The Insider News

Develop in the Cloud - Tim Kellogg[^]:

As a programmer, have you ever had to work with multithreaded code? It's horrible. You might as well give up on unit testing and quality; concurrency bugs usually aren't very reproducible. Hence the old adage: "Some people see a problem and say 'I know, I'll use threads.' Now they have two problems...." We need a language where we can write code as we normally do (single threaded) and have the compiler transform it into multithreaded code automatically. Such a compiler could weigh the benefits of multithreading against the overhead of creating threads and optimize accordingly. This is the only solution to our long-term dilemma.

Dr. Bunsen[^]:

The coffers of Unix hold many simple tools, which by themselves are powerful, but when chained together facilitate complex data manipulations. Unix's use of functional composition eliminates much of the tedious boilerplate of I/0 and text parsing found in scripting languages. This design creates a simple and succinct interface for manipulating data and a foundation upon which custom tools can be built. Although languages like R and Python are invaluable for data analysis, I find Unix to be superior in many scenarios for quick and simple data cleaning, idea prototyping, and understanding data. This post is about how I use Unix for EDA.

Ars Technica[^]:

Compared to any of the popular tablets—the various iPads, the Nexus 7, Amazon's range—the Surface Pro is absurdly overpriced and its battery life is pathetic. Compared to an Ultrabook, it's not that bad: a little ahead in some ways, a little behind in others. The thing is, in spite of its pricing, the Surface Pro isn't an Ultrabook.... This makes Surface Pro an awkward sale.

DZone[^]:

Here are some technologies that have such strong "street cred", they are effectively untouchable. Anyone who dares imply that they are deficient in any way is instantly labelled an uneducated moron. It is impossible to have a realistic conversation about these technologies, and it's not very common for enthusiasts of these technologies to admit their failings.

BBC News[^]:

In a world first, on 3 December 1992, an engineer sent the message "Merry Christmas" from a PC to a mobile device using Vodafone's UK network. But the origins of the idea date back further to Matti Makkonen. Over a pizza at a telecoms conference in 1984, the former Finnish civil servant put forward the idea of a mobile phone messaging service. This was to become the SMS (short message service) standard.

The Security Practice[^]:

Many of the broad family of specifications commonly grouped under the “HTML5” umbrella are scheduled to be completed in 2013, and with the release of Internet Explorer 10, the users of every major web browser flavor can enjoy rich Web apps written on the open web platform, with no need for plugins. Lots of people are excited about HTML5, but one group I don’t see as particularly excited are security experts, or perhaps they’re only excited in a rather cynical fashion. Full employment! Browser botnets! A lifetime of conference talks!

Wired.com[^]:

Competition in automotive technology has long been about who’s got the most horsepower, the best towing capacity or the fastest acceleration. These days, though, it’s all about having the slickest infotainment systems and most-connected cars. The shift in focus from what’s under the hood to what’s behind the dashboard has brought a largely covert war to the auto industry over the operating systems that will control these gadgets. As in the smartphone biz, the battle line is between proprietary and open source software. The outcome will determine what these systems look like, how they work and how distinctive they are as automakers embrace walled gardens or open ecosystems.

dalpix.com[^]:

The original Arduino IDE is great for beginners, but it lacks a lot of features that advanced users need. And I've tried a lot of other solutions. But all were based on plugins and hacks to other IDEs, which lead to not-so-good performance. For example, a very famous plugin provided access to terminal console by adding a fixed option to the IDE Tools menu. So, if you're working with two different boards, you have to change this hard-coded option every-time....

Chris Patterson's Blog[^]:

IDisposable is a standard interface in the .NET framework that facilitates the deterministic release of unmanaged resources.... Despite IDisposable having only a single method named Dispose to implement, it is commonly implemented incorrectly. After reading this blog post it should be clear how and when to implement IDisposable, as well as how to ensure that resources are properly disposed when bad things happen (also knows as exceptions).

don't code today what you can't debug tomorrow[^]:

The... “multiple layers of defense” strategy applies to modern software development. For example, even though the compiler will scream at you if your code does not make sense, there is no reason to skip fixing it, if you happen to see it on your editor.... The principles are summarized as: If you screw up, you want to know earlier than later, and the first layer should have the lowest cost and effort.

Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht[^]:

Although there exist numerous books explaining principles and structures of operating systems, there is a lack of descriptions of systems actually implemented and used. We wished not only to give advice on how a system might be built, but to demonstrate how one was built. Program listings therefore play a key role in this text, because they alone contain the ultimate explanations...

Programming and Productivity[^]:

Like most developers (I assume), I spend the majority of my workspace staring at a terminal window.... When you look at your terminal this much, it needs to be beautiful. More than that, it needs to know you. You need to have a history with it. No, not like that. Here are 5 things that you can do to make your terminal great.

Github[^]:

Regex Tuesday is the day where everyone writes regex for a day! Every tuesday, I will push a new challenge to this website. They can be easy or tricky, and there is sure to be a variety of different challenges available.