Casting is one of the most confusing aspects of any modern language and it often makes beginners think hard. But if you know why you are doing it, then the how makes a lot more sense. We have encountered casting earlier in the context of strong typing but there is more to it. Find out in this extract from my new book, Deep C#: Dive Into Modern C#.

The team of I Programmer book reviewers read a lot of programming titles, but as you may have noticed, some of us also write books about programming too. Here's a selection of titles on Python all from the I Programmer Library.

VS Code is a "go-anywhere, work-with-anything" dev system. However, not all languages are created equal and build systems for C/C++ are particularly challenging. The latest VS Code does something to make it easier.

Here are two introductions to Generative AI  - one from DeepLearning.AI presented by Andrew Ng, the other from Google Cloud Training. Both are on the Coursera platform and both are short, six hours and less than one hour respectively.

Microsoft is making Terminal Chat, an AI feature for Windows Terminal that was announced at Microsoft's Build 2023 conference, open source.

An updated version of Notepad++ is available, on its 20th anniversary. The text editor first saw light in November 2003 when it was released on SourceForge.

Amazon has announced Q, a generative artificial intelligence powered assistant that can be tailored to the data in a specific organization.

CRaC is a novel technique that makes the JVM faster to start.
Liberica's JDK build has just added support for it. Here are the details.

Boston Dynamics' quadruped robot Spot has been given the ability to hear questions and respond to them, thanks to integration with Chat GPT and other AI models. See Spot in action as a tour guide and as a proof of concept for the robotics applications of foundational models.

December 1st is the day on which, each year, Eric Wastl opens a very special advent calendar. You don't get rewarded with chocolates in the Advent of Code - instead it's stars for solving coding puzzles.

Microsoft has made the classic Windows XP wallpaper the design for its shot at this year's ugly sweater options. If, like me, you're wondering how you managed to successfully avoid this as a concept, read on.

GameMaker, for creating 2D platform games and now part of the Opera family, has made a change to its prices and terms and it is good news. GameMaker is now free for non-commercial purposes on all non-console platforms.

Microsoft has launched SharePoint Embedded, a new API-only cloud-based file and document management system that can be used by app developers to make use of the Microsoft 365 file and document storage platform for any app.

Author: Robert C. Martin
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Date: September 2023
Pages: 384
ISBN: 978-0138176396
Audience: General
Rating: 4.5
Reviewer: Kay Ewbank

This book sets out to explain the principles, patterns and practices of functional design, and why functional programming is a good thing.

This book describes a set of patterns that have been observed in mainstream open-source distributed systems. Unmesh Joshi looks at how distributed systems are inherently stateful systems, and what can and will go wrong when data is stored on multiple servers--from process crashes to network delays and unsynchronized clocks.

This book shows how to turn code into tangible creations with Python Playground, a collection of 15 inventive projects that will expand your programming horizons, spark your curiosity, and elevate your coding skills. Mahesh Venkitachalam shows how to generate art and music, simulate real-world phenomena, and interact with hardware, all through the use of Python and common libraries such as numpy, matplotlib, and Pillow.

Subtitled "Doing History in the Digital Age", this book offers an original methodological framework for approaching the web of the past, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right. Niels Brügger approaches the archived web as a semiotic, textual system in order to offer the first book-length treatment of its scholarly use.