News

Centennial Brings Win32 To Universal Windows Apps   Wednesday 06 April

Microsoft has delivered on its promise of the Centennial bridge to Windows 10 Universal apps. You can now convert your existing Win32/WPF apps to Universal. 

Is Chrome Most Prevalent Browser?   Wednesday 06 April

Google Chrome has been steadily increasing its browser market share while Microsoft has been losing its. If the trend continues Chrome could soon become the top desktop browser.

SQL Server Development Edition For Free   Wednesday 06 April

SQL Server Developer Edition can now be downloaded for free, as long as you have a Visual Studio Dev Essentials membership.

Visual C++ For Linux   Tuesday 05 April

Another one of those "the world has gone mad" announcements at Build is that now Visual Studio supports C++ development for Linux. As always with this sort of development, the question is why?

Apache Java Tool for Editing PDF   Tuesday 05 April

PDFBox, an open-source Java tool for working with PDF documents, has been released by Apache.

Xamarin Now Free - Does This Change Everything Or Nothing?   Monday 04 April

Xamarin has occupied a strange place in the .NET programmer's world - the fact that it existed was exciting, but not quite a fully part of it. Now that Microsoft has completed the purchase of the company, it is fully part of it and this is slightly bewildering. 

New Arduino Platform   Monday 04 April

April 2 was Arduino/Genuino Day. As part of the celebrations, Massimo Banzi announced the availability of the MKR1000 and revealed that the Intel Arduino 101 realtime operating system has been open sourced. He also introduced Arduino Create, a new cloud platform for makers.

HEC 1950s Business Computer Goes On Display   Monday 04 April

The first version of the Hollerith Electronic Computer, Britain’s first mass-produced business computer which is notable for being based on a design by Andrew Booth and featuring his magnetic drum store, is now on display in the First Generation Gallery at The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) on Bletchley Park.

E. coli Your Next Major Platform Programmed In Cello   Sunday 03 April

If you have grown tired of programming for desktops, phones and even IoT devices then why not move to the next level. Cello is a wetware programming language that literally lets you program bacteria.

Microsoft Translator API   Saturday 02 April

Microsoft has released a new version of its Translator API. This provides developers with the same speech-to-speech facilities as those used in the Skype Translator and in the iOS and Android Microsoft Translator apps.

HTML5 From W3C X Series   Friday 01 April

An introductory course has been added to the existing two-part Learn HTML series from W3C on the EdX platform. Together the three courses form an X series which starts on April 4.

Docker Native Windows And Mac   Friday 01 April

Native versions of Docker for Windows and Mac are being made available in a limited beta.

Visual Studio "VS 15" Preview Released   Thursday 31 March

A preview of the next version of Visual Studio has been released at Microsoft's Build conference.

Run Linux Binaries On Windows 10   Thursday 31 March

It's Build 2016 and we can start to argue about the top announcement, but being able to run Linux binaries under Windows 10 must count for something. It is being headlined as "Run Bash on Windows" but it goes well beyond this. The question is why and what effect will it have on programmers?

Conversation and Cognition at Build 2016   Thursday 31 March

In his keynote at Microsoft Build 2016, Satya Nadella outlined his vision of Conversations as a Platform in which human language becomes the user interface and a new breed of bots are the apps, orchestrated by Cortana on Skype. 

SandDance Added To PowerBI   Thursday 31 March

A new data visualization tool has been showcased by Microsoft Research. SandDance is a Microsoft Garage project that is being released in two versions; a standalone Web-based tool and a custom Power BI visual. 

Professional Programmer

Artificial Intelligence For Better Or Worse?   Monday 04 April

Advancement in the field of Artificial intelligence is like a tsunami that cannot be stopped. There is a new conquest everyday that, piece by piece completes the puzzle. But what happens when the puzzle is finally assembled? Will the world transcend into a new state of consciousness or will it come face to face with its own demise? It's not easy to tell, but there are hints and indications from both directions.

eBooks

Getting started with Java   Thursday 31 March

Here we tell you how to get started with modern Java development in the shortest possible time. The approach uses NetBeans and Swing and all of the resources used are free to download and use.