The Insider News

Marco.org[^]:

No matter what you make or how much you charge, some people will find things to complain about. If you drop your app’s price all the way down to free, people will still complain — just not about the price. They’ll move on to the features, the implementation, the design, the updates, the way you look, or what kind of dog you have. They’ll complain about every facet of your app, and then they’ll complain about unrelated topics just to pile on.

Betabeat[^]:

Is booze for programmers like spinach for Popeye? The Ballmer Peak, a reference to Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, holds that imbibing alcohol improves cognitive ability, up to a point–a variation of the Yerkes-Dodson law, which shows a correlation between arousal and performance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that optimal programming occurs about two beers in. But what sayeth science?

marcusoft.net[^]:

What am I optimizing for when I write my code today? Change will always come. I know that from the outset. "I will change something in that spec during the 25 years the system will live". How do I try to handle that? Do I precieve change as a risk or an enabler? Being able to change fast is a business advantage and a way to manage risk. How do I make my code being easy to change? What kind of documentation do I need in a system that I'm going to change a lot?

Smashing Coding[^]:

Static typing is great because it keeps you out of trouble. Dynamic typing is great because it gets out of your way and lets you get your work done faster. The debate between strongly and dynamically typed languages rages on, but understanding the issue starts with weak typing and languages such as C.

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.