First time accepted submitter xby2_arch writes "After spending over 12 years writing OLTP applications (Java EE/JDBC/ORMs), I decided to dabble in the OLAP world. I had decent DB skills, considering most of my previous projects had involved data modeling and coding using Stored Procs, etc. Yet I hadn't designed or implemented any dimensional databases. Luckily for me, I had enough relevant domain knowledge to land a developer job in a data warehousing project. The work was enjoyable enough that it motivated me to spend that extra time and effort I needed to cope with the different dynamics of coding in the OLAP realm. In my past life, data volumes weren't the primary concern (instead, transaction volumes were), here, everything was about data. ETL/Integrations present another set of problems you generally skirt in a typical web/app-tier developer role. All in all, it turned out to be a non-trivial, yet worthwhile transition. I am certain that there are plenty of seasoned developers out there who plan to make a similar move (or have made already), who see data as the next chapter in their careers evolving toward becoming Enterprise Architects. I want to hear what's holding them back, or what helped them move forward. What should be considered a prerequisite to make this switch, and what are the risks, etc.?"

mikejuk writes "Every January, it is traditional to compare the state of programming language usage as indicated by the TIOBE index. So what's up and what's down this year? The top language is still Java, but it's slowly falling in the percentages. Objective-C experienced the most growth, followed by C# and C. JavaScript climbed back into the top 10, displacing Ruby. Python and PHP experienced the biggest drops. If you like outside runners, then cheer for Lua and R, which have just entered the top 20. However, I have to wonder why Logo is in the top 20 as well. I know programming education is becoming important, but Logo?"

snydeq writes "Two years later, Oracle's stewardship of Java continues to raise user and vendor ire, this time due to modularization, licensing, and security concerns. 'Plans for version 8 of Java Platform Standard Edition, which is due next year, call for inclusion of Project Jigsaw to add modular capabilities to Java. But some organizations are concerned with how Oracle's plans might conflict with the OSGi module system already geared to Java. In the licensing arena, Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu Linux, says Oracle is no longer letting Linux distributors redistribute Oracle's own commercial Java, causing difficulties for the company. Meanwhile, security vendor F-Secure views Java as security hindrance.'"

bonch writes "According to a report from NetApplications, which has measured browser usage data since 2004, Oracle's Java Mobile Edition has surpassed Android as the #2 mobile OS on the internet at 26.80%, with iOS at 46.57% and Android at 13.44%. And the trend appears to be growing. Java ME powers hundreds of millions of low-end 'feature phones' for budget buyers. In 2011, feature phones made up 60% of the install base in the U.S." Looking at the linked chart, it looks Java ME's been ahead of Android for all of 2011, too, except for the month of October.

theodp writes "Google took some heat for pulling the plug on App Inventor for Android, but all was good with the announcement that App Inventor would live on at MIT. But try to run the App Inventor Java test today and you'll be told that 'as of December 31, 2011, Google ended support of App Inventor', even though the Google-funded Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab won't be able to provide a large scale App Inventor service for general public access until 'sometime in the first quarter of 2012.' Until then, schools offering App Inventor classes and others who desire continued access to the easy-to-use mobile development environment are advised to try to run their own App Inventor Services on Google App Engine using MIT's test JAR files, a seemingly daunting task, especially considering App Inventor's target audience. Any thoughts on why Google would unplug the old system before the new one was ready?"

First time accepted submitter martypantsROK writes "It's been over 15 years since my main job was a software engineer. Since then I have held positions as a Sales Engineer, then spent a few years actually doing sales as a sales rep (and found I hated it) and then got into teaching. I am still a teacher but I want to really get back into writing code for a living. In the past couple of years I've done a great deal of Javascript, PHP, Ajax, and Java, including some Android apps. So here's the question: How likely would I be to actually get a job writing code? Is continual experience in the field a must, or can a job candidate demonstrate enough current relevance and experience (minus an actual job) with a multi-year hiatus from software development jobs? I'll add, if you haven't already done the math, that I'm over 50 years old."

wiredmikey writes "In a rare move, Microsoft is breaking its normal procedures and will issue an emergency out-of-band security update on Thursday to address a hash collision attack vulnerability that came into the spotlight yesterday, and affects various Web platforms industry-wide. The vulnerability is not specific to Microsoft technologies and has been discovered to impact PHP 5, Java, .NET, and Google's v8, while PHP 4, Ruby, and Python are somewhat vulnerable. Microsoft plans to release the bulletin on December 29, 2011, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, and said it would addresses security vulnerabilities in all supported releases of Microsoft Windows. 'The impact of this vulnerability is similar to other Denial of Service attacks that have been released in the past, such as the Slowloris DoS or the HTTP POST DoS,' said security expert Chris Eng. 'Unlike traditional DoS attacks, they could be conducted with very small amounts of bandwidth. This hash table multi-collision bug shares that property.'"

First time accepted submitter nzyank writes "The other day I bravely (foolishly?) volunteered to conduct a video game development workshop at my boys' HS. This in Smallsville, Vermont with an average graduating class size of about 20. The idea is to meet once a week and actually create a game, start to finish. It will be open to would-be programmers, designers, artists, etc. I worked on a bunch of AAA titles back in the '90s, but I'm pretty much out of touch nowadays and I'm trying to figure out the best approach. The requirements are that it has to be one of either Windows/XBox or Android, since those are the platforms that I am current on. It has to be relatively simple for the kids to get up and running quickly, and it needs to be as close to free as possible. Teaching them to use stuff like Blender, C#, C++, Java, XNA, OpenGL and the Android SDK is probably a bit much. I was thinking of something like the Torque Engine, but they want $1000 for an academic license, which is never going to happen. I simply don't know what's out there nowadays and could really use some suggestions."

theodp writes "In the Sixties, we could put a man on the moon. Nowadays, laments jocastette, America's tech giants can't even put a BASIC on the phone. Woz managed to crank out a BASIC interpreter for the 6502 in the '70s. As did Bill Gates and Paul Allen. So, why — at a time when development has never been easier — can't Google, Apple, and Microsoft manage to support a free BASIC or other programming-for-the-masses development environment on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones?" My limited experience with Android development showed using Java to be obtuse and downright obnoxious to do anything (at least without Eclipse, and even with it doing anything non-standard required digging through horrendous ant buildfiles). And, of course, without a REPL things were even more obnoxious. There is the android-scripting project, but it doesn't provide particularly exhaustive access to the platform.

New submitter an_orphan writes "Apparently, Oracle's 'Operating System Distributor License for Java' is expired, causing Ubuntu to not only remove sun-java from the partner repository, but from user's machines."

First time accepted submitter BenLinders writes "The Economics of Software Quality provides solutions to quantify software quality, helping you to manage software development and maintenance. It contains software quality data that you can use to build a business case to improve the quality of your software, and decide upon processes and techniques that can help to implement the needed improvements in your organization." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

dcblogs writes "An analysis of 745 applications for violations of good architectural and coding practices found that Java applications had the most problems and Cobol-built systems, the least. Some 365 million lines of code were analyzed by Cast Software to assess 'technical debt,' or the cost to fix the violations. Java was calculated at $5.42 per line of code, while Cobol did best at $1.26. Cobol code had the least number of violations because programmers 'have been beating on it for 30 years,' said Cast. As far as Java goes, 'there are many people going into Java now that really don't have strong computer science backgrounds,' said its chief scientist, Bill Curtis."

New submitter dd1968 writes "Today IBM announced the release of a new set of Open Source development tools based on their EGL programming language. The announcement describes the tools as being built from the ground up on an 'open, extensible compiler and generator framework.' The one-language approach places an abstraction layer between the developer and target languages, frameworks, and runtime platforms."

First time accepted submitter clava writes "We have a desktop Java testing application that is going to be administering tests to students on lab computers running Ubuntu 10.x. These computers are used by the students for other purposes and we're not allowed to create special users or change the OS configuration. When the testing app is launched, we need to restrict users from exiting the app so they can't do things like search the internet for answers or use other applications. Is there a good way to put an Ubuntu machine in kiosk mode or something via our application and have exiting kiosk mode be password protected? Any ideas are appreciated."

brothke writes "It has been a decade since Oracle started their unbreakable campaign touting the security robustness of their products. Aside from the fact that unbreakable only refers to the enterprise kernel; Oracle still can have significant security flaws. Even though Java supports very strong security controls including JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization Services), it still requires a significant effort to code Java securely. With that The CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Javais an invaluable guide that provides the reader with the strong coding guidelines and practices in order to reduce coding vulnerabilities that can lead to Java and Oracle exploits." Read on for the rest of Ben's review.

mikejuk writes "The world of software is made slightly crazy because of the huge flexibility within any computer language. Once you have absorbed the idea of a compiler written in the language it compiles, what else is there left to gawp at? But... a Java Virtual Machine JVM written in JavaScript seems like another level of insanity. A lone coder, Artur Ventura, has implemented a large part of the standard JVM using JavaScript and you can check the code out on Github. Notice this isn't a Java to JavaScript translator but a real JVM that runs byte code. This means it could run any language that compiles to byte code." Bonus: on Ventura's website is a set of visual notes from a talk he gave titled "My Language Is Better Than Yours."

wiredmikey writes "Millions of people in Brazil have potentially been exposed to malware, as a result of a nationwide DNS attack. Additionally, several organizations in Brazil are reporting that network devices are also under attack. After being compromised remotely, scores of routers and modems had their DNS settings altered to redirect traffic. In those cases, when employees of the affected companies tried to open any website, they were asked to execute a malicious Java applet, which would install malware presented as 'Google Defence' software."

AlexDomo writes to point out this statistical breakdown of the programming languages represented at StackOverflow. "Suprisingly, JavaScript turned out to be the most 'over-represented' language on StackOverflow, by quite a long way at 294% [where "a representation of 100% means that the SO tag count is aligned exactly with the TIOBE language index"]. Could this also be because programming JavaScript is generally quite difficult and will result in people seeking help more often? Following this was C# (which I had expected to be number 1), at 153%. After this, PHP, Ruby and Python were basically fairly balanced at around 100%. The most 'under-represented' major language would definitely be C at 11%. Three other major languages which seemed to be a bit under-represented, below 50%, were C++, Java and Objective-C. For details of the method used and the full results, refer to the original article." One of the attached comments makes an interesting point about the difficulty in divining meaning from such statistics, though.

An anonymous reader writes "Eclipse has launched a website for a new JVM language, called Xtend. It's built with Eclipse's Xtext and compiles directly to Java code, similar to what CoffeeScript does to Javascript. It's not just an announcement but it's already there and useable, including a very feature-rich Eclipse integration."

think_nix writes "After the resignation of Apache from the Java SE/EE Executive Committee, the time has now come for Harmony to be added to the Apache Attic. Harmony was 'the project to produce an open source cleanroom implementation of Java.' An open vote was taken within the Project Management Committee, which resulted in a 20-2 majority to discontinue development."