application development - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• 7 reasons Apple should open-source Swift -- and 7 reasons it won't

  Faster innovation, better security, new markets -- the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit

• 15 technologies changing how developers work

  A long time ago, developers wrote assembly code that ran fast and light. On good days, they had enough money in their budget to hire someone to toggle all those switches on the front of the machine to input their code. On bad days, they flipped the switches themselves. Life was simple: The software loaded data from memory, did some arithmetic, and sent it back. That was all.

• The Open Source Rookies of the Year Awards

  , the open source software management company, picks the top 10 open source projects launched in the past year, based on stats collected from the

• 15 hot programming trends - and 15 going cold

  Programmers love to sneer at the world of fashion where trends blow through like breezes. Skirt lengths rise and fall, pigments come and go, ties get fatter, then thinner. But in the world of technology, rigor, science, math, and precision rule over fad.

• Google woos developers as software becomes more important

  Google did its best to court developers at this year's I/O conference with a much-needed integrated developer environment, API for better games and the ability to more easily translate apps. Their allegiance will become increasingly important as smartphone and tablet hardware sees fewer dramatic improvements.

• Five pioneering paths for software development's new frontier

  Size (and mobility) matters. As desktop PCs lose ground to tablets and smartphones, and the Cloud becomes a more mainstream means for software deployment, desktop applications are being elbowed aside by mobile apps and Web services, resulting in a significant shift in the way software is created.

• Why developers are turning to API services

  As application development increasingly hooks into outside services, tools to manage all those APIs are sprouting up

• The dark side of the beloved Python

  The schism between Python 2.x and 3.x and other deficiencies frustrate its enthusiastic developer community

• The rise of Cloud-based IDEs

  Development tools in the cloud enable programming from anywhere, but they're not suited for all app dev needs

• Brendan Eich tells how to prevent JavaScript memory leaks

  The JavaScript founder details where developers can go wrong and the straightforward methods to stay on track

• Making games of enterprise software

  Thanks to computers and the Internet, everyone is playing games these days.

• In HTML5 war, Microsoft guy slams "President of the United States of Google"

  Microsoft and Google are fighting yet another public relations battle, this time over the HTML5 video standards to be used in the next generation of Web browsers.

• Has Digg dug its own grave?

  Some people just don't like change. Less than a week after Digg released version 4 of its social news-sharing site, fans have rebelled, flooding Digg with links from a rival sharing site, staging a "Quit Digg Day," and prophesying a major drop-off in traffic if the site doesn't return to its roots. Has Digg dug its grave, or is this yet another kneejerk neophobic reaction?

• SAP-Sybase: What to expect in the first 90 days

  Now that SAP's roughly $US6 billion acquisition of Sybase has gained clearance from European regulators, it may not be long before the deal is finalised. With that in mind, users and partners of the companies have much to consider during the next few months, analysts say.

• Yahoo developer tool identifies locations in apps, docs

  Yahoo has created a technology that simplifies and automates for developers the process of identifying geographical references in the content that their applications process.