Programmers who defined the tech industry: Where are they now?

Some early programmer names are familiar to even the most novice of software developers. You may never have seen a line of code written by Bill Gates, or written any application in BASIC (much less for the Altair). But you know Gates' name, and the names of a few others.

By Esther Schindler | 04 November, 2010 10:45

Tags: software development, programming

Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

Despite its complexity, the software development process has gotten better over the years. "Mature" programmers remember how many things required manual intervention and hand-tuning back in the day. Today's software development tools automatically perform complex functions that programmers once had to write explicitly. And most developers are glad of it!

By Esther Schindler | 30 April, 2009 09:52

Tags: programming language, software development

Highly anticipated open-source releases coming in '09

When big companies release new software, they launch it with lots of hoopla: press tours, technical conferences, free T-shirts. Open-source projects, even the well-known ones, generally release their major new versions with a lot less fanfare. The FOSS (free and open-source software) community is often too busy coding and testing to bother with marketing, even when the new "point release" of the software is really remarkable.

By Esther Schindler | 01 April, 2009 09:34

Tags: open source projects

Six Scripting Languages Your Developers Wish You'd Let Them Use

Several weeks ago, Lynn Greiner's article on the state of the scripting universe was slashdotted. Several people raised their eyebrows at the (to them) obvious omissions, since the article only covered PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl and JavaScript. As I wrote at the time, Lynn chose those languages because hers was a follow-up to an article from three years back. Plus, most IT managers are familiar with at least one of those well-known scripting languages, even if they haven't personally written a line of code in one of them.

By Esther Schindler | 15 October, 2008 11:06

Tags: programming

Google App Engine: Getting Data Out Ain't Simple. Yet.

Developers who adopt the Google App Engine for their cloud computing platform today may fear data lock-in, since the only way to import or export data is using a Python-based API. Google is working on a tool to improve data exchange to improve data portability.

By Esther Schindler | 05 September, 2008 11:28

Tags: google apps

Survey: Open Source is Entering the Enterprise Mainstream

Open-source solutions used to be adopted quietly by company boffins who snuck in an Apache Web server or an open-source development tool suite under the philosophy "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" (not to mention "It's easier to do it with open-source tools than to get an IT budget").