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Showing posts from December, 2020

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Workadventure

At a time when organizations such as Microsoft with their Teams feature are creating innovative ways to recreate workspaces, the developers behind the open-source project Work Adventure found a different approach: What if you could recreate a workspace within a 16-bit RPG video game that looks similar to Pokemon games? In this innovative office workspace style, users can move around a virtual universe and talk to colleagues and a video-chat feature that is triggered when moving next to a colleague.  “Pick a map that suits your mood! If you don’t find what you need, you can always create your own map,” the developers of Workadventure wrote on the project’s website that contains additional details.  In addition to spaces that recreate the office look (in 16-bit that is), users can chat in the luscious outdoors or any other designed environment.  Users just need a mic and camera to walk up to a colleague in the game at which point a video feed of them pops up in the top right corner

How Smart Data Hubs power digital transformations

Digital transformation is now vital to business survival , and an increasingly key element of digital transformation is real-time data. Digital integration hubs (DIHs), which are a type of Smart Data Hub, are increasingly being used as high-performance data access layers that provide real-time access to data from across the enterprise to power real-time business processes. For example, financial services firms are using DIHs to enable multiple line-of-business systems to simultaneously access siloed data from throughout the enterprise to drive upsell and cross-sell opportunities across all their customer touchpoints. What is a digital integration hub? A DIH, or Smart Data Hub, aggregates a subset of data from multiple on-premises and cloud-based systems into an in-memory cache. This high-performance data access layer can be simultaneously accessed by multiple business applications at in-memory speeds. The source data systems can include on-premises or cloud-based data warehouses and

Around the industry… predictions for 2021

Nichole Kelly, VP of growth, Windward Consulting Group IT leaders must focus on developing soft skills like compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence when managing teams in a remote infrastructure. Employees are dealing with a vast array of challenges related to the pandemic that require more flexibility and understanding from their leaders. Special considerations should be made not only for parents, but also for caretakers of vulnerable populations and those who have multiple family members working from home in small spaces.  Franz Aman, CMO, relational database company MariaDB   Three hundred and sixty. That’s the number of database systems out in the wild. And while choice is good and finding the right tool for the job is smart, it also adds major complexity. As companies move to modernize in the cloud, they will seek simplification, which will lead to massive consolidation in the database market. Database vendors that offer multi-functional capabilities will win, rather t

SD Times news digest: New report finds that Hologram AR is the new trend for of automobile releases, Graphcore raises $222 million in Series E Funding Round to advance AI

A new report found that Hologram AR leads the new trend and new application scenarios of automobile releases. Car makers have shifted to using augmented reality technology to introduce new car models in far greater numbers than before, according to the market research company Flipclutch. In the car-unveiling events online, users logged in to the official website to watch the live event and were able to see detailed versions of the car in actual size using virtual reality. Due to this demand, Hologram AR provider WiMi launched the “Holographic Academy of Science” to research the cutting-edge technology of holographic AR. This form of virtual reality technology uses the principles of interference and diffraction to record and reproduce real 3Dl images of objects. Observers can see the different angles of the object being photographed. “The range of applications of holographic projection includes automotive conferences, product exhibitions, stage programs, interaction, bar entertainme

Secure code training tops 2021 software development agendas

There’s a highly contested debate lingering throughout the software development community that, surprisingly, does not stem from the global pandemic — whether functionality or performance ranks priority one when talking about secure coding. In the rush to meet software development needs, there is a general acceptance that although “secure code perfection” is the goal, achieving “total” perfection is not realistic (people make mistakes, requirements change and aren’t remediated, etc.). Therefore, if perfection isn’t attainable, is the functionality of code (does the code do what it has been asked to do) or the performance of code (readability, modularity, elegance, etc.) of paramount concern? A foundational aspect of enterprise and mobile application development, secure coding intends to ensure that code is as clean as possible. Error-free code protects the entire software development lifecycle from defects, bugs and intelligence flaws that result in security vulnerabilities

SD Times news digest: Microsoft announces SharePoint Workflow transformation to Power Automate, Apple preps developers forStrong Customer Authentication, Prime and Synerzip merge

The new SharePoint Workflow transformation to Power Automate workshop focuses on workflow assessment and migration guidance to Power Automate in a discovery and hands-on learning event.  This follows the announcement of the retirement of SharePoint 2010 workflows earlier this year Microsoft also stated that 2013 Workflows will eventually follow a similar retirement path.  After attending the training, participants will understand the footprint of SharePoint 2010 Workflows in the environment as well as learn the features and functionality differences between Workflows and Power Automate, according to Microsoft.  Additional details are available here.  Apple tells developers to prepare apps for Strong Customer Authentication Developers will need to verify their app’s implementation of StoreKit and Apple Pay to ensure that their purchases are handled correctly. This comes as part of the European Union’s new Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements for users in the European

How To Write TOR For A Designer? Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

A document that contains detailed answers to the questions of what, why and how – it is a Terms of Reference or TOR. If you order the design of the site or promotional materials, TK for the designer will be a guide to action and provide a complete and high-quality implementation of your ideas. 1. Start with the form In the pursuit of ideas, we rush to set the task designer and immediately talk about content: colors, blocks, details. The designer reads, begins to imagine at once. And at the end it turns out that he imagined the site, and we need a banner. Therefore, at first we indicate what exactly needs to be done: a whole site, page, business card, etc. Designers themselves often say they want to know the nuances of the company and the tasks that stand. Without this, their work can not bring results – the pages will just be, but customers will not lead and will not raise sales. 2. Share information about the company or project The designer will not come up with a business for

5 Essential Tips for Writing Computer Science Research Project Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

Working on computer science research projects can be a difficult task, partly because computer science projects are unlike research projects in any other discipline. Depending on the area of study, a research project can be defined differently. A general definition of a research project states that a research project aims to take old research (done by others) and either expand on it or create something new with the discovered research. Often times with computer science classes, and in similar classes, professors will assign a research project as one of the final projects of the class. These projects can involve doing a wide array of things, from making a new computer program to using artificial intelligence in a new way. Writing a paper about the research project is a common aspect to a research project. The paper is usually used to explain the project and show the results and/or findings of the project. Image Source Below are some of the best tips to help computer science students

SD Times news digest: Cloudflare acquires Linc, Amazon launches AWS Glue custom connectors, ThreatStack now available for Ruby Gems and NPM

Cloudflare’s acquisition of Linc, the automation platform that helps front-end developers collaborate, will create seamless integration between Pages and Cloudflare Workers, a serverless execution environment. that allows users to create entirely new applications or augment. Linc offers a straightforward path to building end-to-end applications on Pages with both frontend and backend logic in one bundle. “Linc and the Frontend Application Bundle (FAB) specification were designed with a single goal in mind: to give frontend developers the best possible tools to build, review, refine, and deploy their applications,” Aly Cabral, the director of product at Cloudflare wrote in a blog post. “An important piece of that is making server-side logic and rendering much more accessible, regardless of what type of app you’re building.” Amazon launches AWS Glue custom connectors AWS Glue custom connectors make it easier to transfer data from SaaS applications and custom data sources to data lake

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Micro

Micro is an API backend that allows developers to write code without worrying about managing backend services as well.  Micro’s team believes that developers should be empowered to build software at an accelerated pace without any limitations.  “Too much time is being lost on walking the maze that is the CNCF landscape. Too much time is being lost to managing the complexity of cloud infrastructure. Developers need to get back to what matters, absolute productivity in the software they’re building. For us that means making backend developers super productive,” the project’s documentation states.  Key features of Micro include authentication, configuration management, key-value storage, an API gateway, service discovery, and PubSub messaging.  In addition to the free open-source project, there is also a managed version called M3O. The free version includes the ability to deploy from Git, connect from anywhere, zero infrastructure management, public API and private repository suppor

Digital accessibility lawsuits increased by 23% in 2020

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 to the influx of new digital spaces that could have accessibility issues, plaintiff firms have gotten more efficient at building and filing claims.  Over the course of 2020, there was a slowdown in the number of cases being filed when lockdowns first started happening in March and April. They then started picking back up again over the next months, rising over 50% from March to the end of the year.  RELATED CONTENT: Accessibility in software development When it comes to who is targeted most in these lawsuits, retailers have it the worst. 77.55% of accessibility lawsuits were associated with retail businesses. Food service ha

Digital accessibility lawsuits increased by 23% in 2020

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 to the influx of new digital spaces that could have accessibility issues, plaintiff firms have gotten more efficient at building and filing claims.  Over the course of 2020, there was a slowdown in the number of cases being filed when lockdowns first started happening in March and April. They then started picking back up again over the next months, rising over 50% from March to the end of the year.  RELATED CONTENT: Accessibility in software development When it comes to who is targeted most in these lawsuits, retailers have it the worst. 77.55% of accessibility lawsuits were associated with retail businesses. Food service ha

Easing the development burden

Installing and configuring a fully integrated multi-software tool DevSecOps environment can be a long, tenuous burden for many organizations, often taking months from start to finish. Consider, instead, standardizing on a single application delivery platform — a set of integrated development, security, and operations tools — to increase productivity and accelerate installation and configuration of development and operations environments. Why focus on standardization? We have begun seeing a dramatic increase in the following types of questions from our customers, and assumed other organizations were facing similar challenges: How can my team build great software products and deliver value as quickly as possible to end users? How can my team remove manual steps in my software delivery process? How can my team remove friction in setting up environments, tooling, infrastructure, architecture, and deployments? How can my team reduce reliance on COTS products and licenses? How can my

SD Times news digest: GitHub releases study on cloning behaviors, Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI program, and Kin + Carta acquires Cascade Data Labs

In the recent study, GitHub compared the different clone options to determine how certain options affect Git performance.  The study found that when focusing on a single repository, the best approach is to do a full clone and then always perform a full fetch into that clone.  Also, calculating a shallow fetch is computationally more expensive compared to a full fetch and GitHub recommends always using a full fetch instead of a shallow fetch both in fully and shallow cloned repositories. More answers to the most common clonig behavior questions are available here . Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI program  Google recently announced its Startups Accelerator: Voice AI program, which brings together Google’s resources to advance promising voice-enabled startups across North America.  The founders of selected startups will pair up with experts to focus on the AI/ML and product development experts to advance their solutions.  The accelerator will begin in March 2021 and 10 t

SD Times news digest: Apache Kafka 2.7.0, Bash-5.1, and System.Text.Json updates

Apache Kafka 2.7.0 is now available with new features and enhancements. Kafka is a stream-processing software platform. The release makes progress towards  replacing ZooKeeper with KIP-497. According to the team, this will add a new inter-broker API for altering ISR. Other features include the addition of the Core Raft implementation and seven KIPs in active development in order to address partitions per cluster, operations and security. The full release notes are available here. First public release of Bash-5.1 Bash is a GNU project bourne again shell that features interactive command line editing, job control, support for csh-like features, and history substitution. The release also includes several outstanding bug fixes. In a post , the team explained the biggest change is “a return to the bash-4.4 behavior of not performing pathname expansion on a word that contains backslashes but does not contain any unquoted globbing special characters.” System.Text.Json updates With the

Researchers details how a general-purpose network is required for interpreting code

Researchers at MIT found that reading code doesn’t activate the same parts of the brain as language processing, despite the similarities that the two tasks share such as learning new symbols and terms.  While it is more akin to the multiple demand network, which is often used for solving math problems or crossword puzzles, reading code tends to rely on a more general-purpose brain network. It doesn’t exactly replicate the cognitive demands of mathematics either, researchers explained.  The finding goes against the hypothesis that math and coding rely on the same brain mechanisms and that the predominantly math and logic-focused left and the spatial navigation-oriented right hemispheres of the brain were activated.  “Understanding computer code seems to be its own thing. It’s not the same as language, and it’s not the same as math and logic,” said Anna Ivanova, an MIT graduate student and the lead author of the study. The research was done in partnership with researchers from MIT’s

Ruby 3.0.0 RC1 now available

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. According to the Ruby team, the goal is to help support commonly seen patterns in programs, as well as allowing developers to write advanced types such as union types, method overloading, and generics.  TypeProf is a type analysis tool that reads Ruby code, analyzes what methods are defined and their uses, and creates a prototype of type signature in RBS format. Currently this feature is still experimental, so it is only supported in a subset of the language and its error detection is limited. The team is currently working to expand coverage, improve analysis performance, and make it more usable.  Ractor is another experimental feature that provides p

Ruby 3.0.0 RC1 now available

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. According to the Ruby team, the goal is to help support commonly seen patterns in programs, as well as allowing developers to write advanced types such as union types, method overloading, and generics.  TypeProf is a type analysis tool that reads Ruby code, analyzes what methods are defined and their uses, and creates a prototype of type signature in RBS format. Currently this feature is still experimental, so it is only supported in a subset of the language and its error detection is limited. The team is currently working to expand coverage, improve analysis performance, and make it more usable.  Ractor is another experimental feature that provides p

SD Times news digest: Sentry now supports Google Web Vitals, Google plans to shut down Android Things console, and GitHub removes non-essential cookies

The Google Web Vitals services are now included in the Sentry application monitoring solution. It includes agentless frontend performance monitoring for serverless, PHP, Node, and Ruby-based applications.  “Customer issues happen at the application level, and that is where developers have the most control,” said Milin Desai, the CEO of Sentry. “That’s why we’re excited to bring Web Vitals to our continually growing support for application performance monitoring this year. Along with being able to identify poor-performing API calls and slow database queries, engineering teams can now see the performance metrics that are even more essential to knowing their code is healthy—from frontend to backend.” Google plans to shut down Android Things console On January 5th, 2021 the console will now longer allow the creation of new projects using NXP i.MX7D and Raspberry Pi 3B, Android announced in a   post . Exactly one year later, the console will be shut down completely with all data deleted

Why it’s time to leave code freezes out in the cold

As the business world pivots to meet the new demands and challenges of COVID-19, so too has the retail world reimagined its biggest shopping season of the year. Instead of enticing shoppers to cram the stores on one or two special days for deals and discounts, holiday shopping has engulfed the season with deals spread across weeks and even months. With these trends accelerating the e-commerce takeover of the holiday season, you might assume this is a busy time of year for many developers. In reality, the holiday season is typically a less hectic period for developers as they stop deploying new code and instead wait out code freezes. Code freezes are a traditional practice to ensure site and app stability during high-traffic periods. They’ve been popular especially in e-commerce because of a fear that a change introduced now could jeopardize their revenue. The downside of code freezes Developers keep writing code during a code freeze, but instead of integrating or testing it with the

SD Times news digest: GitHub Code Search, Apache Airflow 2.0, and SonarSource’s SAST tooling

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 to surface only the most relevant content and keep queries fast.  Apache Airflow 2.0 now available Version 2.0 introduces a new way of writing DAGs, which are a collection of tasks to run that are organized by their relationships and dependencies. They can now be written using the TaskFlow API, which enables dependencies to be handled more clearly.  There is also a fully supported REST API, Scheduler performance improvements, HA compatibility for the Scheduler, Task Groups, updated UI, Smart Sensors that can be used to reduce load, and a simplified KubernetesExecutor.  SonarSource launches high-precision SAST tooling The new Static Application Security Testing (SAST) capab

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: VHS

Performance testing company Stormforge has launched a new open-source project designed to improve and advance application performance and optimization test creation. The project, VHS , records live traffic to test performance against “reality instead of just an educated guess,” Noah Abrahams, open source advocate at StormForge, explained in a post.  “VHS started as a project that filled a need related to our performance testing and optimization portfolio, namely, accurate load generation,” Abrahams said. “Our mission as a company is to extend the concept of application performance from being a reactive mindset focused on operations teams, to a proactive, automatic and continuous process that includes and empowers the application developers themselves. Part of that mission is ensuring that developers in the community are not only aware that proactive solutions are available to them, but that they’re able to contribute and help build tomorrow’s application performance solutions.” Acco

How successful Telco corporations are embracing continuous testing in 2020 and beyond

The Telco industry today is facing more challenges than ever before, with new and emerging technologies like 5G coming onboard and unprecedented demand for connectivity, especially during the current pandemic. Building applications and services as quickly as possible is important for every industry, but speed alone is hardly ever an arbiter of success. What’s needed is the ability to build resilient, reliable and well-executed services in an efficient manner, that makes the most of limited resources and tight delivery timelines in an increasingly competitive market. What’s needed is Continuous Testing. The path to rapid, resilient service delivery can be enabled in part via thorough, complete and continuous testing , that is executed throughout the development process to identify and remediate any issues before they reach production.  Leaving testing to the end of the SDLC means that testing can easily become  a bottleneck for Telco software applications.  Model Based Testing can h