davemabe writes "Every programmer has a favorite scripting language. Here is a well written article by Jon Udell from byte.com detailing the differences between Perl and Python, their cultures, OOP, database access, philosophies, and which one will gain the most converts in the future. Very interesting reading on an almost religious debate. "

Justin Harvey has written a review of The Pragmatic Programmer, a work famous for helping programmers develop their skills. Click below to learn more.

We've mentioned the Borland/Inprise Linux Developers Surveys before. Kinda like the The Linux Counter, it's a way for the needs of the community to be codified and show the corporate folks that we really do count - in numbers and in skills. So, check out the latest survey and we'll probably post the results in a few weeks.

C. Scott Ananian has written a beautiful article for Salon: "Every day, in our increasingly networked world, our freedoms and privacy are being stolen from us. And most of us just let it happen -- most of us tend to accept our computer's workings as immutable, that we are chained to an irrational, vindictive, uncontrollable machine destined to rule over our 9-to-5 days."

Weeden writes "Leafing through the latest issue of The Perl Journal I came accross the Perl Poetry Contest. The deadline is the 20th of February and all the details can be found here. "

friedo asks: "Projects such as Mozilla have developed sophisticated tools like Bugzilla, an automated build status page and a ridiculously cool hyperlinked, cross referenced source viewer. Would other open source developments such as the Kernel, Gnome, etc. benefit from the use of similar tools? Should we develop more organization and automation to help further open source projects?" Good thought, but such things are up to the individual projects. However, this might be a better idea for newer Open Source projects than ones that are already well established.

Tal Cohen, one of our best book reviewers thought that the Slashdot audience would appreciate Pattern Hatching: Design Patterns Applied, a book written by John Vlissides. This book is not one of the many new pattern catalogs, this book shows how patterns are applied in real life -- and also includes some interesting guidelines for would-be pattern writers.

slashdot-me writes "The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) has begun. See the rules at the IOCCC homepage. The contest runs from Feb. 1 to March 31. " As always, the results will be only readable by Martians.

New reviewer Jayakrishnan Nair has brought with him a review of Addison-Welsey/Sun's Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines. There's a lot of work being done in Java right now - make sure that it looks correct. The book covers everything from basic controls, keyboard navigation, tables, toolbars, treeviews to the JFC and effective ways to use the JFC components.

JonahC writes "dotcomma has an interesting programming challenge for people to create IRC bots with artificial intelligence and carry on conversations. With some development, good programmers and some luck, the bots should eventually interact with each other as if they are humans. "

Bringing a little competition to O'Reilly, this Manning Publications book Elements of Programming with Perl seems to be have struck a nerve with reviewer chromatic. Click below to find out how - and possibly add a new book to your library.

Anonymous Coward writes " New York Times story (free registration required) - the lead paragraph: 'SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - In the latest chapter in the legal battle between two rival software titans, a federal judge on Tuesday reinstated an order forcing Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) to change software based on the Java programming language created by Sun Microsystems Inc.'" And as long as we're talking about Sun, check this Red Herring Story headlined "IBM wants to kick Sun butt." Whoa, baby! They play rough in the big leagues, don't they?

Fargo writes "GameSpy posted a six-page essay of Tim Sweeney's entitled "A Critical Look at Programming Languages." Tim Sweeney is, of course, the lead coder for the Unreal game engine (one of the most licensed 3D game engines for the PC.) Juicy quote: "We game developers hold the keys to the future of hardware and software technology... Games were responsible for creating the market which enabled 3dfx and NVidia to mass-product $100 graphics chips which outperform $100,000 Silicon Graphics workstations. In terms of technological progress, we game developers are way more influential than most of us realize." "

Metuchen asks: "I'm developing a program for Linux that will eventually be managing a medical practice. This program will be running on several terminals on the same computer, but they must all access the same database simultaneously (i.e. if one user were to update a record, the next time another user accesses that patient--on a different terminal--the correct information must be displayed). What would be the best way to implement such a program? I would prefer to stay away from writing everything to file after each update since the database will be updated frequently; for the same reasons, I would like to be able to keep everything in RAM without using a RAMdrive (since that may require up to one file per patient). Any suggestions?"

krshultz writes "IBM has posted a great technical article on Java performance on its DeveloperWorks site. I learned a lot about Java and Linux in general." This is a nice big well-indexed article. Go.

Hrvoje Niksic writes "The Software Carpentry project has announced its first Open Source design competition. They offer prizes totaling $100,000 for people who come up with good design for tools that replace autoconf, make, as well as a bug tracking system and a regression testing suite. Good luck!"

yamla writes "Metrowerks, developer of the CodeWarrior development tools, has decided to put their professional Linux tools on hold. Since being bought out by Motorola, they've changed product emphasis and although their Linux guy in R&D wants to go ahead, management has put the product on indefinite hold. I want to develop using CodeWarrior 5 for Linux but apparently, this program may now never see the light of day. " I've talked with some folks over at Metrowerks and have confirmed this - from what they've said, the earliest it would be out is next Fall. Click below to read their account - and remember that it's better to sign the various petitions around than it is to flame people.

PHP 3.0.14 was released on January 11, 2000 to address an obscure safe-mode bug reported on bugtraq. Along with this fix, 3.0.14 also patches an annoying GD-related configure problem. No new features have been added, so unless these 2 issues affect you, there's no real need to upgrade. On the Windows side the slightly broken 3.0.13 distribution has been fixed and ZIP file now contains all the needed files.

Zito writes "'The stereotypical programmer is a shy young man who works in a darkened room, intensely concentrating on magical incantations that coax the computer to do his bidding. He can concentrate 12-16 hours at a time, often working through the night to realize his artistic vision. He subsists on pizza and Twinkies,' Steve McConnell writes for gamasutra about profiles of software developers. "

TimToady writes "Many otherwise intelligent people seem to think that Perl just sort of happened by accident. But Linux Magazine has just now put their October issue online, and it includes an article entitled Uncultured Perl: Perl's Creator Shares his Thoughts on a Subversive Lifecycle. It's basically the secret history of how Perl infested the world, intentionally subverting everything in its path including the NSA, Unix, and the GPL. " Reading Larry Wall stuff has to rank as one of my favorite reading experiences.