April Week 4
Written by Editor   
Saturday, 28 April 2018

Do you have better things to do than scour the internet for news? No problem! If you need to know what's important for the developer, IProgrammer Weekly puts the unmissable bits together in a handy digest. It also includes latest articles. This week see final part of Insider's Guide to Android Developer Nanodgree.

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April 19 - 25, 2018 

Book Watch

This week's additions to our ever-growing archive of newly published computer books are:  

Book Reviews

  • R For Everyone, 2nd Ed

     

     Awarding a rating of 4.5 out of 5, Mike James recommended this book to R beginners who know enough stats not to worry about the advanced material.

  • Graph Analysis and Visualization

    Kay Ewbank awarded a 4-star rating, concluding:
    This is an interesting read, and the authors write clearly and understandably. This isn’t a book that teaches lots of advanced techniques; instead, it’s more about the philosophy of using graphs to analyze data, and as such it works well. It doesn’t have heavy duty numerical analysis or statistics, nor does it go into depth on big data or programming. I got the feeling the authors were trying to impart what their experience had taught them about why some graphs work to tell a story, and others are just lines and boxes.

 

News

Pluralsight Launches Technology Index  
Wednesday 25 April

Pluralsight's new Technology Index ranks the popularity of more than 300 software development languages, tools and frameworks. Its initial insights include the dominance of JavaScript and the popularity of Android developer tools.  

Apple Open Sources FoundationDB   Wednesday 25 April

Apple has made its FoundationDB core open source, and wants all future major development to be carried out openly. Apple acquired FoundationDB in 2015. 

Qt For WebAssembly   Wednesday 25 April

Qt is a popular way to construct a cross platform UI, but the latest move is into the unknown and could change the way we create web apps. 

MySQL 8 Improves JSON   Tuesday 24 April

MySQL 8 has been released with improvements including better mobile support, stronger support for Unicode, and schemaless JSON support.

 

Grasshopper - An Area 120 App To Teach Coding  

Tuesday 24 April

 

Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, has launched a free, learn-to-code app for adult beginners. It teaches JavaScript through short lessons on users iPhone or Android device.

Oracle Code One Displaces Java One   Monday 23 April

Oracle is expanding the scope of its annual developer conference to encompass more languages, technologies and developer communities. So JavaOne is no more and Oracle Code One is now accepting submissions for its inaugural event in October 2018.

 

Amazon Introduces Alexa Skills Templates   Sunday 22 April

Amazon has introduced Alexa Skill Blueprints, a way for any Alexa owner to create personalized skills and responses for Alexa without any need for programming. This  could prove to be a real breakthrough to making Alexa a useful asset in the home.

 

AI Creates Flintstones Cartoons From A Description  
Sunday 22 April

As long as you know the Flintstones, and if you don't you've been under a (Bed)rock for too long, then "Fred is talking to Barney in the lounge" will cause you to imagine the scene. Now an AI system can visualize it for real by generating the cartoon to fit. 

Uber Makes GPS More Accurate   Saturday 21 April

The big problem with GPS, amazing though it is, comes down to accuracy. It just never seems to be quite accurate enough. Uber engineers now think they have a software way of making it quite a bit more accurate and it's remarkably clever.

 

An Update on Language Popularity - Perl is in Trouble   Friday 20 April

According to April's TIOBE Index, Python has dislodged C#, and Objective C and Perl are both in decline. SQL appears to be making a rapid rise - but that's an anomaly.

 

Skill Up Survey 2018   Friday 20 April

Packt has launched its annual Skill Up survey for 2018 to gain insight into the state of the IT industry from a developer’s perspective. The incentive to participate is 80% discount on offer from Packt store. 

Java 10 Improves Garbage Collection   Thursday 19 April

Java 10, a feature release of Java SE, has improved its garbage collection and compilation, and has also extended the Class-Data Sharing feature to improve startup and footprint.  

GitHub Learning Labs Now Open For Newbies   Thursday 19 April

Once you know your way around GitHub its difficult to remember how it felt when it was an unfamiliar environment with its strange jargon of Commits, Issues, Pull Requests and so on. The newly launched GitHub Learning Lab has a bot to guide you through a set of courses in a novel way. 

Professional Programmer

Insider's Guide to Udacity Android Developer Nanodegree Part 7 - Full Stack Android   Monday 23 April

Yes, the final stage of the Capstone and graduation, the endless sense of relief. It was challenging, it was hard, but in the end everything worked out alright and I gained my Android Developer Nanodegree. So what did I think of the whole experience. If you just want to know my final thoughts on a year-long course of study turn to the last page. 

The Core

Date Hacks - Doing JavaScript Date Calculations  

Thursday 19 April

OK, you have mastered the way your particular language represents dates and times but.. this is just the start. Doing arithmetic with dates can go well beyond just working out the interval between two fixed points. What about the third Thursday in the month or how many days are we from the previous 11th of the month? Find out how to hack dates.

 

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Last Updated ( Saturday, 28 April 2018 )