April week 1
This weekly digest is an extended version of the newsletter emailed to subscribers every Wednesday. In addition to listing the news of the week, it also includes the book review of the week, additions to Book Watch, and the latest news from the I Programmer library. At the top of the list are the two feature articles of the week.
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March 30 – April 6, 2022
Featured articles
| Micro:bit – Basic PWM Harry Fairhead 
PWM is a very basic way of controlling the outside world. This is an excerpt from the second edition of Harry Fairhead’s book on programming the micro:bit in C, now covering both the original version and V2.
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Gary Kildall – CP/M, Digital Research and GEM Gary Kildall was one of the most influential people during the early days of the microcomputer revolution. Due to the way history has unfolded, little of his legacy is visible today – but he was an important pioneer and one of the first to take microprocessors seriously.
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Programming News and Views
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Application of AI to the stock market Three members of the team that built DeepStack, the first AI system to beat humans at no-limit heads-up poker, left DeepMind to form a new startup to apply AI techniques to stock trading.
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Cython turns 20 – Why is he ignored? OK, maybe it’s not ignored by those who are happy to use it, but it’s definitely not common. Why should you care? The answer is speed and interoperability with C/C++.
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Open robotics celebrates its 10th anniversary This year, Open Robotics, formerly the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), the organization that is the primary maintainer of ROS (Robot Operating System), the open source 3D robot simulator Gazebo, and the entire Ignition library set, celebrates its 10th anniversary.
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Why use a proxy? A proxy server provides a gateway between users and the Internet and therefore offers a series of advantages – both for access and for security. We examine the question, “Why would you want a proxy?”
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Apache Tika improves security Apache TIka 2.3 was released with improvements including security upgrades to several dependencies and a move to using Apache POI 5.2.
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Applications open for LiFT scholarships Every year since 2011, the Linux Foundation has awarded scholarships that cover the cost of the foundation’s online training courses and associated certification exams. Applications for the 2022 scholarships close on April 30 and there is a 14-page form to fill out.
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Wordle is hard NP
You probably think Wordle, the game that all smart people seem to play, is a mental challenge. But did you know it was hard… NP hard?
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Meta announces conversational AI project
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has announced Project CAIRaoke, a conversational AI project with the goal of underpinning the voice assistants of the future.
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2021 ACM Turing Award for Numerical Algorithms Jack Dongarra is the recipient of the 2021 ACM AM Turing Award for his contributions to efficient numerical algorithms for linear algebra operations, parallel computer programming mechanisms, and performance evaluation.
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React 18 released React 18 was released with improvements including concurrent rendering, automatic batch processing, new APIs such as startTransition, and streaming server-side rendering with Suspense support.
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GitLab integrates security training
GitLab has been updated with improvements including epic-to-epic linking and built-in security training. The company also announced changes to the free tier of GitLab.
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Books of the week
If you want to buy or learn more about any of the titles listed below on Amazon, click on book covers at the top of the right sidebar. If you shop on Amazon after that, we may earn pennies through the Amazon Associates program, which is a small revenue stream that allows us to continue publishing.
Full review
The review notes:
“The book is very readable, right from the start where author James Bonang compares the code you have to work on to an old coin where you no longer recognize the meaning behind the symbols”.
He concludes :
“Overall, this is an enjoyable book to read, with fascinating insights into what the author has encountered throughout his career. If you read it, you will be entertained and will no doubt discover techniques and helpful tips. Recommended.”
Added to Watch Book
More recently published books can be found in Archives of book watches.
From the I Programmer library
Recently published:
Programmers think differently from non-programmers, they see and solve problems in a way the rest of the world doesn’t. In this book, Mike James takes programming concepts and explains what the skill entails and how a programmer goes about it. In each case, Mike examines how we convert a dynamic process into static text that can be understood by other programmers and put into action by a computer. If you’re a programmer, its intention is to give you a better understanding of what you’re doing so that you enjoy it even more.
In Deep C#, I Programmer Mike James, who has been programming in C# since its launch in 2000, offers a “deep dive” into various topics important or central to the language at a level that will suit the majority of C# programmers. Not everything will be new to any given reader, but by exploring the motivation behind key concepts, which is so often overlooked in documentation, the intention is to provoke thought and give developers the confidence to exploit the wide range of C# features.
I programmer has been reporting news for over 10 years. You can access I Programmer Weekly through January 2012 for all titles plus book reviews and articles.
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