Professional Programmer

Insider's Guide To Udacity Android Developer Nanodegree Part 2   Monday 24 April

Continuing the journal charting my progress through Udacity's course for intermediate Java programmers, we come to the second module - the final stage of project Popular Movies. Here we add  functionality to produce a fully featured application that looks and feels natural on the latest Android operating system.

Programmer Puzzles

Towers Of Hanoi Mutants   Thursday 20 April

Towers of Hanoi is a classic puzzle and is often used to illustrate the idea of recursion. Here you are challenged to find solutions to some variations, after first explaining the original version.

News

Stanford CS Moves To JavaScript   Wednesday 26 April

The headline tells you all you need to know - Stanford Computer Science department is experimenting with replacing its long running Java-based introduction to programming with one based on JavaScript. Why? 

Indian Progammers Aren't Being Prepared For Real World Coding   Wednesday 26 April

A new study of the programming skills of Indian students shows that only a tiny proportion are ready to be employed in programming jobs. 

Naturalizing A Programming Language   Wednesday 26 April

This is an interesting idea: take a core programming language and allow the users to teach the system how they want to express their intentions. Instead of trying to use natural language as a computer language, why not develop computer languages in the direction of natural languages? 

Early Bird Offer For Office 365 Engage   Wednesday 26 April

A new conference for Office power users and developers is taking place from 19-22 June. Office 365 Engage covers the full spectrum of Office 365 needs, including SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Azure infrastructure that supports Office 365, Office 365 applications, and Office 365 development. Take advantage of the Early Bird offer and an extra 10% discount exclusive to I Programmer. 

Kite - Smart Copilot For Programmers   Tuesday 25 April

The best products and ideas always spring out of identifying and addressing a general and widespread need. In the case of programming it's the time required when coding for searching the Internet for relevant documentation and code samples. 

Amazon Lets Us All Use Lex To Build A Bot   Tuesday 25 April

 Lex is the voice-to-text and text-to-voice service that powers Alexa. Now we can all use it to add voice capabilities to our apps and devices without restriction. But there is a cost. 

CodeStar to Simplify Development On AWS   Monday 24 April

For developers the most important announcement made at last week's AWS Summit was CodeStar, which is intended is to enable you to quickly develop, build, and deploy applications on AWS. 

IPython 6 Release Supporting Python 3.3 and Above   Monday 24 April

IPython 6.0 has been released and, as expected, drops support for the Python 2.7 branch. While not everyone will necessarily agree, this is a welcome move that improves IPython. 

Magic Is Just Technology In This Amazing Video   Sunday 23 April

We all know the Arthur C. Clarke quote about any sufficiently advanced technology looking like magic, but perhaps our own technology is already enough to look like magic if presented in the right way. 

Google Uses AI To Make Better Artists   Saturday 22 April

Google has come up with an app called AutoDraw that turns rough drawings into a finished image using a combination of machine learning and a library of pre-drawn images. 

Top 10 From Around The Web: PHP Development Resources   Friday 21 April

PHP may not be the most trendy web development language but it is what is behind the scenes of many of the websites we use daily,  Facebook and IProgrammer alike. This round up of external blog posts is all about PHP. 

Facebook Relay Improves Mobile Performance   Friday 21 April

Facebook has released a new version of its Relay JavaScript framework. Relay Modern has been designed to be easier to use, more extensible, and able to improve performance on mobile devices. 

Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs Released   Friday 21 April

Microsoft has announced the General Availability on Azure of its Face API and Computer Vision API to give developers easy tools for handling and interpreting images. The Content Moderator is the third of the newly released APIs. 

Facebook Open Sources Litho Android UI Framework   Thursday 20 April

Facebook's F8 conference often seems more like a place to announce its future directions than anything directly relevant to developers, but Litho should be of interest to any Android programmer.  

Larks and Night Owls of the Programming World   Thursday 20 April

Stack Overflow has produced an interesting analysis of developers working habits that reveals differences that depend on your choice of language. It turns out that C# programmers tend to be early birds; whereas those using C start later and work on into the evening and that London and Paris follow the strictest 9 to 5 working day. 

Microsoft R Server 9.1 Adds ML Enhancements   Thursday 20 April

There's a new release of Microsoft R Server that adds new machine learning enhancements and integration with HDInsight.