This year, a large number of businesses added new stores, websites, and digital content to serve their customers, but accessibility initiatives did not keep up. In 2020 the number of digital accessibility lawsuits increased by 23%, amounting to almost 10 lawsuits everyday, according to a new report from UsableNet, a digital accessibility company. In addition … continue reading
The first release candidate of the next version of the programming language Ruby is now available. Ruby 3.0.0 RC1 introduces a number of new features, such as RBS, TypeProf, Ractor, and Fiber Scheduler. RBS is a language for describing types of Ruby programs, and it enables developers to document the definitions of classes and modules. … continue reading
GitHub has announced that Code Search will now only index repositories with recent activity. This means that only repositories that have had a commit or shown up in a search in the past year will be indexed. If not, the repository will be purged from the index. According to GitHub, this will enable Code Search … continue reading
A key focus of improving the Rust language in 2020 has been on stabilizing features, and according to the newly released Rust 2020 Survey, those efforts have paid off. Survey respondents in general felt that stability of the language has been improving. The rust-analyzer and IntelliJ Rust plugin were key projects highlighted in the survey … continue reading
A number of companies, including Google, Slack, and Zoom, are coming together to launch the Modern Computing Alliance. The goal of the alliance is to address IT challenges that companies are facing across the entire technology stack, from silicon to cloud. Their mission is to “drive ‘silicon-to-cloud’ innovation for the benefit of enterprise customers—fueling a … continue reading
Google has announced it has redesigned its Apps Script IDE. Apps Script is a decade-old platform for automating Google Workspace apps. It lets users do things such as create menus in Google Sheets, manage responses in Google Forms, or create a Hangouts Chat bot. Apps Script has gone through several evolutions over its lifetime, but … continue reading
AI and machine learning saw several steps forward in 2020, from the first beta of GPT-3, stricter regulation of AI technologies and conversations around algorithmic bias, and strides in AI-assisted development and testing. GPT-3 is a neutral-network-developed language model created by OpenAI. It entered its first private beta in June this year, and OpenAI reported … continue reading
There were two new major Java releases this year, Java 14 and 15. Java 14 introduced features such as pattern matching for instanceof, a packaging tool, NUMA-aware memory allocation for G1, and more. Java 15 introduced developer productivity enhancements like the Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA), hidden classes, and text blocks. In May, Java celebrated … continue reading
GitHub wants to improve the daily lives of developers as well as make it easier for companies to invest in open source with new updates and features announced at this week’s GitHub Universe conference. The conference runs until December 10, and sessions can be viewed on demand after the event. Here are a number of … continue reading
The Eclipse Foundation has announced the release of Jakarta EE 9, which provides a new baseline for the evolution of the platform. According to the Eclipse Foundation, the major change in Jakarta EE 9 is the completion of the transition from the javax.* package namespace to the jakarta.* namespace. The foundation explained this namespace change … continue reading
The Kubernetes team has announced that it is deprecating the use of the Docker container runtime sometime after the release of Kubernetes 1.20, which is the upcoming release of the container orchestration tool. Instead, Kubernetes will use runtimes that use the Container Runtime Interface (CRI). “This doesn’t mean the death of Docker, and it doesn’t … continue reading
GitHub has announced it is teaming up with fastai to develop a literate programming environment for Python, nbdev. Computer scientist Donald Knuth defined literate programming as a way of programming that allows developers to work in the order demanded by the logic and flow of their thoughts rather than an order dictated by the computer. … continue reading
