News

Visual Studio 2019 Will Include IntelliCode   Wednesday 13 June

Early details of Visual Studio 2019 have emerged, though details are few and the main news is that development is underway.

Are You A Typical Developer?   Wednesday 13 June

JetBrains has conducted a survey of 6000 developers. It found Java to be the most popular programming language followed by JavaScript and Python. Go was discovered to be the language that devs were keenest to adopt in the future. We now look at a selection of its other findings.

Apple Launches JavaScript Map Kit   Wednesday 13 June

Apple has released a beta version of a JavaScript library for working with interactive maps on web pages. MapKit JS provides map rendering that is optimized for various browsers and devices, and supports native gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and two-finger rotate.

Statistics & Data Science MicroMasters on edX   Tuesday 12 June

There is no let up in the demand for Data Scientists, nor in the interest shown in this emerging field. Enrollment has just opened for an online program that can serve as an accelerated route to gaining a Master's degree at seven universities and also provides a valuable professional credential in its own right.

Microsoft Showcases Key Value Store   Tuesday 12 June

Researchers from Microsoft have presented a new embedded key-value store called FASTER at SIGMOD 2018.

Google's DeepMind Files AI Patents   Monday 11 June

When you see the list of patents that DeepMind has filed you will be shocked and not in awe. It reinforces not learning, but the idea that all software patents are stupid.

Ruby 2.6 Adds JIT   Monday 11 June

There's a new preview of Ruby that is the first in the Ruby 2.6.0 series. The developers say the preview has been released earlier than usual because it includes an important new feature, JIT.

Math & Cryptography Olympiad Open To All   Sunday 10 June

NSUCRYPTO is an online contest that asks participants to solve tough problems. It has already taken place four times and all its previous problems and their solutions are available. Not all its problems have been solved, however, as this contest is looking for breakthroughs in hard scientific problems of modern cryptography.

Hand Tracking With Nothing But A Webcam   Saturday 09 June

There have been hand trackers and they didn't really make much of an impression, but a hand tracker that uses just a webcam could be the breakthrough. Webcams are everywhere and the software could add hand tracking to almost any app and at almost no cost.

Apache Flink 1.5.0 Adds Support For Broadcast State   Friday 08 June

The latest version of Apache Flink has been released with a rewritten deployment and process model, and support for broadcast state.

Mozilla Grants For Art & Advocacy   Thursday 07 June

Mozilla has announced new awards with an emphasis on creativity and spreading a message about threats to a healthy Internet from rogue artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Apple Drops OpenGL and OpenCL   Thursday 07 June

One of the more important announcements at WWDC, Apple's developer conference, was that as far as Apple is concerned OpenGL and Open CL are deprecated technologies. What do you think Apple expects you to use? Yes you got it - Metal - Apple's invented-here, closer-to-the-hardware 3D graphics system.

YouTube Contest On Kaggle   Thursday 07 June

Google AI has announced a new Kaggle video understanding challenge in conjunction with the 2nd Workshop on YouTube-8M Large-Scale Video Understanding, at the 2018 European Conference on Computer Vision in Munich, Germany in September.

TypeScript Adds Unused Span Reporting   Thursday 07 June

The latest release of TypeScript is now available with improvements to the editor including support for unused span reporting; the ability to convert properties to getter/setter; and the choice of moving declarations to their own new files.

Professional Programmer

We Make Nothing   Thursday 07 June

Literally we make nothing. Give me a pound of program, a foot, a kilogram or a meter of your latest program, no not the paper you printed it on, your program, the real thing. You can't - because you make nothing...

The Core

Android Programming In Java - Simple Animation  
Monday 11 June

Android has some sophisticated UI animation features, but it is still good to know how to do the most basic of animations using raw bitmap graphics. Animation is also a good place to first meet the problems of threading and multitasking. This is an extract from Android Programming In Java: Starting with an App 3rd Ed (I/O Press)