Featured Articles

Programmer's Guide To Theory - NP Complete
Mike James

One of the most amazing ideas in computer science is that some NP problems are complete in the sense that they represent all of the problems in NP. Given how different NP problems can seem, how can this be?  This is an extract from Chapter 17 of my recent book on theory.

Binary trees in JavaScript? Easy with the right storage mapping function. Find out how to code a binary tree right up to a depth-first traversal.

News and Comment

Android Studio 4.1 - No Relief In Sight
21 Oct | Mike James

A new version of any IDE is always an event, but Android Studio's state reflects the current mess that Android developement is in. I look forward to each new release in the hope that something has been done. The sad news is that Android Studio 4.1 brings no relief to worried Android programmers.

The Eclipse Foundation’s IoT Working Group has released the results of its 2020 IoT Developer Survey. Agriculture emerges as the leading industry focus area and security as the top concern. Two thirds of respondents either experiment with, use or contribute to open source projects.

Apache Isis has been updated with improvements, including a new programming model for action parameter negotiation, and a simplified command service.

It's been a long wait, but at last the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 is available and it's quite a departure from earlier compute modules. Is this enough to get the Pi a place at the serious IoT table?

Google has extended the Android Auto options with a library that can be used for creating navigation, parking, and electric vehicle charging apps. Android for Cars App Library has now been released as an open beta, for any developer to use.

The next version of npm, v7, has been completed and will be shipping with Node.js v15 this week. The new release adds several features requested by developers including support for Workspaces.

In what I can't help thinking is an example of vicious misuse of AI, Google has come up with a new search option that lets you hum a tune to find out its name.

IBM this week awarded the 2020 Call for Code grand prize of $200,000 to the creators of an app that helps small farmers threatened by climate change decide what to plant and when.

Running a website is not an easy task, as you have to make sure that it is secure. Here are some tips for those moving their retail outlets online. 

Microsoft loves Open Source and loves Python. Now it seems, it loves JavaScript too? Who would have thought that someday Microsoft would promote and teach languages and frameworks not based on .NET?

Users of GitLab can now make use of the Gitpod UI. GitLab is a popular DevOps tool that is used by more than 100,000 organizations. A partnership between GitLab and Gitpod means developers can make use of fully prebuilt, ready-to-code development environments for any GitLab project in the browser.