The Insider News

John Resig[^]:

How do you store sensitive configuration options (such as usernames, passwords, etc.) in source control? Typically what I’ve done is to just punt on the problem entirely. I create a dummy configuration file, such as conf/sample-settings.json which has the basic structure but none of the details filled out.... The technique I picked up from Craig was to, instead, keep an encrypted version of the configuration file in source control and then provide a means through which the user can encrypt and decrypt that data.

YouTube[^]:

Kent Beck and Erich Gamma changed software development forever when they created JUnit. Programmers embraced JUnit and the philosophy behind it. There are now xUnit-style frameworks in just about any language a programmer might need to use today. The simple but powerful conventions introduced by JUnit are now accepted standards for how test frameworks work. In this interview, Kent Beck tells the creation story for JUnit.

doxsey.net[^]:

One of my favorite parts about Go is its unwavering focus on utility. Sometimes we place so much emphasis on language design that we forget all the other things programming involves.... I want to focus on one that's not generally well known: Go can seamlessly use functions written in Assembly.

Learning by Shipping[^]:

Want to get developers fired up? Kick off a debate about development methodologies – waterfall, agile, lean, extreme, spiral, unified, etc. At any given time it seems one method is the right one to use and the other methods, regardless of previous experience, are wrong. Some talk about having a toolbox of methods to draw on. Others say everyone must adapt to a new state of the art at each generation. Is there a practical way to build good software without first having this debate?

NPD.com[^]:

Content that was once primarily accessed by consumers on their PCs, is shifting to mobile devices.... The top two activities that consumers are shifting from their PCs to their tablets and smartphones are web browsing and Facebook. Among tablet owners, 27 percent say they are using their PC less frequently for accessing the Internet and 20 percent say they are using their PC less frequently for accessing Facebook.

IGN[^]:

This decision supposedly came right from the top of the company, with Bill Gates himself even chipping in. Despite initial reservations, Kempin claims that Gates always had qualms that the living room computer would, at some stage, metamorphosise into an alternative PC that could threaten Microsoft's dominance of the traditional market. As a result, it was eventually felt the company had to try and tackle Sony head-on. While with hindsight we can see this worked out for the best, a huge amount of teething issues were encountered along the way.

Reality Prose[^]:

LEGO sets are not cheap toys. They are made to the highest standards and have the price to go along with it. However, in the past couple decades it seems that the price of LEGO sets has become outrageous. New sets can sell for up to $500 retail and old sets can sell for twice that in a secondary market. This is a children’s toy, right? There is no way LEGO sets have always been this expensive; it is just molded plastic. Let’s take a look at the history of LEGO pricing and try to figure out what is going on.

Article:

If governments don’t come round, though, Silent Circle’s solution is simple: The team will close up shop and move to a jurisdiction that won’t try to force them to comply with surveillance.

2ality.com[^]:

Looking back on my life, three programming languages prepared me well for JavaScript (which has some challenging aspects)...

kirupa.com[^]:

In HTML, there isn't just a single animation implementation (hey, that rhymes!) that you can use. You actually have three flavors of animation to choose from, and each one is specialized for certain kinds of tasks. Let's take a quick look at all three of them and see how they relate to the animation definition you saw in the previous section.

Hack a Day[^]:

Get serious about your shell scripting skills and maybe you can pull this one off. It’s a game of snake played in a BASH shell. It seems like a coding nightmare, but the final product turns out to be organized well enough for us to understand and took less than 250 lines of code.

Nettuts+[^]:

You're already using source control for managing your code, right? You might even be using your SCM as the central piece of your workflow, like we do at New Relic. In this article, we're not going to review the basics of source control management, regardless of which one you use. Let's just assume that you already know how to get around. What we are going to cover is how the pros use git. We'll take a look at some of the advanced features and workflows that you might not already be familiar with. Hopefully, you’ll walk away with your mouth agape at the sheer possibilities that git provides!

InfoWorld[^]:

Writing secure code begins long before the first loop is formed -- and is no easy task. To even approximate bulletproof code, architects, engineers, auditors, and managers must try to imagine everything that could go wrong with every aspect of the code. Although it's impossible to anticipate every nasty curve the attackers will throw, you have to do all you can to reduce your attack surface, plug holes, and guard against the fallout of a potential breach.

Topaz[^]:

I’m extraordinarily pleased to today announce Topaz, a project I started 10 months ago, to create a brand new implementation of the Ruby programming language (version 1.9.3). Topaz is written in Python on top of the RPython translation toolchain (the same one that powers PyPy). Its primary goals are simplicity and performance. Because Topaz builds on RPython, and thus much of the fantastic work of the PyPy developers, it comes out of the box with a high performance garbage collector, and a state of the art JIT (just-in-time) compiler. What does this mean? Out of the box Topaz is extremely fast.