Things Every Programmer Should Know | Java Code Geeks

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Visual Programming Means Anyone Can Be a Coder

New Scientist
(08/29/12) Douglas Heaven
New York University programmer Toby Schachman has developed Recursive Drawing, an experimental programming interface that enables coders to incrementally build complex, fractal-like structures. The interface allows users to manipulate the underlying source code by dragging parts of the patterns around. Schachman says the ideas behind the interface could change the way programming is performed in the future. He says there would be no need to be concerned about changing the underlying code, because "the form that you're working in resembles the thing that you're creating." Although there is still a major gap between writing the text and seeing what the running program does, "bringing in graphical ideas like Schachman does can definitely reduce this gap," says Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium researcher Peter van Roy. Recursive Drawing is part of a trend that will help democratize programming, predicts City University in London researcher Sara Jones. "It opens up the process of programming to a broader community of people, including artists, architects, and designers, for whom the unnecessary translation of ideas into text may constitute a frustrating and unwelcome block to the flow of creative ideas," Jones says.
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http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528796.800-visual-programming-means-anyone-can-be-a-coder.html

The A-Z of Programming Languages: From Pizza to Scala

Techworld Australia (08/18/11) Lisa Banks

Scala, Twitter's underlying programming language, was developed by Martin Odersky in an attempt to incorporate some functional elements, first within a language extension of Java, and then within a language that did not have Java's restrictions. "At first, this was an experiment, to answer the question whether we could achieve a tight integration between functional and object-oriented programming and whether this would lead to a useful programming model and language," Odersky says in an interview. Scala increasingly developed into an open source environment and then into a language that could be commercially supported. Odersky says one of the biggest challenges of developing Scala was having a language distinct from Java but that also is simultaneously interoperable with Java. He notes that Scala is increasingly used in projects inside Twitter. "Scala keeps much of the 'feel' of a dynamic language even though it is statically typed," Odersky says. "It thus tends to appeal to people who come from dynamic languages--not all of them but some of them."

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Advanced Linux programming

If you are a developer for the GNU/Linux system, this book will help you to:

• Develop GNU/Linux software that works the way users expect it to.
• Write more sophisticated programs with features such as multiprocessing, multi-threading, interprocess communication, and interaction with hardware devices.
• Improve your programs by making them run faster, more reliably, and more securely.
• Understand the preculiarities of a GNU/Linux system, including its limitations, special capabilities, and conventions.
  
  
  Visit Advanced Linux programming

Concurent Source management part!: CVS Best Practices

CVS Best Practices

version:	0.7
author(s):	Vivek Venugopalan, vivek@magic-cauldron.com
last update:	Oct 2005
available formats:	HTML (read online) HTML (single file) (read online; 65k) HTML (tarred and gzipped package, 23k) PDF (357k) PostScript (343k) text (55k) PluckerDB (28k)

This article outlines some of the best practices that can be adopted when Concurrent Versions System (CVS) is used as the configuration management tool in your software project.