News

Chrome Introduces Scroll Anchoring   Wednesday 12 April

Scroll anchoring sounds painful, or even worse something that happens at sea. Thankfully it isn't and it is a really good idea. It is such a good idea, and so simple, that you can't really understand why it has taken so long to be noticed. Are there other rending improvements just waiting to be implemented?

jQuery Still Our Favourite Framework   Wednesday 12 April

Although Angular and React are the JavaScript frameworks that tend to grab most attention, jQuery is still the predominant choice, especially so for programmers using PHP on the server.

On the Unhappiness of Software Developers   Tuesday 11 April

It is tough being a programmer - you have to put up with so much stuff from people who aren't programmers and even other programmers turn up and spoil your wonderful code. Is there enough that is positive to keep us happy at our work?

AlphaGo To Play World Number One Go Player   Tuesday 11 April

AlphaGo is making a trip to China in May for the Future of Go Summit, which will include a match of three games between  AlphaGo and the world’s number one player, Ke Jie.

ActivePython Adds Packages For Data Science And Web Development   Monday 10 April

There's a new version of ActivePython, the commercial Python distribution from ActiveState.  The new release adds Python packages for data science and web application development.

Google Introduces Mobile Sites Certification   Monday 10 April

Google has added a new certification with a free exam and a set of free resources for exam preparation. It covers best practices for creating, managing, measuring and optimising mobile websites. 

Best Laid Plans of Lions and Men   Sunday 09 April

Can a man survive a lion attack by two lions? The answer is yes if the question is about mathematics and not real lions. This is almost a classic mathematical conundrum. 

Web Dev To Data Scientist With Python   Saturday 08 April

Python is currently very popular as a beginner's programming language and has become the preferred language for introductory computer science courses. It is also a very versatile language, cropping up in many areas of expertise. Does this mean you can use it to switch career paths?

Top 10 From Around The Web: More JavaScript Resources   Friday 07 April

This round up of resources that JavaScript developers might find useful starts with one that stays close to home. The other nine come from further afield, but all will be of interest to JavaScript developers at different levels of expertise. 

US Curtailing H-1B Visas For Computer Programmers   Friday 07 April

As the annual lottery for H-1B visas that enable US companies to recruit highly educated foreign workers to work in "speciality occupations" gets underway, a memo relating to computer programmer jobs will impact the outsourcing companies that grown up to fill vacancies that might not really need specific expertise.  

Ubuntu Drops Phone, Unity8 And Convergence   Friday 07 April

Canonical and its Ubuntu are a powerful force in the Linux world and it seemed to be heading in the direction of creating something that might shake up both Apple and Google with its Ubuntu phone and tablet OS. But it is not to be. 

Jupyter Notebook 5 Adds Cell Tagging   Thursday 06 April

Version 5.0 of Jupyter Notebook is the first major release since the 'big split' of IPython and Jupyter. It dds cell tagging, customizing keyboard shortcuts, and copying & pasting cells between notebooks.

TPU Better Than GPU   Thursday 06 April

Nearly a year ago we commented that the TPU - The Tensor Processing Unit - might be Google's big advantage in AI. Now we have some performance figures that suggest that this is very true. If you want to do AI,  you probably do need a TPU rather than a GPU. 

The Core

A Programmer's Guide To R - The Vector   Monday 10 April

R is a language targeted at statistics, but it has an interesting way of working with data. In this introduction to R we take a programmer's point of view and celebrate that fact that R is based on Lisp. First we need to get started with the most basic of R data types - the vector.

History

The Web - The Early Years   Thursday 06 April

A time before the World Wide Web? Yes, there was one. In fact the Web is quite young, dating from 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee, then based at CERN, invented it and launched the first ever web site.