The Python programming language has been topping virtually every tech trend list for the past two years, so it was no surprise to see it earn another "most popular" ranking in O'Reilly's annual analysis of the most-used topics and the top search terms from its online learning platform. But the reason for Python's latest blue ribbon is worth noting: according to O'Reilly, it was demand among data scientists and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) engineers.
Python is the go-to language for AI, ML and natural language programming (NLP) development, thanks in no small part to the dozen or so libraries and development tools that support it, from TensorFlow to Pytorch. And simple syntax and readability promote rapid testing of complex algorithms, and make the language accessible to non-programmers.
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Posted by John K. Waters on February 20, 20200 comments
The Eclipse Foundation has made some baller moves in the last few years -- its commitment to an annual simultaneous release of multiple open-source projects and taking on the responsibility for the evolution of enterprise Java, to name two. This week it entered into a partnership to support another foundation's open-source technology.
Working with the IOTA Foundation, Eclipse launched the Tangle EE Working Group to provide a governed environment for contributions to IOTA's open source distributed ledger technology (DLT).
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Posted by John K. Waters on February 12, 20200 comments
I was reminded today that developers are action-oriented -- at least when it comes to problems that can be solved with software. IBM developer advocate Nicholas Bourdakos knew his colleagues were spending hours manually labeling thousands of images for their machine learning models, and he railed against this injustice to the heavens, "This shall not stand!"
Okay, he probably didn't do that. (I like to think all developers do it in their hearts.) In fact, when I talked with him on a video call today, he was the definition of "chill."
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 30, 20200 comments
MORE ON THIS TOPIC: Java in 2020, Part 1: What To Expect According to the Experts
Talking with Gartner VP and distinguished analyst Anne Thomas about Java at the start of a new year is becoming a habit. (Let's call it a tradition.) Thomas is a longtime industry watcher with deep industry knowledge, she understands the tech and she doesn't mind stirring the pot, so to speak, if that's what her observations demand.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 28, 20200 comments
Kohsuke Kawaguchi, creator of the open source Jenkins continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) server, and Harpreet Singh, former head of the Bitbucket group at Atlassian, have launched a startup that's using machine learning (ML) to speed up the software testing process.
Their new company, Launchable, which emerged from stealth mode on Thursday, is developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product with the ability to predict the likelihood of a failure for each test case, given a change in the source code. The service will use ML to extract insights from the massive and growing amount of data generated by the increasingly automated software development process to make its predictions. More
Posted by John K. Waters on January 23, 20200 comments
The Eclipse Foundation's Jakarta EE Working Group today announced unanimous approval of a release plan for version 9 of the Eclipse Jakarta EE Platform.
The Working Group is proposing to deliver the specifications in a series of eight "waves," starting with an Independent (stand-alone) Wave, followed by Waves 1-7. Wave 1, for example, comprises the following specs:
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 16, 20200 comments
MORE ON THIS TOPIC Java in 2020, Part 2: Anne Thomas on Java Subscription, Jakarta and MicroProfile Wait, what? Java's not dead? Irrelevant? Replaced by Kotlin? Python? (Swift?)
Nope. Java weathered the predictions of its demise yet again, and though it missed being named TIOBE's programming language of the year for the second year in a row (good old C earned that title, which tells you something about this Who's the Most Popular dance), it remains one of the world's most valuable and widely used languages and platforms. More
Posted by John K. Waters on January 15, 20200 comments
A number of small companies and tech organizations joined the Mozilla software community in a friend of the court brief, filed this week, urging the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to reverse a federal circuit court's decision that Google infringed on Oracle's copyrights to Java code in its Android mobile operating system.
The list of organizations on the Mozilla amici curiae includes Medium, Cloudera, Creative Commons, Shopify, Etsy, Reddit, the Open Source Initiative, Mapbox, Patreon, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Software Freedom Conservancy.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 14, 20200 comments
The Java EE Guardians, the all-volunteer organization formed in 2016 to secure the continuing evolution of enterprise Java, is considering a name change -- and not just because "Java EE" has become "Jakarta EE." With the platform now securely evolving under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation, the members don't feel they have much to guard these days. In fact, they feel more like ... ambassadors.
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Posted by John K. Waters on November 6, 20190 comments