Local development environments can be a pain to set up by hand, despite ready-made deployment environments offered by platform-as-a-service providers. Meanwhile, programmers still need to keep project dependencies consistent between development systems. Installing a private PaaS like Cloud Foundry or OpenShift locally is an option even if you’re…
The 6 Best Ways to Run Microsoft’s .NET in the Cloud
In programming circles, there’s been a steady emphasis on platforms that support Ruby, Python and Node.js – and not as much attention paid to Microsoft .NET platform providers. That’s a real oversight given the enduring popularity of Microsoft languages.
Ladies Learning Code Team Aims to Fix Programmer Education – One City at a Time
Heather Payne wanted to learn to code. She worked in marketing for a large company and wanted to learn to make websites on her own, but she didn’t have any support network: No developer friends to give her advice on what language to use. No one to recommend specific books or tutorials. No one to ask for help along the way. So she gave up.
5 Ways to Tell Which Programming Languages are Most Popular
Are older programming languages like Java and Perl giving way to newer languages like Python and Ruby? Is HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript overtaking Flash and/or native mobile application development? Do Microsoft’s languages still have a large developer following, even as Microsoft promotes other languages as first-class citizens on platforms such as…
New Pipl API Pulls in a Staggering – and Creepy – Amount of People Data Into Your Apps
People search engine Pipl’s people search API is now out of beta and open to all developers. The API can be used to bring a variety of information about an individual, from social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn to government resources like the United States Patent and Trademark Office and county clerk offices, into any application.
MIT Brain Who Beat the Casinos Launches Service to Quantify Developer Performance
Jeff Ma, the MIT blackjack team member who served as the inspiration for Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House and the film 21, gave developers at the Atlassian Summit a glimpse of his new stealth startup: TenXer.
iPad for Business Round-Up: Presentation Link and More
The iPad isn’t just a hot new consumer device, it’s also an increasingly popular tool for business. Each week we take a look at the new or updated business apps for the iPad, and highlight trends in how tablets are being used in the enterprise.
This week we look at a new presentation app, a new project management app and the new version of Google…
Poll: Can Big Data Be Democratized?
There are a number of projects out there that claim to be “democratizing” complex systems such as big data analysis, predictive analytics and business intelligence. Sometimes this means making tools free or cheap (such as Revolution Analytics). Other times, it just means making them more accessible to non-programmers, through either SQL-like query…
5 Tools to Manage Code Tags in Websites
How do you deal with all those Web analytics snippets, header tags for authenticating with various services (like Google Webmaster Central and Quantcast), A/B testing tags, etc.? Are you unsure which tags you still need, or what tags added by other collaborators actually do?
Several services have sprung-up to try to solve the problem of too…
Microsoft Bringing Hadoop Connectors to SQL Server
This week Microsoft announced its intentions to bring Hadoop to SQL Server and Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW). PDW was introduced last year and brought centralized data warehousing capabilities to SQL Server.
“As a first step, we will soon release a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of two new Hadoop connectors – one for SQL Server and one for…
From Big Data to NoSQL: The ReadWriteWeb Guide to Data Terminology (Part 3)
It’s hard to keep track of all the database-related terms you hear these days. What constitutes “big data”? What is NoSQL, and why are your developers so interested in it? And now “NewSQL”? Where do in-memory databases fit into all of this? In this series, we’ll untangle the mess of terms and tell you what you need to know.
In Part One we…
Free E-Book: The Art of Assembly Language Programming
Nearly the entire text of The Art of Assembly Language Programming has been posted online for the Processing Systems and Structures course at Washington University. The book begins with machine organization and then works through basic to advanced assembly language.
A while back we asked whether all programmers should learn assembly language…
Google Chrome Beta Now Supports C/C++
Google has been working on Native Client (aka NaCl), an SDK that brings C/C++ functionality to browsers since at least last year, and now the latest Google Chrome beta version includes NaCl. NaCl uses an API called “Pepper” that provides HTML5 bindings for C or C++ . (NaCl is the molecular formula for salt. Salt and pepper. Get it?)
Google has…
From Big Data to NoSQL: The ReadWriteWeb Guide to Data Terminology (Part 2)
It’s hard to keep track of all the database-related terms you hear these days. What constitutes “big data”? What is NoSQL, and why are your developers so interested in it? And now “NewSQL”? Where do in-memory databases fit into all of this? In this series, we’ll untangle the mess of terms and tell you what you need to know.
In Part One we…
MondoNet: Rutgers Academics Try to Build a New, Censorship-Proof Internet
Here’s another one for our lists of government-less Internets: MondoNet. According to the MondoNet website: “The purpose of this project is to study the technological, social and regulatory feasibility of developing a peer-to-peer mesh networking protocol.”
MondoNet was founded by academics at Rutgers University, and the university is…
Does Facebook Really Have the Worst API?
Photo aggregation service Trove revealed results of a survey of
PouchDB: A Portable Implementation of CouchDB in JavaScript
PouchDB is a new project from former CouchOne (now called Couchbase) employee Mikeal Rogers. It’s an attempt to create a full JavaScript implementation of the CouchDB storage and views API to enable peer-to-peer replication with “real” CouchDB instances.
The current version supports the HTML5 data store IndexedDB, and Rogers plans to support…
Box Expands Mobile Support, Validates the Mobile Enterprise
Today, Box announced a tablet-optimized Android app, a PlayBook app (the company’s first native app for any BlackBerry platform) and a new HTML5 mobile site. The Android version replaces the company’s existing Android app and will work with both smartphones and tablets, optimizing the view depending on the device.
More interesting than the actual…
Cloudera Launches New Partner and Certification Program
Following the announcement of its partnership with Dell, Cloudera announced a new partner program for resellers and professional services providers. Among the various elements of the Cloudera Connect Partner Program will be a certification program.
Cloudera sells enterprise support for Apache Hadoop and its own Cloudera Enterprise product. The…
HTML5 Boiler Plate Hits 2.0
HTML5 Boiler Plate, a template for building HTML5 sites, has been updated to version 2.0. You can find it in GitHub here.
One particularly slick feature: it will prompt users of Internet Explorer 6 to install Google Chrome Frame, which no longer requires admin privileges to run.