Want to quickly know how good a project manager is? Here is an old consultant’s trick: Ask a programmer on the team how much throwaway code he or she used during the last project. A good 80/20 rule is the more throwaway code used during development, the better the project manager. Throwaway code refers to … continue reading
Software changes fast, and developers will need to vigilantly reskill their workers to maintain competence in the highly competitive arena. Reskilling includes learning new programming languages, containerization, big data and working with the most significant tech disruptor: automation. “There’s a growing awareness that the half-life of any technology skill is about two to three years. … continue reading
Researchers have developed a new system designed to tackle complex objects and workflows on Big Data platforms. Computer science researchers from Rice University’s DARPA-funded Pliny project has announced PlinyCompute. The project is funded through DARPA’s Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves (MUSE) initiative. The Pliny project aims to create systems that automatically detect and fix errors … continue reading
Have you ever tried to read a complicated article with music on? Or turned your coffee machine on and completely failed to return to it when it was finished dripping? You might be confronting our most human of frailties: the fact that our brains just can’t keep track of a whole lot of information at … continue reading
Software tools are not a silver bullet for achieving software goals, but they can help programmers deliver safer software faster. That is why organizations often bring developers in on its software purchasing process. According to a new survey from Evans Data Corporation, 43 percent of respondents are often involved in evaluating software while 50 percent … continue reading
When it comes to their jobs, developers want to have a healthy balance between work and life outside of work. This is according to a new report from dev.to. Dev.to is an online community for programmers. The report, What developers want in a job, collected data from more than 21,000 users from the Key Values … continue reading
Could the recent Equifax data breach been prevented if the credit agency had the right programming tools in place? That’s the question researchers from North Carolina State University set out to answer in their recent study: Can Automated Pull Requests Encourage Software Developers to Upgrade Out-of-Date Dependencies? According to the researchers, a majority of software … continue reading
Developers are often told they need to check out what other people are learning in their sector, whether that be a popular language like Python, or a popular framework like Angular. According to a sneak peek at Packt’s annual Skill Up survey, developers and engineers in various jobs plan on learning several new tools and technologies … continue reading
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is keeping a close eye on artificial intelligence and machine learning, and it wants help from the research community to continue doing so. The organization announced the EFF AI Progress Measurement experiment, which is a pilot project to track the progress happening in the AI field. The EFF encourages researchers … continue reading
“Writer’s Block” is a real thing, but “Programmer’s Block?” According to computer science professor at Oregon State University, Heather Knight, programmers are just as subject to getting blocked as writers, but programmers do not have a host of self-help resources with insights applicable to programming. However, she discovered that many of the writing books for … continue reading
Computer science and software development are ever-changing industries. Software developers and programmers must always be learning, updating their skills and keeping up with the latest tools and technologies. It can be hard to understand exactly what you need to know, or where you can get help from. That is why Sonkeng Maldini, founder of Dev … continue reading
Swift has made it into the TIOBE Index’s top 10 programming languages for the first time. Swift is a programming language Apple created about three years ago to replace its other application development language Objective-C. “The expectations were high right from the start, but adoption took off slowly. That is for good reasons by the … continue reading
