Blogs
The Debate That Never Happened: Bush vs Obama on Oracle vs NoSQL
InfoWorld: Java is still the most secure widespread runtime
InfoWorld: Web services are dead -- long live REST
Once, an endless parade of Web service protocols promised to guarantee any system could talk to any other. In the end, we got much of that interoperability via simpler means.
Remember the heyday of Web services, when we were always just one specification away from perfect interoperability? Ultimately, that towering stack of protocols collapsed under its own weight. SOAP and XML generally are ridiculously verbose protocols that began with a commitment to simplicity and gave way to mind-numbing levels of complexity. Add to that the service repository mess: UDDI died an ignominious death, and OASIS's S-RAMP committee can't even create a website that isn't all broken links.
What to expect from MongoDB 2.4
Authored by: Jonathan Freeman, Associate Developer
Today, 10gen released version 2.3 of its document database, MongoDB. Version 2.3 is the development branch of MongoDB 2.4 and an exciting prelude of what is to come on March 5. Since the release date is rapidly approaching here’s a quick overview of some notable changes in MongoDB 2.4.
New JavaScript engine
InfoWorld: In memory of Aaron Swartz: Stealing is not stealing
Why would a brilliant 26-year-old hacker face jail time usually given to murderers? Because of whom he 'stole' from
I didn't know Aaron Swartz. He was one of those people I had run across once or been introduced to, but I've always been better at remembering Roman generals than people I've actually met. Now, like millions of others who have learned about who he was and what happened to him, I'm not merely saddened by his suicide -- I'm angered by it.
In particular, I take issue with this statement from Carmen Ortiz, the federal prosecutor who felt the 26-year-old Swartz should do 35 years in prison for copying files from a computer: "Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar."
InfoWorld: What if Java 8 dropped 'extends'?
Java is looking like everything including the kitchen sink. How about "give one get one" for Java 8 -- and dropping inheritance entirely?
Frankly, I think most of what Java 8 is planning to do is let the fanboys dump every feature they can think of into the language.
InfoWorld: 9 app dev projects you should cancel in 2013
Rolling your own in software wastes both time and money.
Many developers like to create software from scratch, even when there's perfectly good reusable code from other projects, open source, or even commercial products available to do the job. The justification for rolling your own might be ego-driven, based on a notion that no one else will do it as well as you do. It might be a habit, perhaps derived from computer science school projects where students had to create their own compilers so that they'd understand what really happened to code at the machine level.
InfoWorld: Couchbase 2.0: This means war
Couchbase heats up the document database side of the NoSQL landscape. No matter what happens in this battle, we all win.
Competition generally drives innovation -- that's how capitalism works. But up until now, despite its overall worthiness, MongoDB had no credible competition from other document databases. That changed on Wednesday with the general availability of Couchbase 2.0, which adds document database capability to the leading key-value pair database.
Couchbase was sort of a fork of CouchDB, the Apache project founded by Damien Katz. He discovered what took me much longer to discover with my own project: Apache is a tough place to develop software and nearly an impossible place to develop commercially viable software.
InfoWorld: Making it real with 3D printing
By: Drew Nelson
With a 3D printer that costs less than $3,000, you can start your own mini manufacturing operation -- and use open source software to create surprisingly complex designs
The thrill of 3D printing is that is bridges the virtual and the actual. Based on manufacturing technologies developed decades ago, the 3D printing process begins with carefully wrought 3D design files and ends with the robotic arm of a 3D printer flying around to fabricate physical objects of plastic or metal. It's the darling of hacker and steampunk communities and the hope of many who'd love to see a boom in small-scale manufacturing.
InfoWorld: How to teach kids to code
Like many programmers, the author is self-taught, but we need meaningful learning experiences to feed the huge future demand for coders
I grew up in Lake County, Fla. When I was six years old, I was determined to have an IQ high enough to enter the "gifted" program. This entitled me to go to a special "gifted class" once per week.
When I was eight, I was introduced to microcomputers. As county administrators upgraded their computers, they shipped their hand-me-downs to "the gifted center," where the old boxes were used to teach "gifted" kids about computers. We were first taught a little Logo, which features a kid's programming environment similar to a computerized Etch-A-Sketch, where you give commands to move around a turtle that draws things with its pen.