Serverless, Microservices, Architecture, Streaming, & Culture Highlighted for QCon SF 2016
QCon San Francisco tracks are heavily focused on architecture, including topics like: Architectures You’ve Always Wondered About, Distributed Systems War Stories, Architecting for Failure, and Next Generation Microservices. You can find tracks focused on Culture, Optimizing You, & Softskills. Additionally, there are tracks that offer deep-dives in areas like DevOps, Security, and Web Tier Apps.
Targeting Linux Made Easier in Visual Studio 2015
Microsoft continues to refine their new extension for Visual Studio 2015 which provides developers with the ability to write C/C++ code in VS2015 and then transfer it to a remote machine running Linux for compilation and debugging. This combines the benefits of Visual Studio's IDE with advantages of a Linux deployment environment.
Mozilla Discontinue Support for Firefox Hello [Interview]
Mozilla has discontinued and removed Firefox Hello from its flagship browser. InfoQ talked to Nick Nguyen, VP of Firefox, about the decision to stop supporting the WebRTC experiment.
Rethink Leadership: Being Ordinary to Accomplish Extraordinary Results
Ordinariness in leadership can help us to accomplish extraordinary results, argues agile/lean coach Katherine Kirk. Several more people have explored approaches that suggest to rethink leadership and go back to behaviour basics for leading people. Although these approaches are about small ordinary things, their effect may cause a revolution in the way organizations are being managed.
Amazon Kinesis Analytics is Like SaaS for Big Data Analysis
Real-time analysis of event streams has a new focus in Big Data platforms, both on-premise and in the cloud. AWS have released Amazon Kinesis Analytics, a rival to Azure StreamAnalytics. Both platforms use a simple SQL language for complex querying, and move Big Data analysis into a SaaS-like space.
GitHub Introduces Reviews, Projects, Improved API, and More
At GitHub Universe conference in San Francisco, GitHub co-founder and CEO Chris Wansrath announced new tools and features aimed to improve collaboration through formal code reviews and Kanban-like project management. Additionally, GitHub will make it easier to integrate with the platform by launching a public platform roadmap and defining a formal process to solicit feedback and launch updates.
Refuting the Idea of Rewriting the Agile Manifesto
Alistair Cockburn recently posted his viewpoint on the history of the Agile Manifesto, from the perspective of one of the original authors and signatories. He encourages readers to understand the perspective taken at the time by the authors, and also to explore the ongoing work of many of the original signatories. The original authors explicitly refuted the idea of rewriting the manifesto.
IBM Creates Artificial Neurons from Phase Change Memory for Cognitive Computing
A team of scientists at IBM Research in Zurich, have created an artificial version of neurons using phase-change materials to store and process data. These phase change based artificial neurons can be used to detect patterns and discover correlations in Big Data (real-time streams of event based data) and unsupervised machine learning at high speeds using very little energy.
Redmonk Analyzes Java Framework Popularity
Redmonk Analyst Fintan Ryan recently published his findings on framework popularity in Java. After completing an in-depth research study on GitHub stars, issues, commits and Twitter followers, Ryan concludes: Spring still dominates, Spring Boot is on an exponential curve, Netty and Play continue to grow strongly.
Don Syme Presents F# Design Principles at .Net Fringe
Don Syme, creator of F#, presented at .Net Fringe 2016 an assessment of the current status of F#. He also commented on the duality that exists in F#, a functional language created on a runtime built for object oriented languages.
How Agile and Architecture Parted and Finally Became Friends
People stopped seeing the need to define the architecture or do software design due to incorrect interpretation of the agile manifesto, argued Simon Brown. Many software developers don’t seem to have a sufficient toolbox of practices and the software industry lacks a common vocabulary for architecture. A good architecture enables agility with just enough up front design to create firm foundations.
Agile 2016: Lee Cunningham on Scaling Agile and VersionOne
At the recent Agile 2016 conference Lee Cunningham, VersionOne’s Senior Director of Enterprise Agile Strategy, spoke to InfoQ about scaling agile, expanding agile beyond IT, identifying value and the direction of the VersionOne platform.
Key Takeaways from the 'Agile on the Beach' 2016 Conference: Day One
At the sixth ‘Agile on the Beach’ conference, held in Cornwall, UK, several leading practitioners of agile software delivery presented the state-of-the-art and emerging trends within this domain. Key takeaways included the value of the scientific method to drive change; the use of Continuous Delivery (CD) for improving safety and speed; and the power of cognitive bias during the user testing.
BitBucket Introduces Disaster Recovery and Merge Strategies
Recently released BitBucket Server and BitBucket Data Center 4.9 bring the possibility of defining a strategy for disaster recovery, setting a preferred merge strategy, and more.
Oracle Shares Their Strategy for Java EE with the JCP Executive Committee
Anil Gaur, Oracle Group Vice President with responsibility for Java EE and WebLogic Server, was invited to speak at the last JCP Executive Committee meeting to shed some light on the future of Java EE. The core of his message was that enterprise programming is changing, and that Oracle wants to adapt to it. However, questions from the EC members indicated that the plan is still unclear.
