The Insider News

Nettuts+[^]:

Today, most programming languages can use reflection. Statically typed languages, such as Java, have little to no problems with reflection. What I find interesting, however, is that any dynamically-typed language (like PHP or Ruby) is heavily based on reflection. Without the concept of reflection, duck-typing would most likely be impossible to implement. When you send one object to another (a parameter, for example), the receiving object has no way of knowing the structure and type of that object. All it can do is use reflection to identify the methods that can and cannot be called on the received object.

IBM[^]:

Good ideas in programming languages persist and spread to other languages, permeating them over time. Thus, unsurprisingly, the Java.next languages — Groovy, Scala, and Clojure — share many common features. In this and upcoming Java.next installments, I explore how the convergence of function manifests in the syntax of each. I start with a feature — the ability to overload operators — that makes up for a longstanding deficiency in the Java language.

Florian Kugler[^]:

Apple's Interface Builder is supposed to assist you with several important tasks in the process of creating user interfaces: Laying out views, Wiring up outlets and actions, Creating segues between view controllers (with storyboards). After working on a fairly complex iPad app for the last six months together with Chris Eidhof, my personal bottom line for Interface Builder doesn't look too positive with regard to these tasks. In fact, I'm willing to try out abandoning Interface Builder alltogether for the next project. This may sound pretty radical, but let me walk you through my thought process.

John Graham-Cumming[^]:

Last February myself, Professor Darrel Ince and Professor Les Hatton had a paper published in Nature arguing for openness in the code used for scientific papers.... Recently, an important paper in economics has been in the news because its conclusions turn out to be inaccurate for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is a programming error using the popular Microsoft Excel program. This error, in an unreleased spreadsheet, highlights just how easy it is to make a mistake in a 'simple' program and how closed programs make reproducing results difficult.

Ars Technica[^]:

One of the best things about travelling to shows like PAX East and the Game Developers Conference is the chance to check out titles from off-the-beaten-path, independent developers. While shows like E3 are overwhelmed by the presence of multi-million dollar booths from huge publishers, the early-in-the-year shows make a point of highlighting some of the most original and promising game ideas from game makers without big contracts or salaried positions behind them. Freed from the financial responsibilities of the major AAA publishers, these are the titles that are most likely to truly break new ground in gameplay, aesthetics, and subject matter.

GitHub[^]:

It's fairly new and very much a work in progress, so not all games run yet and not all features are implemented.

GigaOm[^]:

Vint Cerf, VP and chief internet evangelist at Google has a few regrets about the original design of the internet, but he’s hoping software defined networking may help right those wrongs. Cerf spoke at the Open Networking Summit Tuesday in Santa Clara, Calif., where he juxtaposed the creation of the internet and the evolution of the world wide web with the development of software defined networking. He began with a rueful acknowledgment that back in the early 70s, when creating the addressing scheme for the internet, 32 bits were enough....

TIME.com[^]:

It’s one of the blogosphere’s favorite tech topics. Every new nugget of competitive information is fodder for an avalanche of coverage. Oftentimes, a story will declare that Android is beating iOS or that iOS is beating Android. Really, though, it’s silly to obsess over any one data point. If what you’re after is a clear idea of how the world’s two dominant mobile operating systems are doing — rather than an excuse to make bold proclamations and/or cheer for your favorite — you want to consider lots of data points.

CodeProject[^]:

Welcome to our continuing series of CodeProject interviews in which we talk to developers about their backgrounds, projects, interests and pet peeves. In this installment we talk to Mike Meinz.

Scott Hanselman[^]:

It's lovely, isn't it. It's the Windows 8 on-screen keyboard, except I don't need or want to see it. I have a Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch and it already has a keyboard. I will never ever want to use the Windows 8 touch keyboard. Unfortunately there is no checkbox or "just turn it off" way to disable the keyboard with a supported option. However, there is a way to effectively disable the keyboard by stopping the service that controls it....

O'Reilly Radar[^]:

A probabilistic programming language is a high-level language that makes it easy for a developer to define probability models and then “solve” these models automatically. These languages incorporate random events as primitives and their runtime environment handles inference. Now, it is a matter of programming that enables a clean separation between modeling and inference. This can vastly reduce the time and effort associated with implementing new models and understanding data.

Tech.Pro[^]:

This is the first part of a series of tutorials on C#. In this part we are introducing the fundamental concepts of the language and it's output, the Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). We will take a look at object-oriented programming (OOP) and what C# does to make OOP as efficient as possible to realize in practice.

All this[^]:

My relationship with spreadsheets is long and complicated. In the early days, they simply didn’t have the power to do the kinds of calculations I needed. In the late 80s, though, that changed,2 and I got very good at using Excel. Soon, though, I began to hate Excel as Microsoft made the Mac version more like the Windows version. Still, I kept using it. When I switched to Linux in the late 90s, there were no decent spreadsheets available, so I went back to more traditional programming/scripting. I found it superior to working with spreadsheets and haven’t looked back.

GitHub[^]:

This document gives you an overview of F#'s goodies for DSL development. It assumes you are familiar with F# syntax; the features are introduced in the order of their encounters by the author. This is by no means a complete reference of F#'s DSL-friendly functionalities. Most of the features are introduced in the context of internal DSLs; however, some of them are helpful in making external DSLs as well.

PCWorld[^]:

What's the most difficult thing you did in the last year? Now stop. Before you answer, can it compare to creating a full-fledged indie game—slated to be approved on Steam—created entirely with QBASIC? Probably not.... But why QBASIC when there are so many other powerful tools out there that would probably be simpler to use? Lance McDonald, the game's creator, hearkened back to when he made games as a kid with QBASIC and wanted to make a love letter to the great games of the '90s.

The Official Microsoft Blog[^]:

More than a year ago, we began bringing two-step verification for certain critical activities, like editing credit cards and subscriptions at commerce.microsoft.com and xbox.com, or accessing files on another one of your computers through SkyDrive.com. For these scenarios, two-step verification is required 100 percent of the time for everyone, given the sensitive nature of these tasks. With this release you can choose to protect your entire account with two-step verification, regardless of what service (or device) you are using with your Microsoft account. It’s your choice whether you want to enable this, but for those of you that are looking for ways to add additional security to your account, we’ve worked hard to make set-up really easy.

Wired.com[^]:

We know what Moore’s Law is and how it works, but not many people reflect on why it exists. Because inventors, visionaries, engineers — whatever you want to call them — have to arrive at each level before they can even imagine a way to the next one.. and then create it. That’s how Pixar and its first film Toy Story — the first feature-length computer-animated film — became a reality. The secret was Moore’s Law, and not just in the technical way one would think. The enabling idea of our vision was computation, of course, but the idea of computation alone would not have gotten us far.... Because we — Catmull, I, and our colleagues — conceived the notion of the first completely digital movie almost four decades ago. It took 20 years to realize that dream with Toy Story, but Moore’s Law is what gave us the confidence to hang on for those two decades.