The Insider News

Larry Osterman[^]:

Many, many months ago, Declan Eardly asked why the \ character was chosen as the path separator. The answer's from before my time, but I do remember the original reasons. It all stems from Microsoft's relationship with IBM...

Marcus Povey[^]:

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny, solid state, and ludicrously cheap hobby ARM based computer designed in the UK. It has a USB port, video, sound, an Ethernet port, 256MB RAM, and can run 3 distinct flavours of Linux. Ostensibly the device was developed with the aim of getting kids to code, and as someone who grew up with the UK hobby computing scene of the 1980s and cut their programming teeth hacking games together on the ZX Spectrum, this is something I can thoroughly get behind.

sprki.com[^]:

You've got a new (or old) computer and you want to hook up a peripheral, upgrade the RAM, or maybe just figure out what all those sockets are for. Here's your ultimate resource: A "spotter's guide" for all the RAM, all the sockets, all the connectors you're likely to find on most machines from today or yesteryear.

Webdesigner Depot[^]:

With CSS3 gradients, transitions, and all the effects, it has really seemed to have taken a lot of the weight off the shoulders of our websites, because let’s be honest—images were surely weighing them down. CSS3 and CSS can’t do everything but, ironically enough, I doubt most of us are aware of its limitations or what pushes the very edges of its possibilities. Well, today we are here to find that out.

Nettuts+[^]:

With more frameworks being bundled with an ORM, SQL is quickly becoming a lost art and is mostly relegated to the nerdiest of our clan — those pesky database people. Why not take today’s quiz and see whether you DB-chops have really gone the way of the dodo?

Pushing Pixels[^]:

Why can’t we just use vector-based icons in our application? At first glance, both designers and developers only stand to gain from switching to creating their icons in vector format. On the other hand, there’s a lot of art and a lot of craft involved in creating and maintaining a consistent visual iconography language within the specific application, and across the entire platform. Here are the issues, and some possible solutions.

TechCrunch[^]:

You’re in a car driving 100 miles per hour on a dirt road. The turns are 100-degree hairpins and there are inclines and dips that would make a normal car’s shocks fall right off their axles. Lucky for you, you’re not alone. You have a partner. Because there are two of you, you can split the responsibilities of getting to the finish line first – in one piece. This is the basis of pair programming. The deliberate practice of staffing every workstation with two software engineers focused on writing software together.

Jose Maria Arranz Santamaria[^]:

When Tim Berners Lee invented web he was looking for a system to publish scientific documents remotely accessible, visually attractive, easy to code and easy to use for a non-technical person. For these reasons the World Wide Web was conceived as a page (document) based system with hyperlinks. Page based development forces a style of coding weird, repetitive (plenty of includes) and inefficient (both bandwidth and computing power) not found in desktop development. Single-Page Interface programming fixes this.

BBC[^]:

Genuine scientific progress is usually collaborative even if the nature of fame, and fiction, is to single out individuals. When listing the world changers of the last 60 years, you might start with Watson or Crick for the structure of DNA – but while both did key work they also needed Rosalind Franklin and a host of other supporting characters. There is also far more to DNA than its structure.

Troy Hunt[^]:

It's no secret that China heavily censors the websites that can be accessed via the Internet. I work quite frequently with a number of people in China and I’m always conscious that there is certain material I’d like to share with them which they won’t be able to access. ’m talking about simple resources which software developers work with on a daily basis as part of their job. Or at least those outside China do. So what’s the experience like for them?

The Atlantic[^]:

Joe Paradiso, an associate professor at MIT's Media Lab and director of the Responsive Environments group, started building this analog music synthesizer in 1973. Now, it streams music live from the MIT Museum, and users can manipulate it remotely via the web.

Cerebral Mastication[^]:

There’s a charming little brain teaser that’s going around the Interwebs. It’s got various forms, but they all look similar. This problem can be solved by pre-school children in 5-10 minutes, by programer – in 1 hour, by people with higher education... well, check it yourself!

All Fuzzy[^]:

If your book claims to be a beginner’s book on a programming language, and is 800 pages, you are doing it wrong. Go back to your editor. Halve the book. I understand that by making the book large, you can justify the expensive price tag, but it certainly doesn’t help a beginner programmer.