application development - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• IBM Watson's next trick: Helping you write better

  IBM's Watson has already proven its mettle in the kitchen and on game shows, but its latest skill set is one that could help us all: making sure our writing conveys what we want it to.

• Salesforce erects Shield for better enterprise-app security

  Security has been an increasingly dominant theme in the enterprise software chorus in recent months, and on Tuesday Salesforce added a new voice to the mix with Shield, a set of platform services designed to help companies build secure apps.

• Oracle unwraps VM VirtualBox 5.0 with focus on security

  After entering beta roughly three months ago, Oracle's VM VirtualBox 5.0 virtualization software is now generally available, offering faster performance and better security.

• How Instagram spots a trend

  With a user base of over 200 million people, who collectively post 70 million new photographs and short videos a day, Instagram provides a timely view of events around the world that people are interested in. But how does the service spot emerging trends while they are still on the rise?

• Sencha's new framework helps enterprises build Web apps for all devices

  Sencha's Ext JS 6 Javascript framework is now generally available, and with it comes the ability to build Web apps for desktops, tablets and smartphones. But getting the user interface right isn't always easy.

• Latest Windows 10 SDK preview helps developers build cooler photo apps

  Microsoft has added a handful of image- and photography-related features in a new version of the Windows 10 SDK. It, along with the OS itself, will become generally available at the end of the month.

• Google Cloud Platform provides a home for cloud code

  Users of Google's Cloud Platform services now have a convenient place to stash all the source code powering their cloud-based applications

• GitHub updates text editing for the modern era

  Plotting to lure developers away from their much-loved but decades-old Emacs and Vi text editors, online code repository GitHub has officially launched Atom, touting it as the text editor for the modern era.

• Unity CEO has game development platform's bugs on his mind

  Gaming platform company Unity Technologies is doubling down on improving its software quality, and letting developers know what it has planned for the future with a new public roadmap.

• Facebook open-sources IDE based on GitHub Atom

  Facebook has begun opening up source code for its Nuclide IDE, which is designed to offer a unified experience for Web and native mobile development.

• How peer review leads to quality code

  If you could deploy existing resources to improve the quality and timeliness of your software development projects, you'd probably jump at the chance.

• MEAN vs. LAMP for the future of programming

  The transition from cutting-edge curiosity to practical workhorse is not one that many technologies make. Yesterday's precocious upstarts often fail to live up to their Version 0.1 promise -- not so for the technologies that make up the fiercely acronymized MEAN stack.

• Red Hat takes the reins of OpenJDK 7

  Red Hat is taking over stewardship of the OpenJDK 7 project, at the moment a generation behind the current release of Java.

• Some Google App Engine languages may not get updates

  Google App Engine users may have some migration work ahead of them, because Google is contemplating not upgrading some popular programming languages currently running on the service, notably Java and Python.

• Facebook enhances C++ with parallel programming tool

  Ever wondered how Facebook is able to assemble personalized news feeds, in real time, for any of its billion-plus users who may log in at any given moment? Now we know, because the company has just released the source code behind the magic.