August Week 2
Saturday, 16 August 2025

Get up to speed on stuff that affects you as a developer with our weekly digest. Find out how to understand and work with metaclasses in Python and for those of you who need to keep legacy applications from sixty years ago functioning we have expert tips on COBOL project modernization.

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August 7 - 13, 2025

Featured Articles


Programmer's Python - Metaclass
13 Aug | Mike James
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Metaclasses are advanced and you generally don’t need to know about them or make use of them. But knowing how they work might suggest alternative approaches to many problems. This extract is from my book with the subtitle "Something Completely Different".

<ASIN:1871962781>


Successful COBOL Project Modernization
09 Aug | Gilad David Mayaan
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We usually think of COBOL as a legacy language. But it is a legacy that lives on, maintaining projects that originated as long as 50 years ago. But this is is increasingly unsustainable. We look at the why and how of COBOL project modernization with five pro tips for successful outcomes.

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Programming News and Views


Hour Of AI With Funding From Microsoft Elevate
13 Aug | Sue Gee
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At the launch event for Microsoft Elevate Hadi Partovi, CEO of Code.org, outlined three new initiatives to ensure that all students are educated in AI in a way that gives them a headstart in AI Engineering so that instead of being passive consumers of AI they are able to use it creatively.


AI Finds Vulnerabilities - Not Everyone Is Happy
13 Aug | Mike James
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An obvious use for AI, the right sort of AI, is to get it to scan a code base and point out security vulnerabilities. What could possibly go wrong?


Groovy 5 Improves Web Content Creation
12 Aug | Kay Ewbank
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Groovy 5 is now available as a release candidate, with improvements including a better groovysh Repl, Java compatibility improvements, and additional scripting variations to support JEP-512 compact source files and instance main methods in addition to Groovy's shorter scripts. It also has improved Web Content Creation supporting Jakarta standards.


Temporal Releases Its First Annual State of Development Report
12 Aug | Sue Gee
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A report released today reveals a disconnect between engineers and decision makers and that only one in four teams report smooth workflows as AI adoption, brittle systems, and tooling misalignment drive backend complexity.


Google Spanner Adds Columnar Engine
11 Aug | Kay Ewbank
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Google has announced a columnar engine for Spanner to extend  analytical capabilities in Spanner databases.


EU Commission Reactivates Bug Bounties
11 Aug | Nikos Vaggalis
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After a period of inactivity, the EC Open Source Programme Office (EC OSPO) has awarded a contract for organizing bug bounties on open source software.


If You Sleep Well Tonight You May Not Have Understood
10 Aug | Mike James
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this lecture. Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, recently gave a talk at the prestigious Royal Institution and while it is fairly introductory as far as AI goes, you really do need to see it.


Get AI Certified With edX
08 Aug | Sue Gee
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edX is again offering a discount of up to 30% on selected courses and program bundles until September 10th. Since AI is currently the hot topic we look at what is on offer.


Robot Crabs Attacked By Real Crabs
08 Aug | Lucy Black
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A robot crab called Wavy Dave has been having a rough time as his real life rivals ripped his claw off.


.NET Aspire 9.4 Adds CLI Tool
07 Aug | Kay Ewbank
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.NET Aspire 9.4 has been released with improvements including new integrations, interactive dashboard-based inputs, and a standalone, native AOT command line tool for creating and running Aspirified apps.


Prompt Engineering For Agentic Systems
07 Aug | Nikos Vaggalis
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Introducing a Github repository that delves into ways of constructing prompts that squeeze performance out when building AI Agents

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Book Watched This Week

If you want to purchase, or to know more about, any of the titles listed below from Amazon, click on the book jackets at the top of the right sidebar. If you do make Amazon purchases after this, we may earn a few cents through the Amazon Associates program which is a small source of revenue that helps us to continue posting.


Agile Web Development with Rails 8 (Pragmatic Programmer)

This book shows how Rails can be used to produce high-quality, beautiful-looking web applications quickly. Sam Ruby and Dave Thomas start with a step-by-step walkthrough of building a real application, then move on to look in depth at the built-in Rails features.

<ASIN:B0DXPFFXD9 >


Mathematics for Computer Graphics, 7th Ed (Springer)

In this book John Vince explains a comprehensive range of mathematical techniques and problem-solving strategies associated with computer games, computer animation, special effects, virtual reality, CAD and other areas of computer graphics in this completely revised and expanded seventh edition.

<ASIN:1447175492 >


Agile Project Management For Dummies, 4th Ed (Wiley)

In this book Mark C. Layton introduces the planning and execution approaches that can help complete projects more quickly, with higher quality and using fewer resources. The book lays out the principles and practices of agile techniques in jargon-free language that anyone can understand. Readers will learn all the important terms, tools, and concepts, so they can infuse agility into their projects.

<ASIN: 1394332092 >

 

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Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 August 2025 )