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Showing posts from November, 2022

OpsMx announces software and services extensions to Argo

The intelligent continuous delivery solution provider, OpsMx, announced new software modules and support services for Argo that make it faster, easier, and safer for companies to use Argo in production, according to the company. New automated analysis capabilities can increase the speed and accuracy of complex progressive deployments. A unified view and centralized audit of activity across distributed Argo clusters is also now available from a new management dashboard.  One of the add-on capabilities, OpsMx Delivery Intelligence, provides advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities to help teams identify and resolve application issues faster and more efficiently. It helps teams understand the performance of their applications across multiple environments, including their production, staging, and development environments. It also provides teams with detailed insights into the root cause of any issues that may be occurring. The capabilities are directly integrated with Argo

Anyscale Platform updated with new unified development environment

Anyscale , the company behind the open source unified compute framework for machine learning called Ray, has announced new updates to the Anyscale Platform. The platform enables companies to build, deploy, and manage machine learning and Python applications.  One new addition is Anyscale Workspaces, which provides a unified development environment for building machine learning workloads. Developers can use tools they are already familiar with, such as VS Code or Jupyter, and still have the scale and flexibility of the cloud.  This release also improves cluster setup times. According to Anyscale, they have achieved startup times that are under two minutes, which is five times faster than Ray can do.  Customers will now also be able to deploy their own custom Docker images as Anyscale cluster environments. They can then use their CI/CD pipelines to manage those workloads, including launching Anyscale Workspaces, jobs, and services.  The platform also now offers a native way for sched

Code Intelligence introduces new command line tool for Java

The automated testing company, Code Intelligence , today announced that its open-source Command-Line Interface tool, CI Fuzz CLI , now enables Java developers to include fuzz testing in their current JUnit setup. With this, Java developers can locate functional bugs as well as security vulnerabilities at scale. According to the company, CI Fuzz CLI leverages genetic and evolutionary algorithms along with automated instrumentation in order to generate multiple unusual inputs to test applications for unplanned behaviors that can result in a crash, Denial of Service, or Zero-Day exploits. “With the CI Fuzz CLI, Java developers can now improve the overall security and robustness of their applications with confidence and ease. It takes just three commands to set up and run a fuzz test. The tool comes with ready-to-use integrations for Maven, Gradle and Bazel. With a JUnit setup in place, developers can even run fuzz tests directly from their IDE,” said Werner Krahe, product director at

AWS re:Invent: AWS Glue 4.0 released, enhanced Amazon CodeWhisperer preview, ECS Service Connect for better microservices communication, and more

AWS re:Invent kicked off today with many new releases in the analytics, AI, compute, database, and more spaces. The event will last through December 1st.  AWS Glue 4.0 released The new version of the scalable serverless tool built to accelerate the development and execution of data integration and ETL workloads received updated engines, support for additional data formats, Ray support, and more.  Glue 4.0 includes Python 3.10 and Apache Spark 3.3.0. The Spark version includes low-level runtime filtering, improved error messages, and additional built-in functions. It also adds native support for the Cloud Shuffle Plugin so that users can scale their disk usage and the new Adaptive Query Execution can help optimize queries.  Support for Pandas, the open-source data analysis and manipulation tool as well as new data formats such as Apache Hudi, Apache Iceberg, and Delta Lake are now supported.  Amazon CodeWhisperer preview gets many enhancements The ML-powered service that helps im

Meta fined $275 million for violating EU privacy laws

Meta is yet again being fined for violating privacy laws in the EU. Earlier this year in September it was fined USD $400 million by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission for mishandling children’s data, and last September they were fined USD $267 million by Irish data authorities for violation in the messaging service WhatsApp. Now, the New York Times is reporting that Meta is being fined another $275 million by Irish regulators. This time, the reason is a data leak that was first discovered last year that led to over 500 million Facebook users having their personal information published in an online forum, including names, locations, and birthdates. Last year, the regulators began investigating claims that Facebook had not properly safeguarded its platform against being scraped for this information.  Since then, Meta has come out with a statement saying it has changed its policies to prevent this from happening again.  Today’s violation and fine brings the company’s total fine

Linus Torvalds Biography Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

Linus Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer who is best known as the creator of the Linux kernel and the co-founder of the Linux Foundation. According to Wikipedia, he’s also known as a “cultural figure” and “the face of Linux”, and has been called an “icon” by some in the media industry. Early Life and Family Linus was born on December 28, 1969, in Helsinki, Finland. His mother was a biologist who worked at the University of Helsinki while his father was a physicist who worked at Aalto University’s Laboratory for Computer Science (later renamed the Department of Computer Science). He spent summers with his grandparents growing up as well as spending some time abroad during college years when his parents were professors at different universities around Europe before returning home again after graduation. Linus Torvalds is married to Tove, who is a Danish politician. Together they have two children: a son named Simon and a daughter named Sisse. In addition to his wife,

Why Using IaC Alone is a Half-baked Infrastructure Strategy

The shift to a developer-centric vision of infrastructure that started about 15 years ago offered users frequent updates and a way to simplify API-centric automation. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) became the standard method for software developers to describe and deploy cloud infrastructure. While on the surface, having more freedom sounds like a nearly utopian scenario for developers, it has become a nightmare for operations teams who are now tasked with understanding and managing the infrastructure and the underpinning tools in the DevOps toolchain. As cloud infrastructure became commoditized, new limitations emerged alongside the broader adoption of IaC, limitations that can have negative impacts for the overall business. If you think of application environments like a pizza (or in my case, a vegan pizza), IaC is just the unbaked dough, and the individual IaC files alone are simply flour, salt, yeast, water and so on. Without the other necessary components like the data, network top

Time for enterprise architects to take their place in the boardroom

Enterprise technology provides the foundation for business operations, so why shouldn’t enterprise architects play a crucial role in corporate decision-making? Unfortunately, many business leaders don’t appreciate the role of the enterprise architect. You can explain to executives the strategic business functions enterprise architects provide, such as managing physical and organizational structures, data stores, workflows, applications, platforms, hardware, and communications. Still, you must demonstrate strategic value before being invited to support business-critical decisions. You don’t have to impress executives with a list of three-letter acronyms related to enterprise design and management. You can distill the role of the enterprise architect into relatable terms, such as: ‘The enterprise architecture affects the entirety of any business. It’s not just about IT but derived from the business vision. Enterprise architecture is the development of business and technology strategies

Time for enterprise architects to take their place in the boardroom

Enterprise technology provides the foundation for business operations, so why shouldn’t enterprise architects play a crucial role in corporate decision-making? Unfortunately, many business leaders don’t appreciate the role of the enterprise architect. You can explain to executives the strategic business functions enterprise architects provide, such as managing physical and organizational structures, data stores, workflows, applications, platforms, hardware, and communications. Still, you must demonstrate strategic value before being invited to support business-critical decisions. You don’t have to impress executives with a list of three-letter acronyms related to enterprise design and management. You can distill the role of the enterprise architect into relatable terms, such as: ‘The enterprise architecture affects the entirety of any business. It’s not just about IT but derived from the business vision. Enterprise architecture is the development of business and technology strategies

Rust’s addition to the Linux kernel seen as “enormous vote of confidence” in the language

The release candidate for the latest version of the Linux kernel was announced last month, and one of the highlights in the release notes for Linux 6.1 is the inclusion of the initial infrastructure for adding Rust as a language.  Rust has been growing steadily in popularity through the years, and though according to the 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey 9 percent of developers use it, it has spent seven years in the top spot for “most loved” language. In this year’s survey almost 87% of developers said they love Rust, which is about 10 percentage points higher than the second-most loved language, Elixir.  According to Joel Marcey, director of advocacy and operations for the Rust Foundation, one of the benefits of Rust over C is that it provides security without sacrificing the performance and speed that C provides, the current language for the Linux kernel. One of the key points of the language that people love is that it is memory safe.   “With Rust, you don’t have to conce

A Winning Strategy for Students Learning C++ Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

C++ is one of the most popular programming languages used by developers across the world. This language can be a great tool for those interested in getting into software engineering, cryptocurrency mining, or other tech-related professions. Despite its wide range of applications, this programming language is also relatively simple to learn. Nevertheless, there are a few strategies that beginners can adopt in order to become an expert in C++ in no time. So, without further ado, let us take a look at what they are. 1. Learn the Syntax The first step in learning to code is to understand the syntax of the specific language. In many ways, the syntax is the programming language’s foundation, and this defines how C++ is composed and understood. So, for instance, you should be clear about how to structure the code. There are many common parts that are always included in a C++ code, no matter the purpose – such as: #include <iostream> – This is a standard header of a C++ progra

Three innovations for code reviews have streamlined the process at Meta

In a study of its development teams, Meta has noticed a strong correlation of developer satisfaction dipping whenever diff review times are slow based on several metrics at the company. Diff reviews refer to any individual set of changes made to the codebase.  Diff reviews which can catch bugs, teach best practices, and ensure high code quality are required at the company with no exception, leading them to try to fix the problem.  One culprit of dissatisfaction is that the slowest 25% of diff reviews amounted to well over a day whereas the median hours in review for a diff was a much more reasonable few hours based on the “Time in Review” metric in 2021, which is how long a diff spends waiting on review across all of its review cycles.  “Simply optimizing for the speed of review could lead to negative side effects, like encouraging rubber-stamp reviewing. We needed a guardrail metric to protect against negative unintended consequences. We settled on “Eyeball Time” – the total amount

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Kangas

Kangas is an open-source tool provided by Comet, provider of an MLOps platform for machine learning teams.  According to Comet, the tool is intended to help teams explore, analyze, and visualize large-scale multimedia data.  Kangas offers users a Python API for logging large tables of data as well as a visual interface for performing complicated queries against the users dataset.  “A key component of data-centric Machine Learning is being able to understand how your training data impacts model results and where your model predictions are wrong,” said Gideon Mendels, CEO and co-founder of Comet. “Kangas accomplishes both of these goals and dramatically improves the experience for ML practitioners.” With Kangas, customers gain several benefits such as scalability with Kangas DataGrid, the class for representing datasets and the ability to quickly group, sort, and filter across several data points with a simple UI. Additionally, this open-source tool brings users interoperability by

CompTIA introduces new tech job posting optimizer

CompTIA, provider of endor-neutral IT certifications, today announced the Tech Job Posting Optimizer, optimize.comptia.org , in order to help employers expand their pipelines and seek out overlooked or untapped talent. The free, web-based platform offers a range of tech job templates and data tools intended to optimize postings for skills, qualifications, and inclusivity oriented to the U.S. labor market.  According to the company, of the over 500,000 job postings for entry-level tech positions in 2022, 57% of employers limited their search to candidates with a four-year degree or higher.  Additionally, for employers looking to fill entry-level cybersecurity roles the number one listed industry-recognized certification is a managerial-level credential that requires advanced experience.  The company stated that while this over-spec’ing among job postings does not negatively impact employers, it does have a downside for candidates as 55% reported some level of a “confidence gap” whe

Google shares info about upcoming Android Privacy Sandbox Beta

Google has been attempting to provide better ways to protect user privacy while also still providing advertisers with ways to serve relevant content to users. Its solution to reducing third-party tracking is the Privacy Sandbox . Earlier this year, it announced it was bringing Privacy Sandbox to Android and since then it has released a few developer previews. Now it is announcing that the Privacy Sandbox Beta will rollout to Android 13 devices starting early in 2023, and to get developers ready it is sharing some information about the upcoming beta. RELATED CONTENT: Google’s Privacy Sandbox creates open standards to enhance privacy First, in order to get access to Privacy-Preserving APIS, such as Topics, FLEDGE, and Attribution Reporting, developers will need to go through an enrollment process to verify their identity and gather developer-specific data that the API may need.  Anyone wishing to participate in the beta program can request access on a limited number of Androi

Atlassian updates Jira’s Open DevOps toolchain solution

Atlassian today announced updates to its Open DevOps solution within Jira Software designed to bring better communication across teams and more visibility into the software development life cycle. Open DevOps was designed to help organizations deal with the ever-growing number of tools their teams use by bringing into a central location that allows them to use the tools they want, and then feed the actions from those tools into Jira, Atlassian’s project management solution.  “We see that those teams on average are using 25 different tools inside their software development tool chain. And what this really means is that they are struggling with tool sprawl. And they’re spending a lot of time, some estimates are 10% of their development team time, just like creating and maintaining this tool chain,” Suzie Prince, head of product for the DevOps organization at Atlassian, told SD Times in an interview. “And one of the knee-jerk reactions to combat that is to lock their teams in place wit

Buildkite Raises $21 Million to Invent the Future of DevOps

Buildkite , a software development company, today announces the completion of a $21 million USD Series B funding round to help the company on its mission to unblock every software developer on the planet. Co-led by Australian investors OneVentures and AirTree, with participation from US-based General Catalyst, and Dom Pym, founder of digital bank Up; Buildkite will dedicate 100% of the funds to launch new developer-focused products and expand the company’s existing operations, marketing and sales teams. Over the last nine years, Buildkite’s platform has quickly become the most performant way to build, test, and deploy software at scale. The platform was the first to introduce the hybrid CI/CD model in which customers host their testing and deployment pipelines on their own infrastructure while offloading the user experience for managing these pipelines to a cloud-powered interface. This provides DevOps teams the ability to achieve closer performance parity to production systems throu

OutSystems expands low-code platform with cloud-native development offering

OutSystems is expanding its low-code platform with capabilities for cloud-native development in the new OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC). ODC combines an architecture based on Kubernetes, Linux containers, microservices, and AWS native cloud services with CI/CD, enterprise-grade security, and the productivity of low-code.  It utilizes AI-augmented development through AI Code Mentor, which helps contribute to productivity as well.  According to OutSystems, customers can achieve High-Performer DORA status when it comes to DevOps and CI/CD practices by using the platform.  OutSystems hopes the platform will enable IT leaders to continually develop solutions that are based on their goals and requirements, facilitating a “continuous innovation cycle for business growth, scale and competitiveness.” “Our new OutSystems Developer Cloud will be familiar to our existing customers, and mind-blowing to those who have ever used traditional low-code or not left the traditional development lan

Infragistics introduces App Builder Design Contest

Infragistics, a provider of tools and solutions to accelerate designs and development, today announced a new App Builder Design Contest to encourage developers, designers and non-designers to use their creativity to win prizes. According to the company, the competition offers participants access to the App Builder drag & drop tool, allowing designers and developers to collaborate in one platform.  It also provides a complete design system, which is compatible with Sketch and Adobe XD and generates code in Angular and Blazor. “App Builder makes it easy to be creative and customize apps to meet unique needs,” said Jason Beres, SVP at Infragistics. “With App Builder, anyone can create an application such as an e-commerce, travel or team collaboration app and we welcome entries from developers and designers all over the world.” The contest is open for interested participants to enter until the end of November. Final judging will take place on December 1st-3rd, 2022 and will be done

Edge Delta announces free edition

Edge Delta , provider of observability tools, today introduced a free version of its product in order to bring users intelligent and automated monitoring and troubleshooting for applications and services running in Kubernetes. The free edition is designed to deliver time-to-value and allow engineers to spend their time on core tasks.  Additionally, it works to detect “unknown unknowns,” or anomalies and issues that an organization has not built rules or logics to catch. “Developers want two main things from their observability tools – an easy and credible way to check the health of their services; and a quick and seamless way to troubleshoot any issues that arise,” says Ozan Unlu, CEO and founder of Edge Delta. “Traditional observability tools weren’t built to prioritize the developer experience, requiring a lot of time and effort that takes developers away from building great software. We want to give this valuable time back to them by providing an elegant and free solution for mon

DH2i announces DxEnterprise v22 with container sidecar

Infrastructure solution company DH2i announced the general availability of DxEnterprise version 22 with a new container sidecar to enable application-level high availability (HA) clustering for stateful containers in Kubernetes.  The Dxe sidecar offers the three key deployment benefits of isolation, quick deployment, and scalability.  The application can run independently in one container while the sidecar hosts complementary HA clustering services. DH2i also claims that it’s easier to build and maintain a combined primary application and DxE container image. Lastly, DxE sidecar containers are easy to scale to support as many pods as needed.  “With the DxE v22 sidecar, database architects and developers can enhance and extend the functionality of their K8s environment. For instance, the DxE sidecar enables users to create highly resilient Zero downtime application-level clusters that span K8 pods,” said Don Boxley, CEO and cofounder at DH2i. “In addition, the DxE sidecar uniquely pr

The evolution of value stream management

While the aspirations of companies wanting digital innovation and to connect business value haven’t changed over the years, the definition of what constitutes value stream management has. Dr. Mik Kersten, the CEO of Tasktop Technologies (recently purchased by Planview) and the author of “Project To Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework,” said that he sees companies have made some kind of shift from project to product, albeit more slowly than anticipated.  In a recent SD Times “What the Dev?” podcast , Kersten said a lot of the focus in value stream has shifted from the “what” and “why” to the “how.” Vendors are trying to figure out how companies are creating their value streams: are they wiring it together in-house as a lot of them tried to do or are they trying to leverage something such as a DevOps vendor? Click here to read the full article on VSM Times. The post The evolution of value stream management appeared first on S

Guido Van Rossum Biography Zainab Sutarwala The Crazy Programmer

If you’re an experienced programmer, you may have heard of Guido Van Rossum before. He’s the creator of the Python programming language, and he’s also worked as an engineer at Google, Apple, and MercadoLibre. It’s hard to find more experience in software design and implementation than that! What inspired Van Rossum to create Python? What other programming languages does he prefer? And what can we learn from him about the future of software design? These questions and more will be answered in our Life in Code Guido Van Rossum biography. Guido Van Rossum isn’t your typical computer scientist, but his accomplishments in the field have propelled him to the forefront of programming luminaries and led him to create one of the most widely used languages of all time: Python. His contributions to technology have been recognized by several different organizations and publications, including the Association for Computing Machinery, which included him on its list of ACM fellows in 2012, as we