News

Chance - Your All-Purpose JavaScript Data Generator   Wednesday 24 July

So you need to test your program, but where do you get some test data from? Chance is a small JavaScript library that will generate random data of various types - like telephone numbers - for you. 

Global Mobile Developer Patterns Revealed   Wednesday 24 July

In its largest and most global developer survey to date, Vision Mobile has found that while Android and iOS are almost in equal in terms of being a developer's main platform, Android leads in terms of mindshare, i.e. the totality of platforms developers are working on. 

Oracle and ARM Java Deal   Tuesday 23 July

Oracle and ARM are collaborating to make the Java Platform better for embedded systems.

Samsung Developer Conference Slated For October   Tuesday 23 July

Samsung had announced a new developer conference. Is this the next must-attend event for Android developers? Is it just Android devs who are going to be interested?

NetBeans 7.4 Beta Released   Tuesday 23 July

NetBeans IDE 7.4 Beta extends HTML5 features to Java EE and PHP application development; introduces new support for Hybrid HTML5 development on Android and iOS platforms; provides support for preview versions of JDK 8; and has redesigned JavaFX support.

Machine Learning Speeds TCP   Monday 22 July

By applying machine learning to the TCP congestion control algorithm, a team at MIT has beaten similar algorithms designed by humans. But don't expect to understand how it works.

Statutory Pardon For Alan Turing   Monday 22 July

There is now a very real prospect that an official pardon in respect of his conviction for gross indecency will be granted to Alan Turing, almost 50 years after his death by suicide.

Adobe PhoneGap 3.0 Released   Monday 22 July

There’s a new version of PhoneGap, the open-source framework for creating mobile apps. The new version has better tools, a new plug-in architecture, and new APIs.

ASIMO Can't Recognize Who Has a Question   Sunday 21 July

In order to show off ASIMO's latest advances in autonomous behavior, Honda set up live  "demonstration testing". This ran into a snag when ASIMO asked visitors to raise their hands to ask questions.

Imagine Cup 2013 Gives Way To 2014   Sunday 21 July

This month's Worldwide Finals of the Imagine Cup was the 11th annual staging of Microsoft's student competition. Over the time it has visited countries around the world. Next year the event will be "going home" to Microsoft's Redmond headquarters in Seattle, USA.

Udacity Looks To AI To Improve Learning Experience   Saturday 20 July

MOOCs have come in for a lot of criticism for low retention and low success rates. Udacity wants to improve the MOOC experience and is looking for ways to construct courses to adapt to student needs.

Live the Life of a Robot Vacuum Cleaner   Saturday 20 July

Here's a launch trailer for a simulation game that "puts you in the shoes of a robot vacuum cleaner". And before you dismiss this as a wacky idea ask yourself, would you be more interested if the game featured a dog, cat. or other pet?

The H Closes Due To Lack Of Revenue   Friday 19 July

The H, a site that focused on news of interest to developers, particularly those on the open source community has closed down, citing the impossibility of making enough money to support its own existence.

ReSharper 8.0 For Visual Studio 2013   Friday 19 July

JetBrains has released a new version of ReSharper, its add-on for Visual Studio that can be used to analyze code quality, carry out code changes across an entire code set, and show how code can be improved.

Microsoft Team Explains Language Stagnation   Friday 19 July

.... or you could say that they provide excellent valid reasons as to why Visual Basic and C# haven't added any new language features in Visual Studio 2013. It really is a matter of reading the runes. 

Microsoft Introduces Lab of Things in HomeOS   Thursday 18 July

Microsoft has a new platform that can collect data from connected devices in homes for research and analysis.

Google Has Another Machine Vision Breakthrough?   Thursday 18 July

Google Research has just released details of a Machine Vision technique which might bring high power visual recognition to simple desktop and even mobile computers. It claims to be able to recognize 100,000 different types of object within a photo in a few minutes - and there isn't a deep neural network DNN mentioned. 

Chrome 29 Beta Brings Video & Web Audio To Android   Thursday 18 July

After the fairly uneventful release of Chrome 28, version 29 moves into beta and has some ground-breaking features for Android.

Professional Programmer

We Make Nothing   Saturday 20 July

Literally we make nothing. Give me a pound of program, a foot, a kilogram or a meter of your latest program - you can't because you make nothing...

The Core

JavaScript Data Structures - Typed Arrays I   Tuesday 23 July

JavaScript's typed arrays are relatively new, but they bring a way to work with binary data and to work with structures that would otherwise be very difficult. In this first article we look at the basic idea of using typed arrays - views, BufferArray and block operations.

History

Sergei Lebedev and Early Russian computers   Monday 22 July

Soviet Russia had its own early computer program and its "father of the computer" was Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev. Was the Russian effort just a copy of computers being built at the same time in the US and the UK or do they deserve their own place in history as equals?