Book Watch
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Book Watch is I Programmer's listing of new books and is compiled using publishers' publicity material. It is not to be read as a review where we provide an independent assessment. Some but by no means all of the books in Book Watch are eventually reviewed.
Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software (W. W. Norton & Company) 30 Apr
In this book Darryl Campbell argues that a lot of software has exposed us to immense risk at the societal and the individual levels. He blames “managerial software”: programs created and overseen not by engineers but by professional managers with only the most superficial knowledge of technology itself. Campbell shows how managerial software fails, and when it does what sorts of disastrous consequences ensue, from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes to a deadly self-driving car to PowerPoint propaganda, and beyond. Yet just because the tech industry is currently breaking its core promise does not mean the industry cannot change. Campbell argues that the solution is tech workers with actual expertise establishing industry-wide principles of ethics and safety that corporations would be forced to follow.
<ASIN:1324078952>
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Terraform in Depth (Manning) 28 Apr
With the subtitle "Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and OpenTofu" this book looks at Terraform and its open-source fork OpenTofu’s approach for infrastructure management. Robert Hafner considers its premise: to be able to provision, update, scale, and replicate infrastructure with the same ease as application code. The book covers the latest versions, standards, and approaches of Terraform and OpenTofu, from absolute basics all the way to advanced production uses. Every technique is illustrated with real-world examples.
<ASIN: 1633438007>
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AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence (Harper Business) 25 Apr
In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin looks into the world of AI development in Silicon Valley. Over the course of more than a year, Rivlin closely follows founders and venture capitalists trying to capitalize on this AI moment. The people he follows include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, the investor the Wall Street Journal once called, “the most connected person in Silicon Valley.” Through Hoffman, Rivlin is granted access to a number of companies on the cutting-edge of AI research, including OpenAI during their work on ChatGPT, and DeepMind, the AI startup that Google bought for $650 million in 2014. Rivlin also brings readers inside Microsoft, Meta, Google and other tech giants scrambling to keep pace.
<ASIN:0063452243>
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Programming News and Views
Send your programming press releases, news items or comments to: NewsDesk@i-programmer.info
Microsoft Adds Usage Report To Graph May 01 | Kay Ewbank
 Microsoft has announced a new Graph API usage report in a beta API version in Microsoft Graph.
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Undefined Behavior Just Not Worth The Effort! Apr 30 | Mike James
 Some very interesting research has just been published that throws a lot of light on the crazy belief that undefined behavior is useful, essential even, to certain types of optimization rather than the huge mistake it really is.
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Akka Adds New Deployment Options Apr 30 | Kay Ewbank
 Akka has announced new deployment options for its Akka platform, as well as new solutions to tackle the issues with deploying large-scale agentic AI systems for mission-critical applications.
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The OpenAI Academy Makes AI Accessible Apr 29 | Nikos Vaggalis
 OpenAI has provided a treasure trove of information for spreading knowledge about AI to the general public; understanding what AI is and learning how to leverage it by using tools like ChatGPT.
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Azul Announces JVM Inventory Apr 29 | Kay Ewbank
 Azul has announced JVM Inventory, a new feature of Azul Intelligence Cloud aimed at making it easier to migrate away from Oracle Java.
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Amazon Q Developer Adds Faster Agentic Coding Apr 28 | Kay Ewbank
 Amazon has improved the CLI agent within the Amazon Q command line interface (CLI) to provide a faster more interactive coding experience. Amazon Q Developer can now use the information in its CLI environment to provide help on reading and writing files locally, querying AWS resources write code, or automatically debugging issues.
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Be Ready For Google I/O 2025 Apr 28 | Sue Gee
 Google has shared the agenda for its annual developer conference. This year Google will live stream two days of sessions, starting with the Keynote at 10:00 AM PT on May 20th, followed by the Developer Keynote at 1:30 PM PT.
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TSP - 81,998 Bars In South Korea Shortest Walking Tour Apr 27 | Mike James
 It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Travelling Saleman Problem (TSP) is impossible to solve for even reasonably small examples using today's computers. Do we need powerful hardware or a quantum computer?
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April Week 3 Apr 26 | Editor
 Take a break and catch up with the latest articles, book reviews and news posted on this site. This week we have an addition to our History section answering the question who were the original programmers. It tells the story of the ENIAC Programmers, six women who pioneered many of the programming concepts we nowadays take for granted.
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Harvard RoboBee Gets New Knees Apr 25 | Lucy Black
 The Harvard RoboBee can now make better landings thanks to new legs based on those of a crane-fly. The researchers who developed the robot say it now no longer needs to crash land, and can instead glide down under control.
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5 Ways AI is Changing Front-End Development Apr 25 | Jordan Chaim
 For a few years now, front-end developers have been nibbling with AI to help them streamline repetitive tasks and boost productivity. However, AI is now evolving into more than just an assistance tool, and is slowly starting to take on advanced development tasks.
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Tailpipe - The Log Interrogation Game Changer Apr 24 | Nikos Vaggalis
 By using the expressiveness of the SQL language, TailPipe makes querying log files as easy as doing "select * from logs;".
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JetBrains Junie and AI Assistant Expand Reach Apr 24 | Sue Gee
 All JetBrains AI tools, including the coding agent Junie and its improved AI Assistant are now available within its IDEs under a single subscription and come with a free tier.
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MicroPython Powered Up For IoT Apr 23 | Harry Fairhead
 The latest version of MicroPython has some significant improvements which make it even better as the first choice for a platform-independent language for IoT and embedded computing.
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Linkerd 2.18 Adds Protocol Declarations Apr 23 | Alex Denham
 Version 2.18 of the Linkerd service mesh has added features aimed at making the software better at handling problematic situations, along with an experimental build of the proxy for Windows environments. Linkerd can be used to add security, reliability, and observability features to cloud native applications, particularly those that use Kubernetes.
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.NET Aspire 9.2 Adds Publishers Apr 22 | Kay Ewbank
 Despite being tagged as a minor upgrade, NET Aspire 9.2 has additions. Since the last major release, NET Aspire 9 has offered new control over the lifetime of containers on local developer environments. This upgrade has added a preview of publishers, a new way of integration making it easier to package and deploy .NET Aspire apps to Docker Compose, Kubernetes, and Azure.
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Featured Articles
Programmer's Python - Inside Class 29 Apr | Mike James
 Python is an object-oriented language, but you can get away with igoring this fact. However, if you do you are missing out on some of its best features. Find out about Python with class. This extract is from my book that explores the features that make Python special and "Something Completely Different".
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HTML5/CSS Layout 27 Apr | David Conrad
 The HTML default layout rules can be a mystery. They are usually introduced to users late on and as part of achieving something complicated and this tends to obscure the principles. So if you want to get to grips with floated, non-floated blocks, clipping and clear then read on.
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ENIAC's Women Programmers 21 Apr | Sue Gee
 Who were the original programmers? We often credit Ada Lovelace with this breakthrough, but her programs remained theoretical. Like Lovelace, the individuals who programmed ENIAC, one of the very first computers, were all women who, for decades, received no credit for their achievements.
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Strange Initialization 20 Apr | Antoni Boucher
 Are you always speaking the same syntax as your compiler? This C++ puzzle looks at how you can put things together thinking they mean one thing when in fact they mean another...
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Raspberry Pi CM5 IoT In C - Setting Up the CM5 14 Apr | Harry Fairhead
 The CM5 with the CM5IO development board is slightly more complicated to set up than other members of the Pi family - find out more. This is an extract from the newly-published Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 IoT In C
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