News

Which Languages Are Bug Prone   Wednesday 04 October

A large-scale study of the effect of programming languages on software quality is reported in this month's Communications of the ACM. Here we report some of its major findings relating to the prevalence of bugs. 

A Worm's Mind In An Arduino Body   Wednesday 04 October

It is a few years since we first encountered the mind of C. elegans built into a Lego body but now we have a version everyone can play with. It is presented as a biologically plausible model of the neural network of a small worm running on an Arduino Uno robotic platform.  

SQL Server 2017 GA For Linux And Windows   Wednesday 04 October

SQL Server 2017 is now generally available, just 15 months after the release of SQL Server 2016. The new version is available for Windows, Linux and Docker. 

Theano To Cease Development After Version 1.0   Tuesday 03 October

Major development of Theano, the numerical computation library for Python developed as an open source project by Yoshua Bengio's Machine Learning group at the University of Montreal, is coming to an end. 

Open Jam For Open Source Games   Tuesday 03 October

A three-day games jam with an emphasis on using open source game development tools and a requirement to open source the resulting games starts on October 6th. 

Alexa Gadgets SDK For Voice-Enabled Play   Monday 02 October

At the same time as launching new Echo products, Amazon has announced Alexa Gadgets and unveiled Echo Buttons, which can be controlled using the Alexa Gadgets SDK and the Gadgets Skill API. 

PostgreSQL Improves Declarative Partitioning   Monday 02 October

The first release candidate of PostgreSQL 10.0 is now available, with improvements including logical replication and improved query parallelism. 

Computational Photography Moves Beyond The Camera   Sunday 01 October

Computational photography is the big second photographic revolution - the first being the move from film to digital. Now we have algorithms that can compose a photo after it has been taken and create effects that would require light to move in curved paths through lenses. We have moved far beyond the simple camera. 

The Corpus Christi Prime   Thursday 28 September

This is a clever idea that seems obvious only after you have seen it. Are there other applications waiting to be thought up? 

Top 10 From Around The Web: Python Development Resources   Friday 29 September

Python is the topic of this week's catch of blog posts that might otherwise have escaped your notice. It ranges over many different scenarios including machine learning, distributed programming, scripting, trading and web scraping. 

More AI Tools From Microsoft   Friday 29 September

This week's Microsoft Ignite brought news of Visual Studio Code Tool for AI and news of two updates to Microsoft Cognitive Services.  

CoffeeScript 2 Released With Support For Async   Thursday 28 September

There's a new version of CoffeeScript that is more compatible with modern JavaScript. The new release adds features including support for async functions and JSX. 

Echo Spot Poised To Occupy Top Slot In Alexa Range   Thursday 28 September

The Echo Spot, which takes features from the Show and the Dot may well turn out to be the most popular in Amazon's latest lineup of new Alexa-powered devices. 

Professional Programmer

Insider's Guide To Udacity Android Developer Nanodegree Part 4 - Build it Bigger   Monday 02 October

Steadily advancing through the Android Developer Nanodegree, I've now reached Level 3 on the curriculum, "Gradle for Android and Java" in which students learn how to use Gradle to "turn a pile of source code and resources into a shipped,tested and functioning app" .

The Core

JavaScript Data Structures - A Lisp-Like List   Thursday 28 September

JavaScript lets you do so much with so little as we show here by implementing a Lisp-like list data structure.