Best Programming Master

IBM has announced the third-generation of its open source Granite LLM family, which features a number of different models ideal for various use cases.  “Reflecting our focus on the balance between powerful and practical, the new IBM Granite 3.0 models deliver state-of-the-art performance relative to model size while maximizing safety, speed and cost-efficiency for enterprise use cases,” IBM wrote in a blog post . The Granite 3.0 family includes general purpose models, more guardrail and safety focused ones, and mixture-of-experts models.  The main model in this family is Granite 3.0 8B Instruct, an instruction-tuned, dense decoder-only model that offers strong performance in RAG, classification, summarization, entity extraction, and tool use. It matches open models of similar sizes on academic benchmarks and exceeds them for enterprise tasks and safety, according to IBM. “Trained using a novel two-phase method on over 12 trillion tokens of carefully vetted data across 12 differe

Microsoft is continuing to improve generative AI across Windows with new updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot. The company has announced that the ability for users to create their own autonomous agents in Copilot Studio is moving from private to public preview next month. Agents can be triggered by specific events and act on their own, rather than being activated by a conversation. For instance, when an email arrives, an agent can be activated to look up the sender’s details and account, see previous communications, check inventory, ask the sender their preferences, and then take the necessary actions to close a ticket.  “Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world. Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate business processes. Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents, and they’ll do everything from accelera

Gemini users will now be able to more easily select the model that fits their requirements by using Google AI Studio’s new Compare Mode .  “As a developer, you understand the critical tradeoffs involved in model selection, such as cost, latency, token limits, and response quality. Compare Mode simplifies this process by allowing you to evaluate responses across the various Gemini and Gemma models available in AI Studio, side-by-side,” Kat Kampf, product manager of Google AI Studio wrote in a blog post .  Users can select two different models, write a prompt, and see how long each model takes and the quality of the response. They can also experiment with different system instructions and gain insights into how those influence the output in different models.  Google offers a number of different Gemini models optimized for different use cases, including Flash, which balances performance and cost, and Pro, which offers greater performance but may take longer and be more expensive. F

Apple is adding new requirements for developers releasing apps through its App Store in the EU because of new rules imposed by the Digital Services Act (DSA), a new regulation for online platforms and marketplaces designed to make those spaces safer and more transparent. As of October 17, developers will need to submit their “trader” status in App Store Connect in order to be able to submit updates to their apps. The designation of trader would only apply to someone releasing apps directly through the App Store in the EU, and Apple advises those developers to review the DSA’s definition to determine if they are classified as a trader.  Some potential factors include whether they make money from their app, if they advertise, if they’re registered for VAT purposes, and if their app is developed in connection with their profession. “You’re unlikely to be a trader for EU law purposes if you’re acting ‘for purposes which are outside your trade, business, craft, or profession.’ For ex

Developer relations (DevRel) is an important role within the development space, acting as a liaison between a company making development tools and the developers actually using those tools. Recently, the Linux Foundation announced its intent to form the Developer Relations Foundation to support people in that career. On the most recent episode of our podcast , we interviewed Stacey Kruczek, director of developer relations at Aerospike and steering committee member of the Developer Relations Foundation, to learn more. Here is an edited and abridged version of that conversation. How do you define the role of developer relations? Developer relations is really the practice of elevating developers and their world. We’re all about helping the developers, helping them solve their problems. But more importantly, part of my role and the importance of it is also to be the voice of the community to the company. So it’s important for us to be able to recognize that the developers are the

Endor Labs is trying to help companies select more secure open source models with the release of Endor Scores for AI Models. The new scoring system evaluates AI models on Hugging Face using 50 metrics related to security, popularity, quality, and activity. The company had previously developed a scoring system for open source packages in general, which included 150 checks, such as whether it has corporate sponsorship, multiple maintainers, number of releases in the last 60 days, or if it has known vulnerabilities. Endor Scores for AI Models builds off of that work and narrows the checks to AI specific concerns.  Developers can search for models via questions rather than needing to seek out particular models. Example prompts, according to Endor Labs, include “What models can I use to classify sentiments? What are the most popular models from Meta? And what is a popular model for voice in Hugging Face?” According to the company, the AI landscape currently is like the “Wild West of t

More and more, development teams are adopting an API-first approach to software development, in which APIs are the building blocks of software and everything else is built around them. This is in contrast to code-first, where the full application — including the API, UI, and other components — is planned out together at the same time. According to Postman’s 2024 State of the API report, 74% of respondents followed the API-first approach in 2024, compared to 66% last year. “APIs are no longer an afterthought but the foundation of development, with between 26 and 50 APIs powering the average application,” Postman wrote in the report.  The benefits of this strategy include faster API production and faster recovery from failures. This year, 63% of respondents were able to produce an API within one week (up from 47% last year). Additionally, organizations following this approach can typically recover from API failures in under an hour.  “By prioritizing API design, governance, and se

Around 50% of attendees to KubeCon in Salt Lake City will be first-timers. If that’s you: welcome, it’s gonna be an awesome show.  Like thousands of others in businesses around the world, you’ve kicked the tires on K8s and decided that it’s worth committing to, at least enough to justify the cost of a week in SLC. You’re on site to scope out technologies and vendors and learn best practices as you put Kubernetes into production in some shape or form. So here’s the no-nonsense advice you need to make your next 12 months hurt less. 1. DIY does not work at scale If you’re serious about Kubernetes, the data says you will end up with tens or hundreds of clusters. You need them to look and behave the same, consistently, otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad with troubleshooting and policy violations. You need the ability to stand a new cluster up for a new requirement in minutes, not weeks, or you’ll be very unpopular with your app dev teams. We all love rolling up our sleeves and tinke

In today’s fast-paced software landscape, managing dependencies and th e myriad of components that contribute to software builds has become a critical challenge for development teams. This is where artifact management emerges as an essential practice, fundamentally transforming how software is built, secured, and maintained. Understanding Artifact Management At its core, artifact management refers to the systematic handling of all components—referred to as artifacts—that go into creating software. These artifacts can range from language-specific packages, like those in Python or JavaScript, to Docker container images and operating system packages. While developers may focus on writing application code, the reality is that modern applications heavily rely on a vast array of external libraries and dependencies, often developed by others. The Dependency Dilemma Consider a simple scenario: a developer writing a Python program that calculates the square root of a number. The developer

The Eclipse Foundation recently conducted a report on open source in the Global South, the region of the world which the United Nations defines as “the developing and emerging industrial economies across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Oceania.” To learn about the findings of the report and what they mean, we spoke with Thabang Mashologu, VP of community at the Eclipse Foundation, on the most recent episode of our podcast, What the Dev? Here is an edited and abridged version of that conversation:  How did this survey come about? What made you want to study the impact of open source in these areas? First of all, since it’s the global majority and that’s where the population growth is coming from, we consider that as a real key part of the sustainability of the open source ecosystem. And frankly, we hear a lot from developers in the Global North, and we just haven’t seen a lot in the way of data and actual insights on the perspectives and challenges of developers

Microsoft is making it easier to use passkeys on Windows 11 by introducing a way for third-party passkey providers to integrate with Windows’ passkey system, improving the user experience for creating and using passkeys, and adding the ability to sync passkeys across multiple Windows 11 devices. Passkeys are a safer alternative to passwords where users can authenticate using biometrics, a PIN, or pattern, and have been adopted by a number of other technology companies , like Amazon, GitHub, Google, PayPal, and more.  With the new API support for third-party passkey providers, users will be able to utilize their preferred external passkey app. To implement this, Microsoft has been partnering with providers like 1Password, Bitwarden, and others. “At Microsoft, we truly believe that security is a team sport. By partnering with OEMs, app developers and other partners in the ecosystem, and by helping people be better at protecting themselves—we are continuing to make Windows more secur

To enable companies to more easily incrementally adopt GraphQL without needing to overhaul their existing systems, Apollo GraphQL has announced a public preview of Apollo Connectors , which enables developers to turn a REST API into a GraphQL endpoint.  According to the company, this helps to bridge the gap between REST architectures and GraphQL deployments, which leads to a more unified API strategy.  Apollo Connectors offers a declarative method for connecting endpoints to simplify the process of mapping types and fields to series. They also reduce technical debt by reducing complexity in GraphQL server development and maintenance. “Apollo Connectors makes it dramatically easier for enterprises to unify their API ecosystem with a federated GraphQL architecture,” said Rob Brazier, vice president of product at Apollo GraphQL. “Almost every organization of significant scale has a large REST API footprint. Apollo Connectors for REST APIs enable our customers to leverage that API foot

Onymos , developer of solutions transforming Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for software and application development, today announced the release of an enhanced version of its intelligent document processing component,  DocKnow . The latest version revolutionizes document processing with its new ability to integrate customer-specific large language models (LLMs), enabling enterprises to extract, process, and validate data from documents with unmatched precision and speed. Onymos DocKnow eliminates the need for time-intensive and error-prone manual data processing by using enhanced optical character recognition (OCR) to extract information from both structured and unstructured data. This includes printed and handwritten text, numbers, dates, checkboxes, barcodes, QR codes, and more from any document, including personal identification, intake forms, and health and immunization records. DocKnow can also be easily integrated with any third-party back-end information management system – such

There has been plenty of talk in recent years about the concept of “democratizing data” – which means giving everyone in the organization, not just data scientists and IT professionals, the ability to access and analyze business data to drive effective decision-making. There is also plenty of high-level guidance on how to democratize data. It often centers on practices like providing employees with no-code data analytics tools or self-service Business Intelligence (BI) features. But in many cases, these conversations are light on specifics. They don’t dive into the details of exactly how businesses can empower non-techies to leverage data effectively. They tell you which types of tools to use, but not which type of data management practices to develop. While the approach taken by every business will be different, the guidance below can help most organizations to reach the point where all employees are able to take full advantage of data without requiring them to earn Ph.D.s in data

The collaboration workspace platform Miro has announced a new evolution of its platform called the Innovation Workspace , which the company says is the most significant update to the platform since 2012. According to the company, other productivity apps follow a document-first or task-first approach, while Miro follows a canvas-first approach. This makes it easier to move back and forth between unstructured work like ideation to structured work like diagramming, documentation, task tracking, and prototyping. “Over the past 13 years, we’ve innovated and led the market, from introducing a digital whiteboard solution, to establishing the visual collaboration category, and now – the Innovation Workspace. Through it all, we’ve stayed true to our core belief that the canvas is king. That’s because the canvas gives teams an infinite, flexible space to innovate without constraints,” said Jeff Chow, CPTO of Miro. “A canvas-first approach connects teams and their work in all formats, including