The Insider News

thecodingbrain[^]:

If computer programming languages are languages, then people who spoke one language and could programme to a high standard should be bilingual. Research has suggested that bilingual people perform faster than monolingual people at tasks requiring executive control – that is, tasks involving the ability to pay attention to important information and ignore irrelevant information. So, I set out to find out whether computer programmers were better at these tasks too.

Brython[^]:

Brython is designed to replace Javascript as the scripting language for the Web. As such, it is a Python implementation (you can take it for a test drive through a web console), adapted to the HTML5 environment, that is to say with an interface to the DOM objects and events. The gallery highlights a few of the possibilities, from creating simple document elements to drag and drop and 3D navigation.

derick_bailey[^]:

When someone submits an issue or a pull request that is “obviously wrong” in your eyes, don’t make fun of them and kick them out of the cool club. Help them learn from the situation. Ask more questions, find out why they are suggesting this change. Dig in to the reasons behind the request and see if there is any merit to it. Take the time to understand their perspective and thought process before you react and judge others.

Sam Stephenson[^]:

In just a few short years Prototype went from best practice to anti-pattern—and depending on who you listened to, you might even be convinced that it was one of the worst things to happen to the web. The reality is that Prototype helped lots of people despite its flawed foundation. But its time had come and gone, and I eventually realized it was time to move on. It was hard not to take Prototype’s failure personally.

bunnie's blog[^]:

We are building an open laptop, with some wacky features in it for hackers like me.... Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design documentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of the art technology.

Gamasutra[^]:

This is not intended to be a list of 10 developers who happened to make good games in 2012 (though releasing a good game certainly didn't hurt anyone's chances of being included). When selecting the developers on this list (presented alphabetically), Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine editors determined which ones defined the year in a positive way. These are the developers and studios that left their mark on 2012 -- the ones that the industry will be watching in the years ahead.

The Register[^]:

The transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, will be 65 years old on Sunday. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact transistor during an experiment conducted on 16 December 1947. Yet this now ubiquitous device - these days more as an element in silicon chip design than as a discrete component - has a history that goes back to the mid-1920s.

Hal's (Im)Perfect Vision[^]:

The core problem here is that many test organizations design their test regimes to test Security Suites... and then apply those tests just to MSE rather than to the entire “Microsoft security suite” of which it is part. Why? One key reason is that Microsoft doesn’t explicitly offer a security suite, instead it spreads security capabilities across its products and components. Rather than MSE being the cornerstone of its security efforts, as an anti-malware engine is for a traditional security vendor, for Microsoft MSE is a component that fills in a missing piece in the Windows security effort.

Anil Dash[^]:

The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be.

The Register[^]:

C++ 11 is “far better than previous versions”, says the inventor of the language Bjarne Stroustrup.... C++ is an ISO standard, first ratified in 1998 with C++ 11 completed in 2011, but Stroustrup revealed he was initially resistant to standardisation efforts. “It took some arm-twisting to get me to realise that it was time to start a standards effort," he said. "People pointed out that you couldn’t have a language used by millions controlled by a single guy in a single company. Even if you could trust the guy, you can’t trust the corporation. I was a bit sad, because the things I wanted to do would take years instead of months, because you have to build up consensus, and then you have to wait for five compilers to catch up."

Web Advent 2012[^]:

I like PHP, Python, and JavaScript, and I like making things in PHP, Python, and JavaScript. I’m not a Symfony developer, or a Django developer, or a jQuery developer. I think this is an important distinction. It’s entirely possible to be a jQuery developer, but not a JavaScript developer. It’s possible to be a Django developer, but not a Python developer. Those are all certainly valuable and useful tools, but if I only know how to use one framework, my options for using the right tool for the job get pretty limited, and in my experience, large, full-stack frameworks are often not the right tool, particularly if flexibilty and performance are major concerns.

danielmiessler.com[^]:

What follows is a primer on the key security-oriented characteristics of the HTTP protocol. It's a collection of a number of different sub-topics, explained in my own way, for the purpose of having a single reference point when needed.

Channel 9[^]:

We are excited to announce an update to the Visual Studio Achievements extension: the availability of nineteen new achievements all oriented toward Windows 8 app development. These new achievements can be earned in JavaScript, C#, VB and C++. Some examples include: I Like To Move It Move It which is earned by using the accelerometer and The Play Is The Thing which is earned by using the AutoPlay contract.

Visual Studio Magazine[^]:

Now that the final versions of Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 have shipped, most Silverlight developers are looking at ways to translate their existing skill set to Windows Runtime (WinRT) apps built with XAML. Because you're already familiar with XAML, you need to understand what the Windows Runtime consists of, and how it's different than what you're used to. In this article, I document 10 things I've found while building my first WinRT app using XAML/C#; I hope they'll save you time and energy getting used to this new platform.

NYTimes.com[^]:

A retired mechanical engineer, Mr. Woodland was a graduate student when he and a classmate, Bernard Silver, created a technology — based on a printed series of wide and narrow striations — that encoded consumer-product information for optical scanning. Their idea, developed in the late 1940s and patented 60 years ago this fall, turned out to be ahead of its time. But it would ultimately give rise to the universal product code, or U.P.C., as the staggeringly prevalent rectangular bar code is officially known.

Exploring IE[^]:

The web browser is not only important at home or in school. For business, the browser is a key tool for accessing line of business apps, connecting with customers and partners, modernizing employee desktops, and enabling employees the flexibility to work from anywhere. Choosing the right browser is critical for organizations, and a choice that has far-reaching impact on organizational security, productivity and application development costs.... Forrester found that ninety-six percent of firms today standardize on a single browser for company-issued PCs.