News

IBM Debater Argues Like A Human - But How?   Wednesday 20 June

IBM is the outlier when it comes to AI. Most other companies are taking the neural network path, but IBM is very much into old-fashioned engineering. The new system has neural networks involved, but they are not the main tool in the kit.

Supreme Court To Rule On Apple App Store Monopoly   Wednesday 20 June

There's another strange twist in the story of the modern app store - the Supreme Court has decided that it will rule on whether or not the Apple App Store is a monopoly or not. The strange part is that it doesn't have to and usually wouldn't get involved.

Packt Skill Up Survey Shows Programmers Are Mostly Full Stack   Tuesday 19 June

Packt has shared the results of its recent Skill Up Survey. It joins the line up of reports that give us insights into the current developer population and reveals some interesting differences.  

GitHub For Unity Now Available   Tuesday 19 June

The open source GitHub for Unity editor extension, which brings Git into Unity with an integrated sign-in experience for GitHub users, is out of beta and available for download. 

Chrome Closes Down Inline Installation   Monday 18 June

This news is something you will applaud, but I'd ask you to also think of what is lost. The Google Chromium Blog has announced that no longer will Inline Installation of extensions be allowed. The browser has become walled garden and another piece of programmer freedom has evaporated.

Don't Neglect Open Source Security   Monday 18 June

In today's fast paced and competitive development environment, we are increasingly making use of open source components to avoid constantly recoding standard features. This introduces security concerns and here we look at some useful resources to understand the potential problems in order to tackle them.

Canada's RAND Immigration Lottery Not Random!   Sunday 17 June

Well of course it isn't, but that doesn't stop people who should no better from stirring up a mock disgust and alarm. Oh dear we programmers are at it again, cutting corners with our job lot of not-quite-perfect random numbers. 

AI Predicts World Cup Winners   Saturday 16 June

An AI system has been used to calculate the likely winners of this year's FIFA World Cup; and the real shock is the system didn't pick Germany. The FIFA World Cup 2018 is underway at the moment in Russia, with 32 teams from across the world taking part. 

Oracle Says Drop Nashorn From JDKs   Friday 15 June

Oracle wants to deprecate the Nashorn JavaScript Engine and remove it from all future Java Development Kits. The details emerged as part of a JDK Enhancement Proposal. 

Node.js Even Its Creator Thinks Its Flawed   Friday 15 June

You have to admire Ryan Dahl for creating node.js, even if you don't like it - and there are plenty of people who don't. Now he is back with  an admission that node.js isn't as good as it could have been and has something better to offer - Deno. 

Atom v Visual Studio Code - The Unexpected Consequence Of Consolidation   Thursday 14 June

OK, so you got upset about Microsoft taking over GitHub, but after a lot of reassurance you can see that commercial interests mean that Microsoft isn't going to trash GitHub - well not at first. But what about Atom? Can MS really afford to have two products in the same area? 

Why Article 13 Must Be Stopped   Thursday 14 June

With only days to go before a crucial vote on EU copyright legislation could have a drastic impact on the internet and, as many others have pointed out, spell the end for memes, Internet luminaries have spoken out and expressed their concern about Article 13.

Professional Programmer

Cloud Computing Books Pick Of The Bunch   Monday 18 June

In almost a decade I Programmer's book reviewers have read and commented on over 1500 programming titles. That's only a fraction of the programming books published, but we try to cover the important ones. In Programmer's Bookshelf we recommend the books you might find helpful at different stages in your personal development.

Babbage's Bag

What Is Computable?   Thursday 14 June

Performing a computation sounds like a simple enough task and it is easy to suppose that everything is computable. In fact there are a range of different types of non-computability that we need to consider. In this article we try to answer the question of what is computable and what is not. This is probably the fundamental question of computer science.