News

You Don't Need To Touch Type To Go Fast   Wednesday 10 February

It is a sad fact that many programmers don't learn to type, despite the fact that the keyboard is their main tool of the trade. New research, however, suggests that this might not matter as much as you might think and you don't have to be ashamed that you are not using all your fingers.

Successor To Cardboard Under Development   Wednesday 10 February

After its runaway success with Cardboard, its open source VR headset, Google is rumored to be working on a new version to be unveiled that this year's Google I/O in May.

Amazon Adds Game Dev Options To AWS   Wednesday 10 February

Amazon has added two new services to AWS for the creation of cross-platform cloud-connected games.

Lodash - A Functional JavaScript Library   Tuesday 09 February

Lodash began as a fork of the popular Underscore.js library but since then has managed to become its superset, adding new features and performing much better. Version 3.4.0 has recently been released.

Microsoft Research Open Source Challenge For Students   Tuesday 09 February

Microsoft Research has provided an interesting challenge to students - identify problems that can be addressed using Microsoft's open source tools and have a stab at solving them.

Coursera Web Specializations   Tuesday 09 February

Four web specializations at different levels and covering different aspects are starting on Coursera. If you want to earn a certificate you can save 10% by pre-paying for the bundle of courses. If you don't want the certificate, and don't want to complete a final project that demonstrates what you've learned, you can audit the courses for free.

Where Are The Raspberry Pi Zeros?   Monday 08 February

The Raspberry Pi Zero is a game changer, but it is not the only game changer on the market. In fact the question of whether it is on the market or not is an important one. 

How Fast Can You Number Crunch In Python   Monday 08 February

We are all more or less committed to using high-level languages, but there is always a background worry that they might not be fast enough for some tasks. An interesting set of benchmarks shows how to use Python to number crunch.

Usborne Books Revival   Sunday 07 February

Fewer Degrees Of Separation With Facebook   Saturday 06 February

Six degrees of separation is the, already well established, idea that any individual is connected to any other via six network nodes. New research has discovered that the average between Facebook users is just three and a half.

GCHQ's Xmas Puzzle Not Cracked - Update Solutions And Prizes   Saturday 06 February

The director of GCHQ distributed a puzzle to selected contacts and then made it available to everyone. The deadline for solution passed and there were no 100% correct solutions. Even so prizes were awarded and we do now have the answers.

Winner Of Underhanded C Announced   Friday 05 February

The winner of this year's competition to find the best sneaky C code has been announced. 

Scientist Lets You Refactor Live   Friday 05 February

One of the big problems of today is working with live code. Now a team at Github has a very clever tool that makes it easy to make, and evaluate, changes in live code in the same way that you might replace a bridge.

Mozilla Confirms End of Firefox OS For Smartphones   Thursday 04 February

Mozilla has sent an email to its community signalling a change of direction in which it will focus its activities on the Internet of Things which entails ending Firefox OS for smartphones. 

SQL Server Drivers For PHP and ODBC Updated   Thursday 04 February

Microsoft has released a preview version of the latest drivers for PHP for SQL Server, and has also released a community preview of the latest ODBC SQL Server driver for Windows and Linux. 

The Core

Advanced Perl Regular Expressions - The Pattern Code Expression   Monday 08 February

In this part of our series exploring Perl RegEx we are going to look into another advanced construct, that of the pattern code expression ??{code} . According to the official perldoc this  "..is like a regular code expression, except that the result of the code evaluation is treated as a regular expression and matched immediately."

PHP Variables and Expressions for Complete Beginners   Thursday 04 February

Variables and expressions are the core of programming in general and no less so in PHP. If you have never encountered the ideas here is a gentle introduction.