News

NetBeans Improves JDK 11 Support But No C/C++   Wednesday 02 January

The second major release of the Apache NetBeans IDE is now available. NetBeans 10 has added support for JDK 11, JUnit 5, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy, as well as solving many issues. On the other hand, there is disappointing news on the C/C++ front. 

The 12 News Days of Xmas 10 - October  
Wednesday 02 January

... the month of mists and mellow fruitfulness. It is also the programmer's month because it could only be bettered if there was a Hexober. 

Mozilla Labs Quietly Relaunches  
Wednesday 02 January

Mozilla Labs has been given a new lease of life - and a new URL. The new website was launched two weeks ago and is a showcase for seven ongoing projects, including Firefox Reality, WebXR Viewer, Common Voice and Project Things.

Julia Language Creators Awarded Numerical Software Prize  Tuesday 01 January

Three of the co-creators of the Julia programming language are the recipients of the 2019 James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, which is awarded every four years to recognize innovative software in scientific computing by researchers in the early stages of their careers.  

The 12 News Days of Xmas 09 - September
Monday 31 December

It's the back to school month and many people feel that the year starts here. So let's get serious...

Internet Pioneer Lawrence Roberts Has Died  
Monday 31 December

Dr Lawrence (Larry) Roberts designed and managed the first packet network, ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. He passed away at his home in Redwood City, California, on December 26, 2018 aged 81. 

The 12 News Days of Xmas 08 - August  
Monday 31 December

August - the silly season in full swing, but we do have SIGGRAPH to keep us entertained.  

Entering The Era Of Voice Power  
Sunday 30 December

Voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, are changing the way people interact with computer devices. As they become more popular, they are getting better and smarter - and harder to ignore. 

A New Mersenne Prime Discovery
Saturday 29 December

The 51st Mersenne Prime was discovered on December 7, 2018, less than a year after the previous one was found on December 26, 2017. The new prime number, known as M82589933, has a value of 2^82,589,933-1. It has 24,862,048 digits, more than one and a half million more than its predecessor. 

The 12 News Days of Xmas 07 - July  
Friday 28 December

July is the month when holidays get into full swing - it makes you wonder when we ever get any work done? But some of us were clearly doing things. 

Ruby 2.6 Adds JIT Compiler  
Friday 28 December

Ruby 2.6 has been released with an experimental JIT compiler, and an abstract syntax tree module.

The 12 News Days of Xmas 06 - June  
Thursday 27 December

June isn't quite the silly season, but some of the news items in the month were fairly silly - others more worrying than silly. 

GitLab Goes Serverless  
Thursday 27 December

GitLab adds to the competition among cloud services providers with its own FaaS solution.  

The Core

JavaScript Async - The Callback & The Controller  
Monday 31 December

Callbacks are so familiar we forget their true position in the world. Not quite events, but very similar. This is an extract from Ian Elliot's published book JavaScript Async: Events Callbacks, Promises & Async/Await. 

Babbage's Bag

What if Babbage..?  
Thursday 27 December

What if the computer had been invented in the Victorian era? This isn’t a silly idea. Charles Babbage was born in the eighteenth century - the age of the Industrial Revolution. The calculating machines he invented, although never fully realized in his lifetime, are rightly seen as the forerunners of modern programmable computers. What if he had succeeded?