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Slashdot: Developers

What Aspects of Open Source Projects Do You Avoid?


paulproteus writes "I'm a Debian developer and a part-time contributor to a few smaller projects. I do a lot of free software-y and open source-y things. Sometimes, though, I don't do them. I figure some other Slashdotters might have similar hang-ups — we contribute to a project, but there are parts that we really dread thinking about. So I wrote a post about having these hang-ups, and I made a place on the web to share how others can help your project. What are the parts that, in your projects, you would be relieved if someone else looked at for you?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/NSH5xWV1wCk/What-Aspects-of-Open-Source-Projects-Do-You-Avoid


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Google Makes Apps Script Available To All


theodp writes "Formerly only available to Apps Users, Google has made Apps Script available to everyone (sample script), including you Google Docs low-lifers. Apps Script lets you automate actions across spreadsheets, sites, calendars, and other Google services. No spamming, kids!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/VArqMmxAXNA/Google-Makes-Apps-Script-Available-To-All


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Programming the Commodore 64: the Definitive Guide


Mirk writes "Back in 1985 it was possible to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came burned into the ROMs (even if it was only Microsoft BASIC). The Reinvigorated Programmer revisits R. C. West's classic and exhaustive book Programming the Commodore 64 and laments the decline of that sort of comprehensive Deep Knowing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/SKLPia33P58/Programming-the-Commodore-64-the-Definitive-Guide


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Key Web App Standard Approaches Consensus


suraj.sun tips a report up at CNet which begins: "Browser makers, grappling with outmoded technology and a vision to rebuild the Web as a foundation for applications, have begun converging on a seemingly basic but very important element of cloud computing. That ability is called local storage, and the new mechanism is called Indexed DB. Indexed DB, proposed by Oracle and initially called WebSimpleDB, is largely just a prototype at this stage, not something Web programmers can use yet. But already it's won endorsements from Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google, and together, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome account for more than 90 percent of the usage on the Net today. 'Indexed DB is interesting to both Firefox and Microsoft, so if we get to the point where we prototype it and want to ship it, it will have very wide availability,' said Chris Blizzard, director of evangelism for Mozilla. ... Microsoft publicly endorsed Indexed DB on its IE blog: 'Together with Mozilla, we're excited about a new design for local storage called Indexed DB. We think this is a great solution for the Web,' said program manager Adrian Bateman."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/pFQ-D9VKvO0/Key-Web-App-Standard-Approaches-Consensus


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Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs


An anonymous reader writes "David Cummings, a programmer who worked on the Mars Pathfinder project, has written an interesting editorial in the L.A. Times encouraging Toyota to drop claims of software infallibility in their recent acceleration problems. He argues that embedded systems developers must program more defensively, and that companies should stop relying on software for safety. Quoting: 'If Toyota has indeed tested its software as thoroughly as it says without finding any bugs, my response is simple: Keep trying. Find new ways to instrument the software, and come up with more creative tests. The odds are that there are still bugs in the code, which may or may not be related to unintended acceleration. Until these bugs are identified, how can you be certain they are not related to sudden acceleration?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/Tuvwxc188fU/Toyota-Acceleration-and-Embedded-System-Bugs


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Digg Says Yes To NoSQL Cassandra DB, Bye To MySQL


donadony writes "After twitter, now it's Digg who's decided to replace MySQL and most of their infrastructure components and move away from LAMP to another architecture called NoSQL that is based in Cassandra, an open source project that develops a highly scalable second-generation distributed database. Cassandra was open sourced by Facebook in 2008 and is licensed under the Apache License. The reason for this move, as explained by Digg, is the increasing difficulty of building a high-performance, write-intensive application on a data set that is growing quickly, with no end in sight. This growth has forced them into horizontal and vertical partitioning strategies that have eliminated most of the value of a relational database, while still incurring all the overhead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/8AZr4_t0KXQ/Digg-Says-Yes-To-NoSQL-Cassandra-DB-Bye-To-MySQL


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SolarPHP 1.0 Released


HvitRavn writes "SolarPHP 1.0 stable was released by Paul M. Jones today. SolarPHP is an application framework and library, and is a serious contender alongside Zend Framework, Symphony, and similar frameworks. SolarPHP has in the recent years been the cause of heated debate in the PHP community due to provocative benchmark results posted on Paul M. Jones' blog."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/APfbKLQDyus/SolarPHP-10-Released


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Drizzle's Future Moving To Rackspace?


abartels writes "It seems like there's been nothing but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle, but with the Rackspace Cloud."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/ZNYmKypIW2g/Drizzles-Future-Moving-To-Rackspace


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Microsoft Shows Full 3D XNA Games On Windows Phone


suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/kRGTMFv4LOo/Microsoft-Shows-Full-3D-XNA-Games-On-Windows-Phone


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"Mythical Man-Month" Supposedly Busted By MIT Startup


An anonymous reader writes "We all know about the Mythical Man-Month, the argument that adding more programmers to a software project just makes it later and later. A Linux startup out of MIT claims to have busted the myth, using an MIT holiday month to hire 20 college student interns to get all their work done and quadrupling its productivity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/8dtj0zw8Thg/Mythical-Man-Month-Supposedly-Busted-By-MIT-Startup


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Code Bubbles — Rethinking the IDE's User Interface


kang327 writes "As Java developers we are used to the familiar file-based user interface that is used by all of the major IDEs. A team at Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that makes a fairly radical departure from current IDEs — it is based on fragments instead of files. The idea is that you can see many different pieces of code at once. Fragments can form groups, have automatic layout assistance, wrap long lines based on syntax, and exist in a virtual workspace that you can pan. A video shows reading and editing code, opening different kinds of info such as Javadocs, bug reports and notes, annotating and sharing workspaces, and debugging with bubbles. They report on several user studies that show the system increases performance for the tasks studied, and also that professional developers were enthusiastic about using it. There is also a Beta that you can sign up for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/iAygeULcj84/Code-Bubbles-mdash-Rethinking-the-IDEs-User-Interface


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The Value of BASIC As a First Programming Language


Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/fR6b9LhCjMY/The-Value-of-BASIC-As-a-First-Programming-Language


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Apple's iPhone Developer License Agreement Revealed


nigham writes "The EFF is publicly disclosing a version of Apple's iPhone developer program license agreement. The highlights: you can't disclose the agreement itself (the EFF managed to get it via the Freedom of Information Act thanks to NASA's recent app), Apple reserves the right to kill your app at any time with no reason, and Apple's liability in any circumstance is limited to 50 bucks. There's also this gem: 'You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise create any Application or other program that would disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod Touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so.' The entire agreement (PDF) is up at the EFF's site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/yo_7xFGxTdQ/Apples-iPhone-Developer-License-Agreement-Revealed


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Game Devs Only Use PhysX For the Money, Says AMD


arcticstoat writes "AMD has just aimed a shot at Nvidia's PhysX technology, saying that most game developers only implement GPU-accelerated PhysX for the money. AMD's Richard Huddy explained that 'Nvidia creates a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game.' However, he adds that 'the problem with that is obviously that the game developer doesn't actually want it. They're not doing it because they want it; they're doing it because they're paid to do it. So we have a rather artificial situation at the moment where you see PhysX in games, but it isn't because the game developer wants it in there.' AMD is pushing open standards such as OpenCL and DirectCompute as alternatives to PhysX, as these APIs can run on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. AMD also announced today that it will be giving away free versions of Pixelux's DMM2 physics engine, which now includes Bullet Physics, to some game developers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/LyI9Atqp2Es/Game-Devs-Only-Use-PhysX-For-the-Money-Says-AMD


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What To Expect From HTML5


snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes a deeper look at HTML5, outlining what developers should expect from this overhaul of HTML — one that some believe could put an end to proprietary Web technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. Among the most eagerly anticipated additions to HTML5 are new elements and APIs that allow content authors to create rich media using nothing more than standards-based HTML. The standard also introduces browser-based application caches, which enable Web apps to store information on the client device. 'But for all of HTML5's new features, users shouldn't expect plug-ins to disappear overnight. The Web has a long history of many competing technologies and media formats, and the inertia of that legacy will be difficult to overcome. It may yet be many years before a pure-HTML5 browser will be able to match the capabilities of today's patchwork clients,' McAllister writes. 'In the end, browser market share may be the most significant hurdle for developers interested in making the most of HTML5. Until these legacy browsers are replaced with modern updates, Web developers may be stuck maintaining two versions of their sites: a rich version for HTML5-enabled users, and a version for legacy browsers that falls back on outdated rendering tricks.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/qvL_bijkApc/What-To-Expect-From-HTML5


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