Programming News: Python, Java, LLVM and More
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-09 19:28:14 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-09 19:28:14 UTC
Python
I’m very excited to announce Pyston, a new open-source implementation of Python, currently under development at Dropbox. The goal of the project is to produce a high-performance Python implementation that can push Python into domains dominated by traditional systems languages like C++.
Java
Java 8 has been reengineered with the strength of Project Lambda Expressions.
Lambda, is a Java function that adds 'closures and related features' dedicated to supporting multicore programming.
DevOps
You probably think I'm going to talk about all the reasons why you should use open source tooling as the foundation for an effective DevOps culture in your organization, but that's not what this is about. Not to marginalize the complexity of the challenges faced by the team I work with, but I have confidence that the engineers are going to figure the tooling part out. Believe it or not, the daunting part is wrapped in cultural change.
The 'developer' and 'operations' DevOps role is now an official part of the tech industry nomenclature.
The number of permanent and officially recognised DevOps Engineer posts in the UK has jumped 347% in the past two years.
LLVM
Chris Lattner has announced the LLVM Foundation this morning as "The LLVM umbrella project has grown over the years into a vibrant community made up of many sub-projects, with hundreds of contributors. The results of this project are used by millions of people every day. Today, I'm happy to announce that we are taking the next big step, and forming a new, independent non-profit to represent the community interest."
Months ago there was work on advancing Gallium3D's LLVMpipe software-based driver with its OpenGL 3.x support, including work-in-progress patches, but nothing was merged at the time. With that said, it was a surprise to see fake MSAA support added tonight for Gallium3D and used by the LLVMpipe driver so it fakes OpenGL 3.0 compliance and forces the necessary extensions for handling OpenGL 3.2.
Leftovers
It's not hard to come up with a dozen different reasons why the rise of open source development has been a watershed event in both the software and hardware industries. All of us can build new web applications faster with our feet firmly planted on the shoulders of jQuery, Bootstrap, and Apache. Languages like Ruby, PHP, and Python power the Internet, and operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD provide the foundation for thousands of companies and services.
I'm proud to announce the very first beta release of Advanced Gtk+ Sequencer. There many improvements releated to thread safety and synchronization. It was a hard way to get to this point but I just want to say I love C programming with GNU tools.
And sadly, gender inequality in open source communities is widely acknowledged to be even worse than in the proprietary software world. Figures are hard to come by, but a 2009 keynote at OSCON Alex Bayley cited a 2006 EU survey that found only 1.5 per cent of contributors to open source are women.
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