Stories by Peter Wayner

9 cutting-edge programming languages worth learning now

The big languages are popular for a reason: They offer a huge foundation of open source code, libraries, and frameworks that make finishing the job easier. This is the result of years of momentum in which they are chosen time and again for new projects, and expertise in their nuances grow worthwhile and plentiful.

10 battles raging for the hearts and minds of developers

Whether you think it's wired into the human mind or an inevitable product of society's formation, dualism defines much of our lives: Communism vs. capitalism. Savory vs. sweet. Passing the ball vs. running the ball in football. Everywhere we look, pairs are locked in an eternal battle, presenting us with myriad opportunities to define ourselves by which side of the line we favor at any given time.

15 technologies changing how developers work

A long time ago, developers wrote assembly code that ran fast and light. On good days, they had enough money in their budget to hire someone to toggle all those switches on the front of the machine to input their code. On bad days, they flipped the switches themselves. Life was simple: The software loaded data from memory, did some arithmetic, and sent it back. That was all.

12 ethical dilemmas gnawing at developers today

The tech world has always been long on power and short on thinking about the ramifications of this power. If it can be built, there will always be someone who will build it without contemplating a safer, saner way of doing so, let alone whether the technology should even be built in the first place. The software gets written. Who cares where and how it's used? That's a task for somebody in some corner office.

First look: Docker is a better way to deploy your apps

A long time ago, a computer program was a stack of punch cards, and moving the program from computer to computer was easy as long as you didn't drop the box. Every command, instruction, and subroutine was in one big, fat deck. Editors, compilers, and code repositories have liberated us from punch cards, but somehow deploying software has grown more complicated. Moving a program from the coding geniuses to the production team is fraught with errors, glitches, and hassles. There's always some misconfiguration, and it's never as simple as carrying that deck down the hall.

Amazon vs. Google vs. Windows Azure: Cloud computing speed showdown

The cloud computing sales pitch is seductive because the cloud offers many advantages. There are no utility bills to pay, no server room staff who want the night off, and no crazy tax issues for amortising the cost of the machines over N years. You give them your credit card, and you get root on a machine, often within minutes.

12 predictions for the future of programming

If hitting a target is hard and hitting a moving target is even harder, then creating a new hit technology is next to impossible because the shape and nature of the target morphs as it moves. Think of building a swish new laptop just as laptops are heading out of favor, or a must-have mobile app just as smartphones plateau, or a dynamite tablet experience just as the wearable future takes hold.

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