"Everyone seems to have a replacement for JavaScript - Google even has two. Now Microsoft has revealed that Anders Hejlsberg has been working on a replacement and it has released a preview of TypeScript. TypeScript is open source - Apache 2.0 license - and a superset of JavaScript. As you would expect from a Hejlsberg language it incorporates type checking, interfaces and lots of syntactic sugar."

"Apple has changed its iOS developer guidelines, adding a clause (on September 12, a source tells me) that reads: 'Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.' That's a change that could have wide-reaching effects, especially on promotion models that offer developers a paid top slot on app recommendation offerings like FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream and more." Weird clause. Doesn't really seem to address any issue I can think of.

"No institution is more responsible for the recent explosion of patent litigation in the software industry, the rise of patent trolls, and the proliferation of patent thickets than the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The patent court's thirtieth birthday this week is a good time to ask whether it was a mistake to give the nation's most patent-friendly appeals court such broad authority over the patent system." Interesting.

"The ObjectScript is a new programing language that mixes benefits of JavaScript, Lua, and PHP. The ObjectScript has syntax from JavaScript, multiple results from Lua, OOP from PHP and much more."

"Today is a great day for Open webOS. We have completed our initial roadmap and are releasing Open webOS 1.0 on schedule, as promised." The only use they mention in a video of WebOS running on a TouchSmart? Hotel kiosks. Sigh.

"When I started writing programs in the late 80s it was pretty primitive and required a lot of study and skill. I was a young kid doing this stuff, the adults at that time had it even worse and some of them did start in the punch card era. This was back when programmers really had to earn their keep, and us newer generations are losing appreciation for that. A generation or two ago they may have been been better coders than us. More importantly they were better craftsmen, and we need to think about that." I'm no programmer, but I do understand that the current crop of programmers could learn a whole lot from older generations. I'm not going to burn my fingers on if they were better programmers or not, but I do believe they have a far greater understanding of the actual workings of a computer. Does the average 'app developer' have any clue whatsoever about low-level code, let alone something like assembly?

I bought a brand new iMac on Tuesday. I'm pretty sure this will come as a surprise to some, so I figured I might as well offer some background information about this choice - maybe it'll help other people who are also pondering what to buy as their next computer.

"I was in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and happened to spot Linus Torvalds sitting alone at a window table. I asked the creator of the Linux operating system and the Git source code control system if I could join him. Over the next fifteen minutes we talked about programming and programmers." Editor's Note: We've realized it's unclear whether this is a satirical interview or not. We don't know, so YMMV.

You'll be forgiven for thinking Tizen is dead and resting in the large cemetary of failed mobile operating systems. Not only has the Tizen SDK 2.0 alpha been released, with highlights that include broader HTML5 support, USB accessory function support, web UI framework, Tizen web API's, improved IDE and development tools, but also an actual (insert rumour) phone, named the GT-i9300_TIZEN. Yup, an SIII running Tizen.

"So this news is a couple of days old now, but I wanted to write a blog entry about the exciting release of GStreamer 1.0. When we released GStreamer 0.10 about 7 years ago we did not expect or plan the 0.10 series to last as long as it did, I think if we had it would have been called 1.0 instead of 0.10. Our caution back then was that 0.10 was a quite revolutionary version with the core of GStreamer extensively re-designed around effective use of threads and thread safety."

ActiveWin.com has just posted their 45-page, 40-screenshot review of Microsoft Windows 8. The review covers many different aspects of the OS including performance, security, application compatibility, and more. "Is Windows 8 a hit or miss? It's a hit, it is clearly Microsoft's most bold development in years, it probably beats out the transition from Program Manager (Windows 3X) to Windows 95, the move from Windows 9x to the NT Kernel. The Windows 8 platform represents so many things: truly touch centric, support for modern processor architectures, fast and fluid as Microsoft puts it and also represents where the majority of the world is heading when it comes to computing, entirely mobile."

"RIM has just unveiled the latest iteration of the BlackBerry 10 operating system, set to be released on new devices early next year. We have finally gotten a look at the UI RIM will be shipping, and it's an interesting mix of user interaction metaphors we've seen on multiple devices to this point and a strong progression from the version of the software we first saw back in May." It looks nice. I like it.

The open source Contiki OS, a tiny operating system that runs on anything from the Commodore 64 to the Internet of Things, goes commercial: in an email to the contiki-developers list, Contiki founder Adam Dunkels talks about how newly founded startup Thingsquare is turning Contiki into an open source product called Thingsquare Mist, with a paid support model.

"It seems like people really hate the new Maps in iOS 6. Now, I'm not disputing that Maps does give a lot of strange results to a lot of people all around the world, but for a large, large number of people, iOS 6 Maps has been a huge improvement over Google Maps. I'm talking about those of us who live in China (you know, the place with 1.3+ billion people and the second-largest economy in the world)." Fascinating.