General Development Archive

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Haskell

Submitted by Ward D 2008-09-19 General Development 7 Comments

Computerworld chats to Simon Peyton-Jones about the development of Haskell. Peyton-Jones speaks in depth about his desire to 'do one thing well', as well as interest in lazy functional programming languages and their place in a world with rapidly increasing multi-core CPUs and clusters.

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Lua

Submitted by Frank Lopez 2008-09-11 General Development 13 Comments

Professor Roberto Ierusalimschy offers an in-depth examination of what he believes to be the most successful programming language not born in a developed country.

Bringing Desktop Applications to the Browser

David Adams 2008-09-10 General Development 23 Comments

jQuery is emerging as the JavaScript library of choice for developers looking to ease their creation of dynamic Rich Internet Applications. As browser-based applications continue to replace desktop applications, the use of these libraries will only continue to grow. See jQuery in action, its easy syntax, how to use jQuery correctly in your own JavaScript code in your browser app, and how to avoid any pitfalls when using it with other libraries.

KornShell 93 Auditing

Submitted by BlueVoodoo 2008-09-04 General Development 3 Comments

Over at one of IBM's many developer websites, there's an article on new features of the Korn Shell. "New features of the Korn Shell provide system administrators and management with the ability to monitor, track, record, and audit every command executed by any user of a system. This is different from the normal shell history, and provides detailed information that includes date, time, tty, user, and the command. This information can be stored locally or transmitted in real time to a remote logging system."

Submitted by jmalasko 2008-08-26 General Development No Comments

XML is a communication format for exchanging structured documents and data. Too often, an XML format is chosen arbitrarily during development, without much planning or design. Learn how to design a format less likely to require change and agile enough to incorporate new requirements with the simple addition of new extensions instead of full changes.

The State of the Language: An Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup

amjith 2008-08-20 General Development 70 Comments

DevX interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup about C++0x, the new C++ standard that is due in 2009. Bjarne Stroustrup has classified the new features into three categories Concurrency, Libraries and Language. The changes introduced in the Concurrency makes C++ more standardized and easy to use on multi-core processors. It is good to see that some of the commonly used libraries are becoming standard (eg: unordered_maps and regex).

From Scripting to Object-Oriented Python Programming

Submitted by BlueVoodoo 2008-08-13 General Development 7 Comments

"Often it is difficult to make the transition from procedural scripting to object-oriented programming. This article explores how to reuse knowledge from PHP, Bash, or Python scripting to transition to object-oriented programming in Python. The article also briefly touches on the appropriate use of functional programming."

Submitted by matej 2008-08-13 General Development 22 Comments

You thought Tcl/Tk stands for 'obsolete GUI'? You define the looks of Tk as 'prehistoric'? Or do you visualize ugly interfaces when reading this? I certainly do. Mats Bengtsson writes: "Tcl's windowing toolkit, Tk, has been 'known' to be ugly and outdated. With the 8.5 release last December the tile package, now named ttk (Themed Tk), is included in the core which brings true native widgets on Windows (yes, Vista too) and Mac." But what about Linux? Mats points at tileqt and the new tilegtk and notes: "Imagine that you can switch theme, and toolkits, on the fly without any program restart." Finally, he mentions progresses in both tkpath and support for WebKit. He concludes: "When all this comes together it will make Tk a very competitive toolkit."

PHP 4 is Dead, Long Live PHP 4

Submitted by Ward D 2008-08-11 General Development 12 Comments

For a technology that has been in stable release since May 22, 2000, PHP 4 has finally reached the end of its official life. With the release of PHP 4.4.9, official support has ended and the final security patch for the platform issued. With PHP 5 offering a viable upgrade path for the last few years, the recommendation is for addministrators and developers is to move to the PHP 5 platform (if they haven't already done so), which is currently at 5.2.6. For those who are not able to migrate their systems to the new version of PHP noted PHP security expert, Stefan Esser, will continue to provide third party security patching for the PHP 4 line through his Suhosin product.

Submitted by estherschindler 2008-08-06 General Development 17 Comments

In an "as told to" article for CIO.com, Linus Torvalds explains how he keeps the Linux people and software on-track. Arguably the most surprising facet of Linus' management style is that he's perfectly willing to flame people when he thinks they're wrong--though he's also happy to be corrected himself. "Part of that, by the way, is not feeling shy about saying impolite things or showing some emotion. So I'd rather flame people for doing stupid things and call them stupid, rather than try to be too polite to the point where people didn't understand how strongly I felt about something." That's particularly interesting in light of several OSCON presenters who believe that the way to grow the open source community is to make projects more welcoming to would-be contributors. Do these attitudes actually contradict one another?

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Python

amjith 2008-08-05 General Development 39 Comments

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. This time we chat with Guido van Rossum, best known as the author of Python, and currently working for Google, CA where he gets to spend at least half his time developing the language.

The A-Z of Programming Languages: JavaScript

Submitted by Francis Lopez 2008-07-31 General Development 11 Comments

JavaScript creator and current CTO of Mozilla Corporation Brendan Eich provides a detailed history of JavaScript, including some of the more interesting programs written with JavaScript, right up to how JavaScript has been essential to the Ajax or Web 2.0 revolution.Eich started work on JS in 1995 and says he's been surprised by how popular it has been: "I was resigned for a long time to JS being unpopular due to those annoying popups, but more: due to its unconventional combination of functional and prototype-based object programming traditions."And with multicore/massively-parallel computers upon us, Eich talks about the future of JavaScript: "JS has its role to play in addressing the multicore world, starting with relatively simple extensions such as Google Gears' worker pools -- "shared nothing" background threads with which browser JS communicates by sending and receiving messages."

Submitted by snydeq 2008-07-29 General Development 41 Comments

InfoWorld has put together a 20-question test of your programming knowledge. Questions range from 'What is the best way to preserve type safety in assembly language?' to 'Why are race conditions a problem in modern software development?' and they touch on your knowledge of the history of programming languages, how best to develop easily maintainable and secure code, and your game plan for overcoming a lack of energy drinks, Jolt Cola, and Mountain Dew at the local supermarket - in other words, your commitment to programming as a way of life. Editor's Note: Think of it as your midnight distraction (*cough* Grad Students) rather than news, you might actually enjoy it ;).

Submitted by jmalasko 2008-07-28 General Development 2 Comments

Create a plain old Java object (POJO)-style Web service easily using Apache CXF, an open source Web service framework. This article, Part 1 of a series, shows you how to expose POJOs as Web services using Spring and CXF. It also illustrates CXF integration with the Spring Framework.

The A-Z of Programming Languages: D

amjith 2008-07-22 General Development 23 Comments

Walter Bright talks about D and his desire to improve on systems programming languages. Many successful concepts from other languages like JavaScript, PERL, Ruby, Lisp, Ada, Erlang, Python, etc., have had a significant influence on D, he says. He adds: "D 1.0 was pretty straightforward stuff, being features that were adapted from well-trod experience in other languages. D 2.0 has ventured into unexplored territory that doesn't have a track record in other languages. Since these capabilities are unproven, they generate some healthy skepticism. Only time will tell."

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Modula-3

amjith 2008-07-16 General Development 6 Comments

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Luca Cardelli is a member of the Modula-3 design committee. Cardelli is a Principal Researcher and Head of the Programming Principles and Tools and Security groups at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, and is an ACM Fellow. Here he chats to Computerworld about the origins of Modula-3, including how the most exciting Modula-3 design meeting ever, was abruptly interrupted by the San Francisco 7.1 earthquake.

The Great Language with a Strange Name

Submitted by LinucksGirl 2008-07-15 General Development 5 Comments

Awk is a very nice language with a very strange name. In this first article of a three-part series, start playing around with awk to see how it works and quickly get your awk programming skills up to speed. As the series progresses, more advanced topics will be covered, culminating with an advanced real-world awk application demo.

“Git the basics” Screencast

Submitted by Ian Ward 2008-07-14 General Development 3 Comments

Bart Trojanowski has given an in-depth 2-hour Git tutorial titled "Git the basics" for the Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts and this is the screencast of that presentation.

Avoid Latency While Editing Remote Files Using bcvi

2008-07-11 General Development 13 Comments

The ability to run both console and graphical programs securely on a remote system using SSH brings you a great deal of freedom. When the communications link to that remote system has high latency, however, running interactive programs such as a text editor on the remote machine can become a real test of your patience. The bcvi project lets you edit files on a remote system using gvim (or another editor) on your local desktop machine to avoid the latency.

The A-Z of Programming Languages: YACC

Submitted by Sandro Hartley 2008-07-10 General Development 4 Comments

Computerworld interviews Stephen C. Johnson, the brains behind YACC Yet Another Compiler Compiler: The compiler was developed some 35 years ago and is still going strong today through various incarnations. Asked what he is proudest of in terms of YACC's development and use, Johnson said: "I think computing is a service profession. I am happiest when the programs that I have written (YACC, Lint, the Portable C Compiler) are useful to others. In this regard, the contribution YACC made to the spread of Unix and C is what I'm proudest of." And would he do anything differently? "I'd try harder to find a notation other than $1, $2, $$, etc. While simple and intuitive, the notation is a source of errors as grammars evolve."