InfoQ Homepage Programming Content on InfoQ
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Debate and more Insights on Dynamic vs. Static Languages
The transcript of Steve Yegge’s presentation on dynamic languages in Stanford University, which he posted on his blog, triggered many reactions in the blog sphere. Cedric Beust, Ted Neward, Ola Beni and Greg Young provided their viewpoints and arguments on different tradeoffs involved in dynamic vs. static debate.
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Should you really learn another language?
Blogger Gustavo Duarte cursed in church when he said that learning new programming languages is often a waste of time. He said that "In reality learning a new language is a gritty business in which most of the effort is spent on low-value tasks with poor return on time invested.". But not everyone agreed.
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Collection Initializers in VB
Collection initializers were supposed to be released along with LINQ in C# 3 and VB 9. While C# did get them, they were cut from the VB release. Part of the reason was the Visual Basic team wanted to make VB's version more powerful. We present the leading options for the new syntax.
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Interview: Smalltalk Dave about Programming Languages, SOA, MDA and the Web
In an interview at OOPSLA, Dave Thomas talks about the reasons for the rise of Java, what's behind Web 2.0, MDA and SOA, the rise of dynamic languages and the opportunities that he sees in the web as a platform.
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MountainWest RubyConf 2008 Videos
The videos from MountainWest RubyConf 2008 are all available for downloading from the Confreaks website. We selected a few videos and provide an overview and some entry points into the talks.
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Try to get the best of your Statically Typed Language
The use of dynamic type-checking in static languages is often perceived as unavoidable on complex projects, even though workarounds necessary to enforce it tend to negatively impact the quality of code. According to Debasish Ghosh, features in static languages, i.e. Java generics, offer an opportunity to avoid runtime type checking and optimize the advantages of static typing.
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Is it time to abandon loops?
With the addition of LINQ, extension methods, and improved anonymous delegates, many algorithms no longer need explicit loops. In a post titled "If you are using a loop, you're doing it wrong", Chuck Jazdzewski looks at a possible future for C#.
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Microsoft Research Releases Singularity RDK
On March 4th, the Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK) was released as an open source project on CodePlex. The RDK is based on the Singularity Project from Microsoft Research by Galen Hunt, Jim Larus and others. The Project web site said that Singularity itself is primarily about "the construction of dependable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools."
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Presentation: The Overlooked Power of Javascript
In this presentation from JAOO 2007, Glenn Vanderburg takes look at Javascript, where it came from and how powerful it actually is. After a look at the resurgence of Javascript for the browser and Flash, powerful libraries like jQuery or Prototype are introduced.
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Article: Asynchronous Workflows in F#
In this third installment, Robert Pickering continues the conversation on F# and this time focuses on Asynchronous Workflows and the resulting performance gains obtained when used.
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Eric Hodel discusses RubyGems and his involvement in the Ruby community
In this interview, Eric Hodel talks with InfoQ about his longstanding involvement with the Ruby community, focussing on his recent role as the maintainer of RubyGems, the de facto packaging system for Ruby libraries and applications. Eric also discusses his local Ruby user group Seattle.rb and his involvement with the Ruby Hit Squad, creators of the deployment automation tool Vlad the Deployer
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Parallelism with Fork/Join in Java 7
As the number of processor cores available on modern hardware increases, it's becoming ever more important for developers to develop in ways that take advantage of the new hardware. The Fork/Join library in Java 7 helps solve this problem.
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Programming Languages: More Powerful with Less Freedom?
In quest for more power, languages are often grown with new features. While it provides programmer with more freedom, does this actually achieve more power? Reg Braithwaite believes that this is not necessarily true and argues that it is possible to render language more powerful yet limiting options offered to programmers.
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RadRails goes 1.0 - adds Profiler, CallGraph Analyzer, Rails Shell, etc.
RadRails 1.0, part of the Aptana IDE, has been released. Next to the powerful refactoring capabilities, it adds profiling tools and GUIs for Ruby, fast jruby-debug support for JRuby, and more. We talked to Christopher Williams of RDT and Aptana about RadRails 1.0.
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Planning for Eclipse 4.0
Earlier this week, the various teams and developers on Eclipse began discussion on the incubation of new ideas for the future of Eclipse, with a project dubbed 'e4'.