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Apple WWDC 20: New tools enable developers to create all-new app experiences

Apple announced new APIs and capabilities to expand developers’ toolset for building applications at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.  “This year, Apple is providing developers with even more ways to deeply integrate their apps into core platform features in order to deliver powerful functionality in a way that also protects user privacy and security,” Apple wrote in a post t hat contains additional details on all of the new features for developers.  The new Find My Network accessory program lets third-party device makers take advantage of a network with hundreds of millions of devices, while offering end-to-end encryption so that only users can see the location of their item.  Meanwhile, Safari for Mac is getting support for the WebExtensions API to make it easier for developers to expand extensions to Safari and distribute them through the App Store, the company explained. A new StoreKit tool in Xcode lets developers simulate subscription setup, in-app purchases and

Gremlin brings safety improvements to chaos engineering with Status Checks

Gremlin wants to make it safer to experiment in production with the release of Status Checks. The new capability automatically verifies systems are healthy and ready for chaos engineering.  “More and more, companies want to do Chaos Engineering. And not only do it, but automate it. But they are concerned if they have attacks triggering automatically, it may perform a chaos attack at a bad time (say when a system is already experiencing an outage!). This is a huge concern,” Matt Schillerstrom, product manager at Gremlin, told SD Times in an email. “This is a huge safety improvement, in that it drastically mitigates the chances you break your own systems and impact customers while doing chaos engineering.” RELATED CONTENT:  To build resilient systems, embrace the chaos The first 5 chaos experiments to run on Kubernetes  Previously, companies would try to address safety concerns by running experiments in stage environments, then applying those findings to product. However, Gremlin ex

SD Times news digest: erwin updates Data Modeler, Progress DataDirect’s new data connectors, and Mozilla’s front-end developer learning pathway

Data governance company erwin announced a new version of its Data Modeler (DM) to support digital transformation, cloud migration, and infrastructure modernization.  Erwin DM now features metadata-driven automation capabilities and support for data warehouse and DBMS modernization to ensure data governance and reduce data management costs and data-related risks. It also includes native support for Snowflake (4.1.x) and MariaDB (10.x) databases.  “As a result of COVID 19, businesses around the world are drastically stepping up their digital transformation efforts, including moving their legacy data to the cloud to ensure it’s more available for decision-making,” said erwin CEO Adam Famularo. ”So we continue to invest in the technology we pioneered to ensure customers can understand, design and deploy new data sources, plus support data governance and intelligence efforts, to further reduce data management costs and data-related risks, while improving the quality and agility of an org

Increasing Jakarta EE adoption indicates growing interest in cloud-native Java

Java developers are increasingly becoming interested in cloud-native Java, according to the findings of a new study from the Eclipse Foundation . The study also showed that there has been significant adoption of Jakarta EE 8.  The 2020 Jakarta EE Developer Survey is based on responses from thousands of Java developers. There was a 19% increase in participation from 2019.  According to the Eclipse Foundation’s data, the number of certifications for Full Platform Compatible Products for Jakarta EE has been greater in the past 8 months than certifications for Java EE were in over 2 years.  RELATED CONTENT:  Is Java still relevant?   Jakarta EE to focus on cloud native development There has also been growing interest in the Jakarta EE community itself. “In addition to significant interest in Jakarta EE and the community’s progress toward Jakarta EE 9, the Eclipse Foundation is seeing record growth in membership, as we added more members in Q1 2020 than any time since our inception

Apple WWDC 20: Custom processor for Macs, new privacy requirements, and annual software updates

Today, Apple’s virtual WWDC 20 keynote event revealed that all Apple Macs launching after 2022 will be powered by a custom processor as well as other incremental updates to its software lineup. “At Apple, integrating hardware and software is fundamental to everything we do…and silicon is at the heart of our hardware,” Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said. “So having a world-class silicon design team is a game changer.” To smooth the transition from Mac infrastructure, Apple introduced Rosetta 2 to run Intel-compatible apps on the new Apple silicone, and Xcode will contain the tools developers need for the transition. Macs will join iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches in having custom-made chipsets. With the new Apple processors, the company claims that Mac computers will be able to achieve higher performance while consuming low power.  Developers can apply to get a Developer Transition Kit, which is a Mac Mini that is powered by the A12Z processor paired with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage, a

The HCL Software DevOps product portfolio expands with three major project releases

HCL Software expanded its software DevOps team and product portfolio with the releases of three major tools: HCL Accelerate 2.0, HCL Launch 7.1, and HCL OneTest 10.1.  “Digital transformation investments are really accelerating and companies are doubling down here. We see a whole slew of investment in collaboration security tools but Agile, IT, delivery, and DevOps are still top of the list and very relevant to keeping your business thriving during this changing time,“ said Brian Muskoff, the director of DevOps Strategy at HCL Software DevOps.  The first update, Accelerate 2.0, is the company’s value stream management platform that improves throughput while identifying bottlenecks and unifying data from across the organization. Release teams can move to more frequent releases with self-service tools, including templates and automated controls, according to the company.  Accelerate 2.0 includes a new DevOps query language that allows users to model their value stream and to see t

SD Times news digest: Datadog integrates with Amazon Elastic File System, Copado raises $26 million, and Google’s internships focus on open source

Datadog announced support for Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) for AWS Lambda.  Through the new integration, developers will have visibility across the serverless components that power their business and will be able to troubleshoot potential issues quickly.  “As our shared customers can take advantage of the new persistent file system functionality to enable new application patterns, they will do so with support in their preferred monitoring tool,” said Ajay Nair, the director of product management of AWS Lambda at Amazon Web Services, Inc. Copado raises $26 million for its native DevOps platform Copado raised $26 million to accelerate the delivery of digital transformation, bringing its total to $47 million.  The company said it will use the new funding to expand global distribution and accelerate product innovation, including its new DevOps analytics platform, DevOps 360, according to a blog post . “Using DevOps to deliver high-quality software releases with speed and

How to Add Custom JavaScript into Your WordPress Site? Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

When you want to change the theme of your site, one thing that needs to be done is to add custom JavaScript to it. However, there are other options available if you do not want to add it to your site. For instance, simply add the ‘Heat and Footer Script’ as an option which is much less intrusive compared to the other. Well, this article is not about the various alternatives, but mainly about the JavaScript which can be added to your WordPress site. How you can exactly do the task? We will share the details with you in the section below. Options to add JavaScript to WordPress Site Image Source It is not difficult to add custom JavaScript to a WordPress site. All you need to know the way through which it can be done. Two main options and ways in which you can add JavaScript to WordPress sites include the following: 1. Add Custom JavaScript File First of all, you have to save the file with .js format. After this, you may add this into the folder http://wp-content/themes/your-theme/

GitHub Super Linter built to maintain consistency in documentation and code

GitHub is introducing a new linter that can handle all types of code. The GitHub Super Linter was built by the GitHub services team to maintain consistency in GitHub’s documentation and code while making communication and collaboration across the company a more productive experience. The Super Linter prevents broken code from being uploaded to master branches, helps establish coding best practices across multiple languages, and builds guidelines for code layout and format.  “With these basic criteria, we should be shipping better, cleaner, and more stable code internally and to our customers and partners,” GitHub wrote in a blog post . Since it is a source code repository that is packaged into a Docker container, any repository on GitHub.com can call the Super Linter and start utilizing its benefits.  Any time a pull request is opened, it will start linting the code case and return via the Status API. This then allows the developer to go back to their branch, fix any issues, and

SD Times news digest: Apache Spark 3.0 released, OpenAPI 3.1.0 RC0, Pinpoint Agile ceremonies

The new release includes an accelerator-aware scheduler, adaptive query execution, dynamic partition pruning, as well as performance and SQL compatibility enhancements. Spark SQL is the top active component in this release with 46% of the resolved tickets are for Spark SQL. This year is also the 10-year anniversary of the Spark project. In the TPC-DS 30TB benchmark, Spark 3.0 is roughly two times faster than Spark 2.4. Additional details on the new release are available here . OpenAPI 3.1.0 RC0 The first release candidate of OpenAPI 3.1.0 now supports 100% compatibility with the latest draft of JSON Schema. It includes a new top-level element for describing Webhooks that are registered and managed out of band. It also includes support for identifying API licenses using the SPDX identifier.  The PathItems object is now optional to make it simpler to create reusable libraries of components. Reusable PathItems can be described in the components object. There is also support for de

Editor’s Blog: Value streams help developers create applications that matter

The effectiveness of software development teams has traditionally been measured by their output — how many lines of code did they write today? How many times was code deployed to production. In short, the measure was speed. The idea that they can move code has always been important. But today, organizations are starting to ask if what is being moved matters to both the end user and the organization itself. For an end user, what matters could be about improved satisfaction, or more shopping cart conversions. Internally, it could be about improving operational efficiency.   Thomas Murphy, research director and analyst at Gartner, explained it’s all part of bringing value to the organization. “We’re not just building stuff to build stuff,” he said. “Value should be about… how do I build a little, make sure that I’m on track, not spend six months working on something and then hear, well, that’s really not quite what we needed. To me, that’s part of value stream. How can I have better dia

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: NeoML

This week’s highlighted open-source project is NeoML , a library for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. According to ABBYY, the company that created NeoML, the project is best suited for applications running in cloud environments, on desktop, and on mobile devices. Developers can use the library for object identification, classification, semantic segmentation, verification, and predictive modeling.  An example use case is a bank using NeoML to develop models to manage credit risk and predict customer churn, ABBYY explained.  Currently NeoML supports C++, Java, and Objective-C. ABBYY plans on adding support for Python soon. The library also supports over 100 layer types, has more than 20 traditional machine learning algorithms, and is fully cross-platform.  In addition, NeoML supports the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX), which is an ecosystem for interoperable machine learning models. ONNX improves tool compatibility, which makes it easier for develope

premium Microservices and APIs: The path to agility

It’s often been said that digital transformation is not a destination, but a journey. In the past, that journey was fraught with complications and the risk of downtime as legacy systems were retired and replaced. Today, however, steering legacy systems into the digital age has been made simpler through the introduction of microservices and APIs.  Microservices combined with APIs offer a lifeline for firms struggling to upgrade their core systems and services, bridging the divide between old and new; legacy and digital. Now, legacy systems – robust and hardy by design – can behave like digital counterparts, to innovate and evolve at scale and at speed.  Good things come in loosely coupled packages Microservices are an effective way for organizations to deliver features of a service in a compartmentalized and more manageable way. They break down monolithic applications into independent, loosely coupled constituents that can be delivered separately from one another and run using isolat

SD Times news digest: Stack Overflow testing new Reactions feature, WSL updates, and Xamarin.Forms 4.7

Stack Overflow has announced that it is testing a new Reactions feature. The new feature includes a button on answers across Stack Overflow to provide a simple way to say “thanks.” “We’ve heard from our users that the inability to say “thank you” is frustrating—especially for new users who don’t have enough reputation to upvote or comment. Even when users gain these privileges, they still want to say ‘thanks,’” Stack Overflow wrote in a post . The company said they hope this addition reduces friction for users whose comments are deleted, reduces burden on moderators, and minimizes the time active users spend on flagging and deleting comments.  Windows Subsystem for Linux updates This includes three new updates in the new Windows Insider Preview Build 20150: GPU compute and the new commands wsl –install and wsl –update. GPU compute support spans support for NVIDIA CUDA, which will help enable professionals to use their local Windows machines for inner-loop development and experime

What Kind of Education Does a Programmer Need? Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

Algorithm theory, mathematical statistics, and analysis, information theory, graphs, basics of physics – all these are directions and subjects necessary for becoming in practical programming. Yes, a lot of knowledge is required, and there are even more areas of work for the carrier. Therefore, it is difficult to say clearly how a professional programmer is “born” and what specialty is needed for a particular performer. There’s a choice, and it’s a big one. There is an advantage: yesterday’s mathematician-physicist or today’s schoolboy with basic knowledge of mathematics may become a programmer . Here, it is important to clearly define the set of needs and set up a timeline for education as a programmer. And if that education is getting difficult, it is a good idea to contact the paper writing service . The theoretical and practical preparation of future specialists is important and valuable. But what kind of education a programmer needs depends only on his goals. A college educati