News

Google's Jack & Jill Android Java Compiler Project Is Dead   Wednesday 15 March

In a surprise announcement, the Android development team has made it clear that the new Jack compiler and Jill linker are not going anywhere. The move to Java 8 will now be made by developing the existing javac compiler. 

Stack Overflow Reveals Hiring Trends   Wednesday 15 March

Stack Overflow has collected data on changes in the developer hiring scene that will be really useful to anyone currently looking for a job. It shows that ReactJS and Docker are the fastest growing targets that employers are looking for, while Ajax is declining fast.

Python cx_Oracle Adds Direct Binding   Wednesday 15 March

Oracle has released a new version of the Python interface for Oracle Database. The new version supports Python 3.6 and Oracle client 12.2.

Pi Day 2017 - Why Pi?   Tuesday 14 March

It is Pi Day again and it's time to think deep thoughts about Pi and why it is so special. Of course, you can just use it as an excuse for eating large amounts of Pie.

WebAssembly Explorer - A Learning Tool   Tuesday 14 March

WebAssembly has arrived in Firefox 52 and Chrome 57. It brings the ability for developers to compile applications from C or C++  for the web. To help developers understand and experiment with its binary format Mozilla has created WebAssembly Explorer.

Software Testing Diploma   Tuesday 14 March

Alison has added four new courses about software testing methods and procedures to its portfolio and, as they need to be taken as a sequence, has combined them in a Diploma in Software Testing.

GameMaker Studio 2 Adds Level Editing   Monday 13 March

A new version of GameMaker Studio has been released with level editing and workflow enhancements. The software is designed for creating 2D games, and there's a new closed beta for the Mac version.

Gmail Add-ons Developer Preview   Monday 13 March

Google has announced the developer preview of Gmail Add-ons which provides a new way for G Suite users to access an app's functionality directly from Gmail.

//No Comment - Assessing Code Authorship, Git Blame Who? & The Case of OpenStack   Sunday 12 March

•  Assessing Code Authorship: The Case of the Linux Kernel

• Git Blame Who? Stylistic Authorship Attribution of Small, Incomplete Source Code Fragments

• Cooperation among competitors in the open-source arena: The Case of OpenStack

Patently Absurd - Out Of Office Notification   Saturday 11 March

In January 2017 the United States Patent Office granted a patent application lodged seven years previously by IBM for an Out-of-Office email notification system. Seven weeks later IBM formally disclaimed the patent. What does this say about software patents?

Self Driving Car Challenge   Friday 10 March

Udacity and Chinese ridesharing company Didi Chuxing are joint sponsors of a contest with a top cash prize of US $100,000. Part of the appeal of participating is that the top five teams get the chance to run code on the Udacity self-driving car.

//No Comment - JavaScript Classes, Checking APIs & Deep Learning   Thursday 09 March

• Refactoring Legacy JavaScript Code to Use Classes: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 

• Statically Checking Web API Requests in JavaScript

• Development of JavaScript-based deep learning platform and application to distributed training

Kaggle Enveloped By Google Cloud   Thursday 09 March

Rumors that Google was acquiring the data science community Kaggle were confirmed at the Google Cloud Next Conference yesterday. This confers the benefit of the ability to store and query large datasets and direct access to Google's cloud machine learning environment.

Professional Programmer

Programming - A Life Long Challenge   Thursday 09 March

What is it that makes programming more than just an occupation? It's that chance it gives you to see things from the inside out. And watching a beginner gives insights into what it is all about.

The Core

Password Cracking RAR Archives With Perl   Monday 13 March

Cracking RAR archives is something not yet achievable as the format has no known vulnerabilities.Let me correct that, no known vulnerabilities as far as unlocking an encrypted RAR archive without the use of a password goes. In this article we look at password cracking by dictionary attack.  Along the way we explore how to turn a single threaded Perl/Tk GUI application into a multi-threaded one.