News

Survey Reveals JavaScript Trends  
Wednesday 21 November

The results of the JavaScript Trends 2018 survey are out. This year's report has a new dark theme which helps identify trends. However, the conclusion is that 2018 was mostly a continuation of the trends observed last year! 

Pachyderm Gets Faster And Gets Funding  
Wednesday 21 November

Data lake company Pachyderm has announced a new version of its software, along with $10 million in funding for future development. The developers say the new version of Pachyderm has more than a thousand times increase in workload performance, enabling 100s of terabytes of data to be processed per job. 

Linux To Start Alternative To glibc?   Tuesday 20 November

The world of open source software, and Linux/GNU in particular, is a strange one, governed by internal politics and beliefs. Now frustration seems to have the better of the Linux developers who are now considering creating their own Linux call library. 

GitHub Desktop Improves Merge Conflict Resolution   Tuesday 20 November

More automated merge conflict resolution has been added to the new version of GitHub Desktop client, along with an easier way to create new repositories and start merges. GitHub Desktop 1.5 gives developers a way to work with workflows in a desktop environment. 

Uber Joins Linux Foundation   Monday 19 November

Uber has joined the Linux Foundation as a Gold member, making an annual contribution of $100,000. In addition it has become a member of the TODO Group, an open group of companies that run open source programs. 

Wing Python Improves VI Mode   Monday 19 November

An updated version of the Wing Python IDE has been released with improvements to VI mode and the ability to create new virtualenvs from the project menu.  The Wing Python IDE has an intelligent editor and debugger and the creators say it makes interactive Python development fast, accurate, and fun. 

Alexa Skills Challenge The Winning Projects  
Sunday 18 November

Amazon has announced the results of a recent Alexa Skills Challenge, run on Devpost, with the theme "Tech for Good". Even if you didn't compete it is instructive to see the projects that were selected as winners. 

Raspberry Pi 3A+ Last Of The Line   Saturday 17 November

The eagerly awaited Raspberry Pi 3A+ is now on sale in time for the holidays. It has a smaller form factor than the 3B+, which is priced at $35. These two Model 3+ Raspberry Pis are the last ever of the "classic" Raspberry Pi range. 

Scylla DB Adds HTAP   Friday 16 November

A new release of Scylla DB has been released with support for Hybrid Transactional / Analytical Processing (HTAP) via concurrent OLTP and OLAP. The open source NoSQL database also now has feature parity with Apache Cassandra.  

Learn About AWS On Coursera   Friday 16 November

Coursera and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have joined forces to provide a course that introduces the core services and infrastructure of ASW. Through demonstrations participants will learn how to use and configure AWS services to deploy and host a cloud-native application. 

Visual Studio Java Gets IntelliCode   Thursday 15 November

Developers using Visual Studio Code to write in Java can now make use of Microsoft's AI-assisted IntelliSense extension. The extension has until now been limited to use with Python and C#. 

Tell Mozilla About Your CSS Woes   Thursday 15 November

Tell the Firefox DevTools team about your biggest CSS and web design issues by taking part in its Design Tools survey. Mozilla wants to hear from both web developers and designers, and not just Firefox users; devs who use Chrome, Safari, Edge, and IE users are encouraged to join in. 

The Core

Connecting To The Outside World with Perl and Database Events   by Nikos Vaggalis
Monday 19 November 

There are times when I want my database to be able to talk to the outside world, rather than the other way around. Let's explore some scenarios where this ability would come handy before implementing a solution using Ingres RDBMS and Perl. You can see the result in action and the code is available to replicate it with any RMDBS. 

Functional And Dysfunctional Programming  

by Mike James
Thursday 15 November

What is functional programming? Surely all our programs should function in some way or other? No - that's not what it means. Functional programming is altogether different....