Feature Articles

Programmer's Python - Type Annotation

There are moves to bring strong typing into Python and it isn’t a bad idea, but you need to understand type and its role in programming to make good use of it, or to decide if it is essential or optional.

JavaScript Data Structures - A TimeInterval Object

Building a TimeInterval object is not only useful in itself, it also demonstrates how to use objects in JavaScript without pretending that it is a class-based, typed language. Find out how object augmentation replaces inheritance.

News

Node.js 14 Adds New Diagnostic Tools
22 Apr | Kay Ewbank

Node.js has been updated with Diagnostic Reports added as a stable feature, a new experimental async local storage API that can trace a transaction through different steps in a process and support for internationalization and easier native module use.

The claim that remote software developers earn 22% more than developers who (almost) never work remotely has recently raised some eyebrows and some questions. Yes, the headline was designed to attract attention, but there is truth behind it. 

RedisGraph, the graph database model for Redis, has been updated. The new edition supports full-text searching, full-graph response to queries, and enhancements to the Cypher query language.

Python 2.7.18 is the very final maintenance release of the Python 2 line. Being the very final release is a milestone to be recorded. However, it does raise the question of why it comes almost 4 months after Python 2's official end of life. 

The open source project HTML DOM has 100 snippets of vanilla JavaScript for common DOM manipulation tasks. It also has 1.8K stars on GitHub, which must make it worthwhile taking a look.

DevSecOps developers working with "mature devops practices" have higher job satisfaction and are more security conscious, according to new survey from devops automation company Sonatype.

CryptoHack is a fun way to learn cryptography and also acquire valuable CTF skills. Through a series of puzzles, it challenges you to break bad implementations of "modern" crypto, such as AES, RSA, and Elliptic-curves. 

OK, new proofs that things are NP hard are so common that we have given up reporting on them, but this one - a new game from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology - is fun. It's a generalization of the well-known Dots and Boxes.

Together with Intel, Udacity has launched a new nanodegree to give developers the skills they need to build and deploy AI-powered edge devices. Udacity has also extended its recent Quarantine Special Offer of 1 month of free access to this new nanodegree program and to the others which were previously included.

Sophos has announced that its sandbox-based isolation tool Sandboxie is now open source. Sandboxie was acquired by Sophos in 2017 as part of the takeover of Invincea. Sophos made Sandboxie free to use last year, and said at that point the tool would be moving to an open-source model.

The TIOBE Index for April 2020 has been published bringing news that the graphical block-based language Scratch has moved up the index by seven places in the past year and regained a place in the top 20 for the first time in some years. 

The Qt framework may be moving to a paid-for model, according to a report from a KDE developer on the board of the KDE Free Qt Foundation. The report says that the Qt Company is thinking of restricting new releases to paying customers for the next year. 

Books of the Week

Added to Book Watch

• The Age of Algorithms (Cambridge University Press)
• Expert C++ (Packt)
• Building React Apps with Server-Side Rendering (Apress)

Full Review

Data Structures and Program Design Using C++ (Mercury Learning)

Alex Armstrong awarded a rating of 3 out of 5 to this book he thought more suitable as a textbook for a class rather than for individual study.