Featured Articles

Fundamental C - Enumerations
Harry Fairhead

This extract, from Harry Fairhead's new book on programming C in an IoT context, explains what enumerations are all about. You don't need them but they do make your program easier to read and hence perhaps less error prone.

The IBM PC can be considered the most boring computer ever designed. Even so its legacy is everywhere. How did this dominance come about and why isn't IBM more important today?

News

Edge Becomes Second Most Popular Desktop Browser
08 Apr | Janet Swift

Microsoft Edge has increased its market share to the point where it has overtaken Firefox to become the second most popular browser on the desktop. The trends - upward for Edge and downward for Firefox, over the past few months suggests that this is a permanent and irreversible change.

The eleventh version of ECMA Script has just been finalized and we can look forward to some fun things as the year progresses. So what's new?

Vodafone is asking smartphone users to help with a project aiming to speed up research to find a cure for corona virus. The Corona-AI project will be delivered through DreamLab, Vodafone's app originally aimed at helping cancer research.

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Library has opened its virtual gates to non-members for free until June 30, 2020. 

The window for applications for Google's Season of Docs 2020 is approaching, and mentoring organizations will be able to begin submitting applications to Google from April 13. Season of Docs is a project supported by Google that aims to bring open source organizations and technical writers together. 

Due to the Covid-19 planetary wide scare, many conferences instead of being canceled have gone purely virtual. To know which ones are choosing this delivery method Spokable has posted an ever-updated tracker of virtual conferences, at the moment covering over 40 online events. 

Microsoft is shutting down TechNet Gallery, the website where TechNet members could share scripts, tools, and guides for use with Microsoft products.

Boeing has so many bigger problems that this one could go unnoticed, but it is of special interest to us programmers. The FAA has issued an order that 787s have to be switched off and on every 51 days.

The Eclipse Foundation has released Theia, described as a true open source alternative to Microsoft’s popular Visual Studio Code. Theia is an extensible platform to develop multi-language Cloud and Desktop IDEs.

Pluralsight is giving free, unlimited access to its entire library of more than 7,000 video courses for the entire month of April. The offer is open to new users who have to sign up but don't need to provide credit card details.

GitHub recently passed $1,000,000 in total payments to researchers since moving its program to HackerOne in 2016.  Over half its total awards were made in the last year alone, reaching almost $590,000 in total bounty rewards across its programs.

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2 has been released with a number of improvements including revamped Git functionality and a new .NET Async tool.

Books of the Week

Added to Book Watch

• Deep Learning with JavaScript (Manning)
• Practical C Programming (Packt)
• SQL Database Programming 5th Ed (Questing Vole Press)

Full Review

MongoDB The Definitive Guide, 3rd Ed(O'Reilly)

 
Awarding a top 5-star rating, Kay Ewbank concludes her review with: This new edition seems a worthy successor to the previous editions.