Loops! They are fundamental to creating algorithms - but what are they and how many varieties are there? This is an extract from my book Trick of the Mind which explores what it is to be a programmer.

These days, top-down modular programming is pushed aside by object-oriented programming when it comes to teaching how to program. But there is a place for both methodologies to co-exist and top-down programming solves the ever-present problem of how to begin.

It is a long standing mystery to me that the people who standardize C really don't seem to use it much, or if they do it is in some refined academic way that is purely for amusement. The latest C standard, C23 is due later in the year and it isn't good.

In the week that eminent AI researchers sign a petition to halt further development of large language models a report from Stanford University shows that public attitudes towards AI models are largely positive, while NLP researchers tend to be more ambivalent.

There's an updated version of SkySQL, the fully managed database-as-a-service version of MariaDB.

JetBrains has released RubyMine 2023.1, with Rails 7 and Ruby 3.2 support to speed up the coding process. There are also improvements to the IDE's performance and memory consumption.

Google has announced a preview of AlloyDB Omni, a downloadable edition of AlloyDB designed to run on premises, or in the cloud. The developers say AlloyDB Omni offers similar benefits to AlloyDB, including high performance, PostgreSQL-compatibility, and Google Cloud support.

In another attempt to secure the precious software supply chain, GitHub has released a new Export SBOM functionality which generates an NTIA-compliant software bills of materials (SBOMs) on demand.

The Vesuvius Challenge, which asks teams to read four passages from inside two unopened scrolls buried under twenty meters of mud and ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD appears to be a herculean task. With a prize pool of over a million dollars it offers substantial cash prizes and just taking part seem a rewarding thing to do.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation in conjunction with the University of Cambridge have launched Ada Computer Science, a free online learning platform for teachers, students, and anyone interested in learning about computer science.

The past is a guide to the future, but sometimes you are just left wondering what went so wrong that we couldn't have the future we were promised. So it is with Something Pretty Right which tells the story of Visual Basic - its rise and its assassination. All down to Microsoft.

The latest update to IntelliJ IDEA has been released by JetBrains, with improvements including an updated UI, faster Maven imports and background commit checks.

PyTorch 2.0 has been released with fundamental changes to the way it works at the compiler level, faster performance, and support for Dynamic Shapes and Distributed.

Author: Edward Pollack & Jason Strate
Publisher: Apress
Pages: 659
ISBN: 9781484292143
Print: 1484292146
Kindle: B0BSWH65ST
Audience: DBAs & SQL devs
Rating: 4 or 1 (see review)
Reviewer: Ian Stirk

This book discusses indexes, a primary means of improving performance in SQL Server, how does it fare?

This book addresses the disparity between the fact that machine learning has redefined the way we work with data and is increasingly becoming an indispensable part of everyday life, yet software engineering has played a remarkably small role compared to other disciplines. Marco Scutari and Mauro Malvestio take an overview of how to design machine learning pipelines as well as the state-of-the-art tools we use to make them.

Most books about compilers dedicate one chapter to each progressive stage, a structure that hides how language features motivate design choices. By contrast, in this book subtitled An Incremental Approach in Racket, Jeremy G. Siek provides an incremental approach that allows students to write every single line of code themselves.

This book starts from the first steps in planning, building, and programming a robot with Raspberry Pi Pico. After a quick tour of Pico, Danny Staple begins with designing a robot chassis in 3D CAD, providing easy-to-follow instructions, shopping lists, and plans. Later chapters add simple sensors and outputs to extend the robot, reinforce design skills, and techniques for programming with CircuitPython. The book also covers interactions with electronics, standard robotics algorithms, and the discipline and process for building robots.