Programming News Picks: Focus on Free Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-16 23:26:19 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-16 23:26:19 UTC
Summary: 2014 news picks that focus on programming and development, especially of Free software or using Free software tools
Demise of Proprietary
-
HTML5 developers queried recently by tools vendor Sencha remain dedicated to building apps via Web technologies, even as doubts have been cast on how effective HTML5 is vis à vis native development. Many of those same developers, however, have dropped support for the classic Microsoft Windows platform.
Surveying 2,128 business application developers from the HTML5 development community, including users of its own tools, Sencha found that 70-plus percent of developers planned to do more with HTML5 in the 2013 timeframe than they had done the previous year. And 75 percent will work further with HTML5 in 2014. More than 60 percent of developers have migrated to HTML5 and hybrid development for primary applications. For the coming year, just 4 percent of HTML5 developers plan to cut back on HTML5.
-
I still remember IBM's provocative announcement in 2001 that it was putting $1 billion toward the development and promotion of Linux. While such billion-dollar commitments from IBM are now so routine as to be unremarkable, back then a billion dollars meant a lot. I was working for an embedded Linux vendor at the time, and most of our sales cycle was spent explaining why GPL-licensed Linux wasn't the technology equivalent of terminal cancer. (Thanks in part to Microsoft's contribution.)
Google
-
The second video features Jason Hibbets's full interview with Chris DiBona Open Source Director at Google. Find out how DiBona measures his performance, why he once called open source "brutal," and more on working for Google and the future of open source.
-
Over 280 attendees representing 177 mentoring organizations gathered for a two-day, code-munity extravaganza celebrating the conclusion of Google Summer of Code with the annual Mentor Summit held at Google in Mountain View, California.
GitHub
-
GitHub's position as the repository of choice for open source community projects is today one of dominance, most would argue.
Officially often referred to as a "web-based revision control service" (rather than simply a software code repository), this classification is an obvious nod to the site's inherent level of active community involvement as open projects are continuously developed, refined and augmented.
-
So, what’s the problem? Well, that’s simple. It seems that Fox News’ technology department –run by a motley crew of half-witted quick-study-types– failed to explain GitHub, and also disregarded both spelling and punctuation in favor of adopting what I would describe as a rogue journalistic style; a style that exists far beyond the confines of traditional English language rules. It is now with great pleasure that I flog the holy-hell out of the following screen capture in an attempt to make them cry.
-
I have an open source script for a specific site (I'm trying not to call anything by name here) that a few other developers and I recently moved to GitHub. We've been joined by several new developers since we moved to the new system, including one very active one in particular. However, this active one has started changing a lot of the project.
First of all, he deleted our versioning system (not like Git, but like that—we called it versions v4.1.16) and said it would be better to simply push the code to the site when we think it's ready. Now there's no centralized place to put release notes, which has become annoying.
-
GitHub has become the de facto repository for open source projects. So, we were excited for the opportunity to sit down with GitHub's co-founder and CIO Scott Chacon during the All Things Open Conference in Raleigh, NC.
Python
-
One year ago the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) was founded on one purpose; to create a sustainable user community based on software development in Puerto Rico. On February 20, 2014 we will celebrate our first anniversary with an open format meeting with lightning talks from the community.
-
Programming languages are crucial to a programmer as they boosts their productivity. Keeping in mind the fact that programmers may not be comfortable with all the coding languages around, we thought of compiling a list of programming languages set to make it big in 2014.
-
Python community, friends, fellow developers, we need to talk. On December 3rd, 2008 Python 3.0 was first released. At the time it was widely said that Python 3 adoption was going to be a long process, it was referred to as a five year process. We've just passed the five year mark.
-
In an article entitled “Python Displacing R As The Programming Language For Data Science,” MongoDB’s Matt Asay made an argument that has been circulating for some time now. As Python has steadily improved its data science credentials, from Numpy to Pandas, with even R’s dominant ggplot2 charting library having been ported, its viability as a real data science platform improves daily. More than any other language in fact, save perhaps Java, Python is rapidly becoming a lingua franca, with footholds in every technology arena from the desktop to the server.
Git
LLVM
-
It looks like there's finally going to be stable point releases of the LLVM compiler infrastructure for pushing out bug-fixes quicker, whether you're using the Clang C/C++ compiler or depending upon LLVM for your GPU driver compiler back-end.
-
It's nearly one month late but the LLVM 3.4 compiler infrastructure is now available with the updated Clang C/C++ compiler front-end, the usual LLVM sub-projects, and also some new compiler tools.
-
The release of LLVM 3.4 is imminent and with the major compiler infrastructure upgrade comes update to the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end, LLDB debugger, and other LLVM sub-projects. LLVM 3.4 is a very righteous release and in celebration of its forthcoming release, it's back into compiler benchmarking season at Phoronix.
Ruby
-
Ruby 2.1 has many improvements including speedup without severe incompatibilities.
-
The Ruby project has done a new major release on Christmas for their popular programming language. Ruby offers performance speed-ups but without severe incompatibilities, according to the release announcement.
Misc.
-
Regular readers of this column won't be surprised to hear that I love both Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL. Rails has been my primary server-side Web development framework for about eight years, and it has managed to provide solutions for a large number of consulting and personal projects. As for PostgreSQL, I've been using it for about 15 years, and I continue to be amazed by the functionality it has gained in that time. PostgreSQL is no longer just a relational database. It's also a platform supporting the storage and retrieval of many types of data, built on a rock-solid, ACID-compliant, transactional core.
-
In the sometimes dark and mysterious world of computers, I see open source programming and community around it as a force of good. Open source sparks and kindles a connection between people that I think is hard to find elsewhere in programming. Working with open source, a programmer builds important and powerful collaboration skills. This is significant because many of us (programmers and self-proclaimed nerds) are rather antisocial. Open source programming helps us cultivate social behaviors like sharing, improved communication, and collaborating towards a common goal.
-
So by the mid-1980s, programming in schools was surging...
-
The Checkpoint-Restore Tool has reached version 1.0 as part of the CRIU project. Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace allows for users to freeze running applications and checkpoint it to the hard drive as a file and that checkpoint can then be restored to a running process later on. CRIU is different from suspend-and-resume with the Linux kernel in that this is a tool for handling individual programs and it is implemented in user-space.
-
The development team behind the Clutter software, a library for creating compelling, portable, dynamic and fast graphical user interfaces (GUI), has announced a few days ago that the second maintenance release of the stable Clutter 1.16 branch is available for download.
-
Jim Kukunas of Intel OTC published the set of 13 patches on Monday that include medium and quick deflate strategies, a faster hash function with SSE 4.2 support, PCLMULQDQ-optimized CRC folding, SSE2 hash shifting, and other changes/tuning.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- "Alternative to Microsoft Office" Must Use Free/Open Standards/Formats for Real Sovereignty
- It would make sense for the EU to invest in its own workers and its own software projects, more so now that there are hostile countries both to the east and to the west
- When Everybody Has a Right/Access to An Attorney/Lawyer (But Some Get Funding From Malicious American Corporations to Spend a Million Dollars on Many Lawyers and Several Barristers)
- And send about 75 KG of legal papers to the residence of the "opponent"
- European Qualifying Examination (EQE) Being Reduced to Pieces of Papers One Can Buy, Patent System Rapidly Losing Its Legitimacy
- Welcome to the "new Europe"
-
- Founder of IBM Ventures Has Just Quit IBM
- Some people leave IBM and many people 'leave' IBM
- Signs of Impeding Mass Layoffs - Not Just Quiet Layoffs - at Microsoft
- Beneath the surface there are waves of layoffs and even entire teams are let go
- Career Science and Academia as Corporate Propaganda 'on Tap'
- article about surveillance
- Veteran GNU/Linux Journalist Jack Wallen Tries Geminispace and Likes It
- It'll turn 7 some time soon
- Scheduled Maintenance Tonight
- There will be similar work early next week
- IBM Has No Clue How to Integrate Companies Like Red Hat
- IBM is failing to respect this company's culture
- Fake Articles From Sites With "Linux" in Their Name/Domain Name
- we can at least hope that linuxteck.com made a decision to quit slop
- Links 13/03/2026: New US Weapons for Taiwan, Pakistan Air Strikes Hit Kabul
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/03/2026: Exhaustion and Smartphone Addiction
- Links for the day
- Friday the 13th & Debian Developers afraid to nominate in DPL elections
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 13/03/2026: Chatbot "Pentagon Contract" (Bailout) and Secret Service Ditches Slop Pusher
- Links for the day
- Priorities in 2026
- 2026 is an interesting year
- Willis Towers Watson (WTW) Producing More Propaganda for EPO "Cocaine Communication Managers"
- The Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) has this new paper about Willis Towers Watson (WTW) and its annual EPO-sponsored propaganda, pretending all is well when things are clearly dire
- Head of Microsoft Office and Microsoft 360 is Leaving Microsoft Amid Problems and Mass Layoffs
- Microsoft is like a "legacy" company
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 12, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 12, 2026
- Gemini Links 13/03/2026: "Someone to Take Over Antenna" and Random Seed/RNG
- Links for the day
- By Expanding to Advocacy of Ponzi Schemes and Bill Epsteingate (Sex Trafficking), Linux Foundation Revenue Grew to $220,730,594, But Salary of Linus Torvalds Not Even in Top 10 Anymore!
- true!
- In the Name of Transparency, Today We Show Our Defence and Counterclaim
- already uploaded by the other side
- IBM Cannot Even Do Payroll, Now a "Legitimate Target" of Iran
- Missiles or not, it seems like IBM systems will be targeted more by cybercriminals
- Links 12/03/2026: Heating Bills to Soar, "Banks in Gulf Evacuate Their Offices"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/03/2026: On Phone Anxiety and Bjorn "Looking for Someone to Take Over Antenna"
- Links for the day
- Cultification: best candidates avoiding Debian leader elections
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Richard Stallman (RMS) et al Cited in 'Nature' (Journal/Site) Today, "CODE beyond FAIR"
- Under Open Access
- The Register MS, on Verge of Collapse, Keeps Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for China
- Publishers that participate in this simply don't care about their readers
- Overview of False Narratives and Lies Used to Lower Salaries at the European Patent Office (EPO), Abandoning Patent Quality and the EPC
- Many of the latter slides are the same as Munich's
- Links 12/03/2026: Atlassian Layoffs, GAFAN Covering up Slop-Induced Outages, "Age-verification in Operating Systems and the Internet"
- Links for the day
- The EPO's President, Who Covers Up Cocaine Use, is Trying to Suppress Communication Between EPO Staff Under the Guise of 'Privacy' (and in Defiance of a Court Ruling)
- Why does Europe's second-largest institution: 1) curtail communication among staff (including union) and 2) go out of its way to avoid obeying a court order from ILOAT in Geneva?
- Exactly One Week Before Next EPO Strike, Media Intentionally Not Mentioning EPO Strikes
- One form of propaganda technique/s involves the systematic suppression of certain topics, or of particular "narratives"
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 10 Out of 200: Showing Public Tweets is Not a Privacy Violation, But This Isn't About Justice, It's About Censorship
- It's time to put a stop to this abuse of process (which is what the Judge deemed it to be last year)
- Suicide of disgruntled employee? Bus fire at Kerzers / Chiètres, Switzerland, at least six dead
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 11, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, March 11, 2026
- Gemini Links 12/03/2026: "on Urbit" and the True Cost (or Criticism) of "Social Control Media"
- Links for the day
- Slop About "linux" in Google News
- Once people recognise that those sites are fake it's hard to 'unsee' what they are
- An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part V - Attempts to Take Down and Suppress Criticism of Back Doors Controlled by Microsoft and the American Government
- The cost of maintaining illusions
- IBM's Payroll: Cannot Even Pay the People What They're Legally Entitled to
- How financially-stressed is IBM at this point?
- Slides From the European Patent Office (EPO) Explain Why They're Striking, How They're Striking, and What Comes Next
- A week from now the strike will go ahead
- GAFAM Datacentres Are Facilities of War, So Risk of Downtime by Missiles or State-Sponsored Cracking Has Vastly Increased
- How safe is your business in "clown computing" or DCs marked as some "legitimate targets" at wartime?
- Companies That Take Away Blood and Sweat From the Community to Sell a Ponzi Scheme to Everybody
- We need Free software that is run by communities
- 1,234 People Gather Online to Plan Next EPO Strikes and Other Industrial Actions
- yesterday an online gathering orchestrated the next moves by EPO staff
- Links 11/03/2026: Fake Videos Swarm YouTube, "Ukraine Can Now Manufacture ‘China-Free’ Drones"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 11/03/2026: Lagrange for iOS and Android and "Turning a Folder of Git Repos Into Project Launcher"
- Links for the day
- Kafkaesque: Unlawful Activities in the UK to Cover Up Unlawful Activities in the United States of America
- Why is bribery and even extortion seen is OK? Because rich people do those things?
- Former IBM Executive, Ron Hovsepian, Doomed S.u.S.E. (SUSE)
- SUSE is like a child nobody wants to raise
- Quiet Layoffs or Silent Layoffs Alleged at Microsoft
- Will some investigative journalists do their job now and ask Microsoft tough questions?
- After a Long Lull LinuxTeck (linuxteck.com) Came Back Only as a Slopfarm
- Unlike Linuxiac, LinuxTeck wasn't very active in recent years
- Links 11/03/2026: EPO and USPTO Software Patents Thrown Out Again, Copyright Concerns Over Slop (Plagiarism Using Buzzwords)
- Links for the day
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 9 Out of 200: 5RB Barrister Does Not Even Know the Name of His Own Client (That He Was Paid Well Over $200,000 to 'Speak' or 'Cover' for)
- If you assault women in the United States, there's a barrister available for you in the UK
- IBM's Fedora is Now Led by GAFAM Slop
- The official word of Fedora is partly slop
- IBM 'Dinobabies' Speak Out
- "They want newbies out of school at a much cheaper rate"
- Links 11/03/2026: "Drill, Baby, Drill" and Social Control Media Recognised as Threat to Democracy
- Links for the day
- 5 Years Since Freenode Conflict
- IRC isn't going away
- A Week Ahead of Next EPO Strike the Staff Representatives Show the Administrative Council That the Office Lost the Best Staff, It's No Longer Attractive
- the message circulated regarding the open letter to the Administrative Council
- Jeff Bezos as an Individual Said to Have Enough Capital to Buy IBM
- Assuming a market capitalisation of 234.70 billion
- Starting Soon: Another New Series About Richard Stallman
- There are some inside stories we can tell
- Gemini Links 11/03/2026: School, Code Slop, and "Fancy Weapons"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 10, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 10, 2026