News

Front-End Developers Your Day Is Done - AI Can Do Your Job   Wednesday 07 June

There is a sad fascination in going over lists of jobs that are close to being lost forever to AI or robotic systems - Go player, Truck driver, warehouse worker, taxi driver, delivery worker, front end developer. Yes front end developer. 

Apple Updates - What Developers Need to Know   Wednesday 07 June

WWDC17, Apple's annual developer conference, is underway in San Jose and the keynote included announcements about iOS 11 and WatchOS 4 that open up new possibilities. The App Store also has a brand new look with benefits for developers. 

Java 9 Slips Again   Wednesday 07 June

The long delayed Java 9 isn't going to make its July release date. The latest delay is to give the Java Expert Group time to get Project Jigsaw back into the mix. 

Google Capture the Flag 2017   Tuesday 06 June

Google has announced a Capture the Flag contest with an online qualification round lasting 48 hours taking place on June 17th and 18th. The top ten finalist teams will be invited to Google to compete onsite for a prize pool of $31,337. 

New Self Mandarin Improves Versioning   Tuesday 06 June

There's a new version of the Self programming language with new versioning systems for its key subsystems. 

Grimoire Lab-GitHub - Stats On Steroids   Tuesday 06 June

Grimoire Lab is an open source toolkit built on Python, Elasticsearch and Kibana. It taps into GitHub's raw data through Perceval, a module designed for retrieving data from repositories related to software development. 

Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit Version 2.0   Monday 05 June

After over six months in beta, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit Version 2.0, which was formerly known as CNTK, is now in full release with general availability. 

Apache Spark MapR Connector Provides JSON Support   Monday 05 June

There's a new Native Spark Connector for MapR-DB JSON that gives developers APIs to access MapR-DB JSON documents from Apache Spark, using the Open JSON Application Interface (OJAI) API. 

Native Code On Chrome Dropped In Favour Of WebAssembly   Monday 05 June

Google has just announced that Chrome will no longer support native code in the form of PNaCl. Instead it will follow the lead of the other browser makers and rely on WebAssembly for fast code. In short, WebAssembly won. 

Understand Computer Logic With Turing Tumble   Sunday 04 June

Turing Tumble, a game that lets you build a mechanical computer powered by marbles to solve logic puzzles and is intended to teach kids how to think about computers, has already well exceeded its target on Kickstarter. 

We May Have Lost At Go, But We Still Stack Stones Better   Saturday 03 June

AI may have become the world's best placers of black and white stones on a grid, but when it comes to the art of stone stacking humans are still way ahead and there's the art to consider. 

Top 10 From Around the Web: Wordpress and CMS Resources   Friday 02 June

This round up of interesting posts from external sites has resources for those working with WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. 

Node.js 8 Includes npm 5   Friday 02 June

The latest version of Node.js has been shipped with a new npm client, support for future versions of the JavaScript runtime, and an experimental Node.js API. 

Chrome Declared Winner   Friday 02 June

As another month closes and new stats become available we take another look at browser market shares from StatCounter Global Stats and reflect on a recent blog posts from Mozilla and from ex-Mozillian, Andreas Gal with the title "Chrome Won". 

HerbGrind: A Tool to Find Floating Point Errors   Thursday 01 June

Floating point is the numerical format used for most calculations and we tend to trust it, but this trust is misplaced. Floating point calculations can be so wrong that they resemble noise. Now there is a way to automatically detect when things go wrong. 

The Core

The Programmers Guide To React   Monday 05 June

React seems to be taking over the web frontend, but it is remarkably hard to discover what it actually brings to the party. What is the problem that React seems to solve? The only way to find out is to strip it bare of its tools, UI declarative language and ES6 and take it right back to basics. 

Babbage's Bag

Public Key Encryption   Thursday 01 June

Public key encryption is vital to the working of the Internet and the commercial web in particular. We look at how it works and explain the RSA system in detail.