IDE stakes, but this is more an error of perception than reality. Lots of people use it and lots of people think it is better than the alternatives - me for one. Now the news is worrying. Oracle, a company well known for caring little for open source, is trying to get Apache to take on NetBeans. Is this the end, or the beginning...

The Weekly Top 10: Python Web Development Resources   Wednesday 14 September

Python is the topic of this week's catch of blog posts that might otherwise have escaped your notice. There are a couple of courses, a round up of books, a couple of servings of Django, Python compared to SQL for data analysis and more. In short, something for every Pythonista.

MySQL Reaches Milestone 8 Release   Tuesday 13 September

There's a major new release of MySQL with improvements including a transactional data dictionary.

Master Phase Of IARPA Mapping Challenge   Tuesday 13 September

The Master phase of the IARPA 3D Mapping Challenge is now underway with live scoring starting today. There's a prize purse of $86,000 for this contest which runs until October 4th.

Google's DeepMind Perfects Speech - But There Is More   Monday 12 September

WaveNet is a neural network that generates speech better than ever before. But before you just write this off as another in the long line of neural network successes, this might be more of a breakthrough than just voice.

Mobile App Development Webinar Reviewed   Monday 12 September

Rob Lauer, from the Telerik Platform Product Management Team at Progress, recently hosted a webinar on ways of building mobile applications. Mobile Application Development - Demystified is now available to all. 

Original EDSAC Programmers Look Back   Sunday 11 September

Three EDSAC veterans who recently visited  its reconstruction project, provided some interesting insights into the day-to-day operation of the machine in the 1950s.

10 Million Raspberry Pis   Saturday 10 September

It is all too easy to miss the surprise factor in this statistic. We have grown accustomed to the way the Raspberry Pi has taken over the world, but 10 Million Units in four years is amazing. What are they all doing!

Android Studio 2.2 RC 2 Downplays New Layout   Friday 09 September

One of the big new features of Android Studio 2.2 announced at this years Google  I/O was the new Constraint Layout. It was heavily featured in the early previews. But since Release Candidate 1 it has been relegated to a back seat.

Samsung's JerryScript Is Now Stable   Friday 09 September

Samsung's JerryScript JavaScript interpreter, described as a JavaScript engine for the Internet of Things, has reached stability in its 1.0 release.

Airship, a truly secure PHP CMS   Thursday 08 September

Attacks on popular Content Management Systems are all too common, and with hacking nowadays considered big business, there's no sign of the attacks declining. CMSs therefore find themselves caught in the eye of the storm, considered as a prime target for both script kiddies and professional hackers alike, as they hold the biggest share of the e-commerce market.

KDevelop Develops   Thursday 08 September

 A new version of KDevelop has been released with improved C++ support powered by Clang, along with CMake and QML/JavaScript support.

The Core

Raspberry Pi WiFi With The ESP8266   Monday 12 September

The ESP8266 provides a low cost and relatively easy way to get a Pi onto WiFi without using a USB port. This is a particularly attractive proposition for the Pi Zero, which only has a single micro USB connector.  

eBooks

Java Class Inheritance   Thursday 08 September

Working with classes and objects is a very sophisticated approach to programming. You can't expect to absorb all of its implications in one go. We have already looked at the basics of class and objects. Now we need to look at encapsulation, constructors, overloading and inheritance.