The Insider News

Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day[^]:

The free TFS Source Control History Visualization extension for Visual Studio 2012, based on the Gource tool project and created by Alexander Biryukov.... Not sure if it's something I'd use often, but that doesn't take away from it's shear coolness!

MSDN Magazine[^]:

For almost a decade now, I’ve been coding for various .NET platforms using C# and XAML, so when Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, of course it was great to see a XAML-based framework in the Windows 8 API. At the same time, I was quite intrigued to see support of C++, not as a managed language but to generate native code, and moreover, to see an extensive DirectX API that can be accessed only from C++.

Web Dev .NET[^]:

I recently became curious as to when browser sniffing might ever be acceptable. I mean, surely there must be a valid use case even if it isn't pretty. So, I went on a search on Twitter and I also polled some of my close developer friends on their thoughts. The following is a list of my findings.

LuaHashMap[^]:

When writing LuaHashMap, the biggest question was always, "How is the performance?". The dogma is that it should be slow since it's going through an interpreter ("scripting language"). But wisdom demands benchmarks before making unsubstantiated claims.... So this seemed like a good basis to start a new round of benchmarks. But why stop at Lua? So let's do a whole suite of interpreted languages that would otherwise be dismissed. So I'm incorportating Lua, Python, Ruby, Perl, and Tcl.

Math ∩ Programming[^]:

Probability theory underlies a huge portion of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, and a number of our future posts will rely on the ideas and terminology we lay out in this post. Our first formal theory of machine learning will be deeply ingrained in probability theory, we will derive and analyze probabilistic learning algorithms, and our entire treatment of mathematical finance will be framed in terms of random variables. And so it’s about time we got to the bottom of probability theory.

#2782[^]:

Really you should do yourself a huge favor. The next time one of your friends suggests you write a book, just ignore them. That’ll also save you the onerous task of reading the rest of this post. Still reading? Oh dear. Well I guess I feel compelled to inflict some well meant advice. This is based on collaborating on three books in the last few years. I’ve also written numerous technical papers, a PhD thesis (i.e. another book) and several published articles. Glutton for punishment, that’s me.

GigaOM[^]:

Until now, the mobile revolution has been about squeezing the desktop internet onto portable devices. Entrepreneur Edward Aten says the real revolution for smartphones is about fulfilling a whole new set of needs that people have in their daily lives.

unsane.info[^]:

I was introducing “Alien” (1979) last night to Darren and a couple of friends, and at one point when we paused the movie, we paused, not to discuss the relative merits of the thriller genre, or chestbursters, but the computers that were envisaged when the movie was produced. I’m not talking about the displays, mind you; while they’re incredibly primitive, they’re a symptom of the time and they can be accepted as having a certain kitsch nostalgia.... What’s most noticeable though is how computers were presented.

Dan McKinley[^]:

Real-time web analytics is a seductive concept. It appeals to our desire for instant gratification. But the truth is that there are very few product decisions that can be made in real time, if there are any at all. Analysis is difficult enough already, without attempting to do it at speed.

goyello.com[^]:

While working with (young) C# programmers I’ve noticed that some mistakes are being repeated by almost every one of them. These are mostly the mistakes, which once you point them, are quite easy to remember. However, if a developer is not aware of them, they can cause many problems with the efficiency and quality of the developed software. Therefore, I decided to gather the 8 most common mistakes made.

The Ultimate Visual Studio Tips and Tricks Blog[^]:

I was watching episode 10 of Elementary and they mentioned a language called Malbolge. I’ve been coding for a long time but never heard of this language so decided to do some research. Apparently there is a major group of programming language I haven’t been exposed to: Esoteric Languages. I thought I would show some of these to folks who may have never seen them.

Ars Technica[^]:

Windows RT distinguishes itself from Windows 8 in two main ways. First, it runs on ARM processors rather than x86 ones. Second, it bars the installation of third-party desktop applications. The built-in Windows applications like Notepad work, and of course, the bundled Office 2013 apps run on the desktop, but any attempt to run third-party applications is greeted with an error message. After a little under two-and-a-half months on the market, the first cracks have started to appear in Microsoft's lockdown. A developer going by the name of clrokr has published a way of defeating this limitation, enabling arbitrary desktop applications to be run on Windows RT.

Wikibon[^]:

Fair price comparisons are a valued treasure among customers attempting to identify the lowest cost scenario for a particular product or service. However, in many cases, price is but one factor that CIOs use in making strategic technology decisions. Obviously, if a lower cost product is incapable of meeting business goals, that product will not garner much consideration in an assessment. But, when the lower cost product provides what might be an adequate solution, perhaps the lower cost will win the day.... It is these two key metrics – overall cost and feature set – that continue to drive the war of words between Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

Simply Ahmazing, Our World is[^]:

In the past year and half I've been learning Java (for Android), Python and JavaScript (& HTML/CSS) (for web development) and I've come to realize that the best way to learn programming from a book or tutorial is to read it 3 times! Yes, read it 3 times!! Reading new content this way has helped understand new languages/concepts well. I'm confident it can help you, a beginner to programming or a certain programming language, maximally absorb knowledge from whatever it is you're reading.