paulywog writes: "It hasn't been posted to the YAPC website yet, but the announcement was on usePerl this weekend. The site for the YAPC 2002 will be my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. Goofy name for a school in eastern Missouri, I know, but it's a great place for conferences. ... So, if you're in the St. Louis area and are a PERL fanatic, watch for upcoming information on yapc.org or the St. Louis Perl Monger's site." See also the Yet Another Society site.

Mauro Notarianni writes: "In the Stepwise article, 'Mac OS X: Game Developer's Playground,' Troy Stephens writes, "Mac OS X has the potential to be a superb launching pad for doing game development.' The author describes how 'Cocoa's developer productivity benefits, when combined with Mac OS X's strong support for technologies such as OpenGL and QuickTime, can empower game developers to create the custom production tools they often need in a fraction of the programmer hours it takes on other platforms.'"

jfonseca writes: "An article from Open Magazine claims the new Intel C/C++ compiler's geometric mean performance on multiple kernels compiled through it reached 47% improvement over GCC. They also predict the end to the ubiquitous GNU compiler due to low performance. Many other compiler/platform combinations also compared. A bit pretentious, yet an interesting read."

Adam asks: "I'm an undergraduate math and CS major, and as such, I would like to write some programs that do basic math, from finding perfect numbers to solving basic algebraic equations--just for fun. However, I only have experience with Java, and BigInteger and BigDecimal suck pretty hard as far as writing equations with them is concerned. So, to all you mathematicians and math lovers, what languages do you program mathematics in, and why?"

Ardax writes: "Looks like Borland is going to be releasing C++ for Linux, according to this InfoWorld article. We'll be seeing more details at LinuxWorld in NY next week. The article doesn't mention whether this will be C++ Builder for Linux, or 'just' a command line compiler. No matter what, this is a sweet thing. I wonder how it will compare to gcc? (I wonder if it will be able to compile the kernel? :-) ) If it's the whole C++ Builder shebang, I wonder if there will be an Open Edition? Borland's Community site has a blurb about this. There's no comments at the Borland community yet, but some interesting commentary might pop up there."

cabbage queries: "I just joined a medium sized firm with a development department of approx. 250 people. They primary product is a client-server based solution delivering realtime market data to the desktop in large financial institutions. They currently use SCO Unix for the servers, but a move to Red Hat Linux is definately in the cards. But this isn't the only change thats happening: they are also considering integrating their data with the client's enterprise delivery systems, and proprietary applcations. Currently they use a 'pragmatic' version of the Unified Process utilizing UML. The process is well organized and reasonably well documents and seems to serve well as a development process. However, it doesnt address the requirements of systems integration where the requirements are ill-defined, require extensive R&D, may only be tested on site, and may not be complete until the client determines that the solution does what they thought they wanted. Do any slashdotters have any suggestion as to how to move from a well organized application development process to one that addresses systems integration without destroying the application development process. We really don't want to set up a seperate department if at all possible."

WrinkledShirt contributed this review of a Professional Linux Programming, a tome he says can "bend light" by its sheer size -- 1155 pages of multi-author, multi-language instruction and examples. Read on for his thoughts on the book's shortcomings as well as its strengths, and remember, lift with your knees, not with your back.

lisam writes: "The Wiki plugin integrates nicely with Slash and has a lot of cool features, says Chromatic who introduces Wikis and gives a detailed explanation of how and why the Wiki plugin works in this OnLamp article. (chromatic is coauthor of O'Reilly's upcoming Running Weblogs with Slash.)" A lot of people just think of Slashdot style sites when thinking of the Slash codebase, but this article goes on about how to extend slash in cool ways. If you are interested in plugins, the repository is a good place to start.

nwetters writes: "VMGEAR, the producers of the OptimizeIt suite of Java profiling tools, have sold out to Borland. Press release here. "Because performance assurance is becoming an integral step in the development of Java enterprise applications, selling the OptimizeIt products with JBuilder makes great sense for Java developers.""

timmgrant asks: "Inspired by a love of technology I have always wanted to develop embedded software for consumer electronics. I have just finished a computer science degree and have now been looking for work in that industry but it seems that every job in this field requires previous professional experience in embedded programming. For those that have made it into this field (or any other specialised field) what path did you take? What steps do you propose would take me closer to my ultimate goal?"

f00zbll writes: "A good article about development and OOP/OOD. The lessons apply to most OO languages and OOD. Interview with Joshua Bloch over at Javaworld. Ignore the fact that Java is owned by Sun and use the tips to help your work/project/development."

iamriley writes: "According to this, Sun is making Gnome 1.4 available for customers 'to test drive, explore, and evaluate an early version of the GNOME desktop for the Solaris[tm] Operating Environment, SPARC[tm] and Intel Architecture Editions.'"

Frank writes: "This series of articles on developerWorks comprises a complete guide to better programming in Perl. In this fourth installment, Teodor introduces functional programming and several essential Perl idioms important for Perl programmers looking for speed and elegance in their code, such as the map() and grep() functions, and the Schwartzian and Guttman-Rosler transforms."

Rolig liten hattgubbe writes: "infoAnarchy has the scoop about Codecon, which is an interesting P2P-themed hacker conference in San Francisco (Feb 15-17) at JWZ's DNA Lounge. Some of the next-generation projects discussed are already functional, and a demo of Peek-A-Booty is going to be presented. I wonder if anyone will be arrested?"

chromatic writes: "Larry Wall's latest explanation of Perl 6 features, Apocalypse 4 has been posted on Perl.com. That means Damian Conway's explanatory Exegesis can't be far behind. Looks like some nice simplifications this time around."

cbv writes: "The FOSDEM orgnization is pleased to announce that the GNUstep, Mozilla, KDE, PHP and Gnome will have developers meetins in Brussels during the FOSDEM meeting that will take place 16 and 17 February 2002."

DreamTheater writes: "Java inventor James Gosling says he isn't losing much sleep over Microsoft these days, despite the software giant's effort to stem Java's popularity with its own Java-like language." Gosling talks about other things in this interview, too, like his current project of developing a good IDE.

gte910h asks: "I am an embedded developer who is learning how to program programmable logic devices (CPLD's and FPGA's). I have looked at VHDL and other Hardware Description Languages, but they seem so obtuse compared to C or Java. Has anyone tried any of the tools based off of general purpose programming languages, like JHDL. Do they work as well as VHDL and other HDL's? These would make things this type of development acessable to more people if they work well enough." Are packages similar to JHDL available for other languages?

Memetic asks: "There is a software development kit for wireless games, downloadable from TTPCom, a wireless devices IP vendor. It's described as: 'an open API delivering access to all the mobile phone's features in order to develop a new generation of on-line and multi-user games...it is possible to take advantage of the GSM, GPRS or 3GPP networks by downloading these games over the air, sending SMS messages between players, and creating multi-user content and games. Technologies such as Bluetooth or GPS are also made available' My question, does anyone see independent developers emerging for donloadable gaming or will this market be driven by the network operators / handset manufacturers?" While using this technology to build games on cell phones doesn't intrigue me, adapting this for our current and future crop of handheld computing devices does. What kind of future do you think there is for games development on such platforms like the Visor, the PalmPilot, and the next-generation-Gameboy that may come down the pipe in the next couple of years?

Bender writes "Stanley Lippman, who is best known for his work on the C++ language, recently became the head honcho for Microsoft's Visual C++ product. This is a link to a recent interview in which he discusses standards conformance and Microsoft's policy towards C99."