IT seems to be growing again. Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending will increase 4.5% this year to $3.68 trillion, driven by artificial intelligence, big data analytics, blockchain technology, and the IoT.
Digital transformations are fashionable. You won’t find an enterprise that isn’t leveraging some combination of cloud, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to better serve customers or streamline operations. But here’s a hard truth about digital transformations: Many are failing outright or are in danger of failing. Typical reasons for failing are not understanding what is digital transformation (different people understand it differently), lack of CEO sponsorship, talent deficiency, resistance to change. Usually a technology-first approach to digital transformation is a recipe for disaster. Truing to just push trough technically unfeasible transformation idea is another way to fail.
The digital era requires businesses to move with speed, and that is causing IT organizations to rethink how they work. A lot of IT is moving off premises to SaaS providers and the public cloud. Research outfit 451 standout finding was that 60 per cent of the surveyed enterprises say they will run the majority of their IT outside the confines of enterprise data centres by the end of 2019. From cost containment to hybrid strategies, CIOs are getting more creative in taking advantage of the latest offerings and the cloud’s economies of scale.
In 2018 there seems to be a growing Software Engineering Talent Shortage in both quantity and quality. For the past nine years, software engineers have been at the top of the hardest to fill jobs in the United States. And same applies to many other countries including Finland. Forrester projects that firms will pay 20% above market for quality engineering talent in 2018. Particularly in-demand skills are data scientists, high-end software developers and information security analysts. There is real need for well-studied, experienced engineers with a formal and deep understanding of software engineering. Recruiting and retaining tech talent remains IT’s biggest challenge today. Most CIOs are migrating applications to public cloud services, offloading operations and maintenance of computing, storage and other capabilities so they can reallocate staff to focus on what’s strategic to their business.
The enterprise no longer is at the center of the IT universe. It seems that reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated and the long and painful decline in PC sales of the last half-decade as tailed off, at least momentarily. As the sales of smartphones and tablets have risen, consumers had not stopped using PCs, but merely replaced them less often. FT reports that PC is set to stage a comeback in 2018, after the rise of smartphones sent sales of desktop and laptop computers into decline in recent years. If that does not happen, then PC market could return to growth in 2019. But the end result is that PC is no longer seen as the biggest growth driver for chip makers. An extreme economic shift has chipmakers focused on hyperscale clouds.
Microservices are talked about a lot. Software built using microservices is easier to deliver and maintain than the big and brittle architectures or old; these were difficult to scale and might take years to build and deliver. Microservices are small and self-contained, so therefore easy to wrap up in a virtual machine or a container (but don’t have to live in containers). Public cloud providers increasingly differentiate themselves through the features and services they provide. But it turns out that microservices are far from being one-size-fit-for-all silver bullet for IT challenges.
Containers will try to make break-trough again in 2018. Year 2017 was supposed to be the year of containers! It wasn’t? Oops. Maybe year 2018 is better. Immature tech still has a bunch of growing up to do. Linux Foundation’s Open Containers Initiative (OCI) finally dropped two specifications that standardise how containers operate at a low level. The needle in 2018 will move towards containers running separately from VMs, or entirely in place of VMs. Kubernates gains traction. It seems that the containers are still at the point where the enterprise is waiting to embrace them.
Serverless will be talked about. Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Serverless architectures refer to applications that significantly depend on third-party services (knows as Backend as a Service or “BaaS”) or on custom code that’s run in ephemeral containers (Function as a Service or “FaaS”), the best known vendor host of which currently is AWS Lambda.
Automation is what everybody with many computers wants. Infrastructure automation creates and destroys basic IT resources such as compute instances, storage, networking, DNS, and so forth. Security automation helps keeping systems secure. It bosses want to create self-driving private clouds. The journey to self-driving clouds needs to be gradual. The vision of the self-driving cloud makes sense, but the task of getting from here to there can seem daunting. DevOps automation with customer control: Automatic installation and configuration, Integration that brings together AWS and VMWare, workflows migration controlled by users, Self-service provisioning based on templates defined by users, Advanced machine learning to automate processes, and Automated upgrades.
Linux is center of many cloud operations: Google and Facebook started building their own gear and loading it with their own software. Google has it’s own Linux called gLinux. Facebook networking uses Linux-based FBOSS operating system. Even Microsoft has developed its own Linux for cloud operations. Software-defined networking (SDN) is a very fine idea.
Memory business boomed in 2017 for both NAND and DRAM. The drivers for DRAM are smartphones and servers. Solid-state drives (SSDs) and smartphones are fueling the demand for NAND. NAND Market Expected to Cool in Q1 from the crazy year 2017, but it is still growing well because there is increasing demand. Memory — particular DRAM — was largely considered a commodity business.
Lots of 3D NAND will go to solid state drives in 2018. IDC forecasts strong growth for the solid-state drive (SSD) industry as it transitions to 3D NAND. SSD industry revenue is expected to reach $33.6 billion in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 14.8%. Sizes of memory chips increase as number of layer in 3D NAND are added. The traditional mechanical hard disk based on magnetic storage is in hard place in competition, as the speed of flash-based SSDs is so superior
There is search for faster memory because modern computers, especially data-center servers that skew heavily toward in-memory databases, data-intensive analytics, and increasingly toward machine-learning and deep-neural-network training functions, depend on large amounts of high-speed, high capacity memory to keep the wheels turning. The memory speed has not increased as fast as the capacity. The access bandwidth of DRAM-based computer memory has improved by a factor of 20x over the past two decades. Capacity increased 128x during the same period. For year 2018 DRAM remains a near-universal choice when performance is the priority. There is search going on for a viable replacement for DRAM. Whether it’s STT-RAM or phase-change memory or resistive RAM, none of them can match the speed or endurance of DRAM.
PCI Express 4.0 is ramping up. PCI-standards consortium PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group) has ratified and released specifications for PCIe 4.0 Specification Version 1. Doubling PCIe 3.0’s 8 GT/s (~1 GB/s) of bandwidth per lane, PCIe 4.0 offers a transfer rate of 16 GT/s. The newest version of PCI Express will start appearing on motherboards soon. PCI-SIG has targeted Q2 2019 for releasing the finalized PCIe 5.0 specification, so PCIe 4.0 won’t be quite as long-lived as PCIe 3.0 has been. So we’ll See PCIe 4.0 this year in use and PCIe 5.0 in 2019.
USB type C is on the way to becoming the most common PC and peripheral interface. The USB C connector has become faster more commonplace than any other earlier interface. USB C is very common on smartphones, but the interface is also widespread on laptops. Sure, it will take some time before it is the most common. In 2021, the C-type USB connector has almost five billion units, IHS estimates.
It seems that the after-shocks of Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities on processors will be haunting us for quite long time this year. It is now three weeks since The Register revealed the chip design flaws that Google later confirmed and the world still awaits certainty about what it will take to get over the silicon slip-ups. Last pieces of farce has been that Intel Halts Spectre, Meltdown CPU Patches Over Unstable Code and Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticises Intel’s ‘garbage’ patches. Computer security will not be the same after all this has been sorted out.
What’s Next With Computing? IBM discusses AI, neural nets and quantum computing. Many can agree that those technologies will be important. Public cloud providers increasingly provide sophisticated flavours of data analysis and increasingly Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Central Banks Are Using Big Data to Help Shape Policy. Over the past few years, machine learning (ML) has evolved from an interesting new approach that allows computers to beat champions at chess and Go, into one that is touted as a panacea for almost everything. 2018 will be the start of what could be a longstanding battle between chipmakers to determine who creates the hardware that artificial intelligence lives on.
ARM processor based PCs are coming. As Microsoft and Qualcomm jointly announced in early December that the first Windows 10 notebooks with ARM-based Snapdragon 835 processors will be officially launched in early 2018, there will be more and more PCs with ARM processor architecture hitting the market. Digitimes Research expects that ARM-based models may dominate lower-end PC market, but don’t hold your breath on this. It is rumoured that “wireless LTE connectivity” function will be incorporated into all the entry-level Window 10 notebooks with ARM processors, branded by Microsoft as the “always-connected devices.” HP and Asustek have released some ARM-based notebooks with Windows 10S.
Sources:
Ohjelmistoalan osaajapula pahenee – kasvu jatkuu
PC market set to return to growth in 2018
PC market could return to growth in 2019
PC sales grow for the first time in five years
PCI-SIG Finalizes and Releases PCIe 4.0, Version 1 Specification: 2x PCIe Bandwidth and More
Hot Chips 2017: We’ll See PCIe 4.0 This Year, PCIe 5.0 In 2019
Outsourcing remains strategic in the digital era
8 hot IT hiring trends — and 8 going cold
EDA Challenges Machine Learning
The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018
How to create self-driving private clouds
ZeroStack Lays Out Vision for Five-Step Journey to Self-Driving Cloud
2017 – the year of containers! It wasn’t? Oops. Maybe next year
2018′s Software Engineering Talent Shortage— It’s quality, not just quantity
How Central Banks Are Using Big Data to Help Shape Policy
Digitimes Research: ARM-based models may dominate lower-end PC market
Intel Halts Spectre, Meltdown CPU Patches Over Unstable Code
Spectre and Meltdown: Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticises Intel’s ‘garbage’ patches
Meltdown/Spectre week three: World still knee-deep in something nasty
What’s Next With Computing? IBM discusses AI, neural nets and quantum computing.
PCI Express 4.0 as Fast As Possible
Microsoft has developed its own Linux!
Microsoft Built Its Own Linux Because Everyone Else Did
Facebook has built its own switch. And it looks a lot like a server
Googlella on oma sisäinen linux
Is the writing on the wall for on-premises IT? This survey seems to say so
12 reasons why digital transformations fail
7 habits of highly effective digital transformations
857 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle open-sources DTrace under the GPL
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/19/oracle_open_sources_dtrace_changes_licence_to_gpl/
Which makes lots of sysadmins’ fave tracing tool cool for Linux
Tomi Engdahl says:
Who Killed The Junior Developer?
https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9da2dc58c
There are plenty of junior developers, but not many jobs for them
But I know what companies have told me: “we don’t hire junior developers because we can’t afford to have our senior developers mentor them.” I’ve seen the rates for senior developers because I am one and I had project managers that had me allocate time for budgeting purposes. I know the rate is anywhere from $190-$300 an hour. That’s what companies believe they are losing on junior devs.
I don’t believe that because no senior developer is working a full day on that $300 an hour rate. Also their hand wringing about the costs seems like crocodile tears knowing all the time they waste (at least in my opinion) on things like meetings.
I’d recommend companies that want to start having junior developers again invest some time in developing a program that helps senior developers and anyone people working with them how to effectively mentor. And also account for more grim realities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Java CTO: Devs shouldn’t have to learn Docker, K8s, 30 other things to deploy an app
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/22/ibm_java_cto_john_duimovich_interview/
Big Blue’s Duimovich chats cloud and more to El Reg
Oracle, Java’s meddling uncle, last year said it would hand over governance of Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation.
For enterprise Java, that means a chance to accelerate the development and deployment of new features and to become more responsive to the needs of corporate developers.
“What they did is they gave control of the evolution of enterprise Java to a foundation,” Duimovich explained.
Duimovich contends enterprise Java is “actually a pretty interesting space” these days, pointing to developments like reactive programming, where you’re dealing with asynchronous code and high event rates for IoT applications.
“Enterprise Java at the Eclipse Foundation is going to drive new features more quickly,” he said. “And I think it will also be a more inclusive community that’s easier to join.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Programming as craft
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/24/programming-as-craft/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Can programming be a craft?
craftsmanship is an activity that doesn’t just provide us with satisfaction, but also makes us fundamentally human by enchanting us with the world right around us.
He provides the extended example of musical organ makers, who work on instruments that are designed to last centuries. They innovate, but within the tight context of a lineage of apprenticeships that goes back many generations.
There is a reverence in witnessing the craftsmanship of skilled artisans, but Crawford is careful to argue that reverence does not mean sycophantic obsession with the past. Instead, he makes a persistent plea to avoid seeing tradition as constraining, but rather considering it as a base upon which to innovate on.
What gives craftsmanship its fundamental character is the progress latent in the work. Works by young novices can be easily distinguished from the works of experienced masters, and following a single craftsman’s career can be enlightening as they learn their trade.
Returning to my opening question then, should we see programming as a craft? The glib answer is yes, of course it is. There is a skill that is developed over time, and masters hopefully understand the field better than novices. Quality work can be identified by other masters, and at least some programmers have reverence for the computer that Crawford’s organ masters would find recognizable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The impact GitHub is having on your software career
https://opensource.com/article/17/3/impact-github-software-career?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Over the next 12 to 24 months (in other words, between 2018 and 2019), how people hire software developers will change radically.
There are two factors that give you a real sense of the times:
Microsoft, long the poster child for closed-source proprietary software and a crusader against open source, has embraced open source software whole-heartedly. The company formed the .NET Foundation (which has Red Hat as a member) and joined the Linux Foundation. .NET is now developed in the open as an open source project.
GitHub has become a singular social network that ties together issue tracking and distributed source control.
For software developers coming from a primarily closed source background, it’s not really clear yet what just happened. To them, open source equals “working for free in your spare time.”
For those of us who spent the past decade making a billion-dollar open source software company, however, there is nothing free or spare time about working in the open.
GitHub is a great equalizer. You may not be able to get a job in Australia from India, but there is nothing stopping you from working with Australians on GitHub from India.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A look at 6 iconic open source brands
https://opensource.com/article/17/2/six-open-source-brands?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Branding is an integral part of marketing. When it’s done right and makes an impact
There are many projects doing it right that we can look to for inspiration and guidance. Here are six of my favorites.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The best Linux web hosting services of 2018
https://www.techradar.com/news/best-linux-web-hosting
Tomi Engdahl says:
From manual to automated DevOps: One man’s journey
https://rhelblog.redhat.com/2018/02/13/from-manual-to-automated-devops-one-mans-journey/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
A simple (yet ever-expanding, and possibly incomplete) checklist includes tools for:
Developers
Source code management (SCM)
Backlog and bug-tracking
Pipeline management
Cloud and platform management
Target platforms for deployments
Security testing
Code and content testing
Documentation
And of course, automation!
Whether there are 50 steps, or only 5, for a piece of code to reach production, if the entire workflow isn’t automated—is it really DevOps?
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s largest: Samsung’s 30-terabyte SSD
Samsung says it has launched the world’s largest volume production of SSD. For business-grade disc, data is 30.72 terabytes, or twice as much as the previous record label, which was introduced in March 2016.
capacity has been achieved by combining 32 new Samsung Tandem NAND circuits in the same package. They consist of 16 stacked 512 gigabit VNAND chips.
n addition, Samsung has switched the SATA bus to twice as fast a SAS bus that transfers data to 12 gigabytes per second. This way, the reading speed has been raised to 400,000 IOPS operations.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7598&via=n&datum=2018-02-21_14:39:40&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
5G laptops will launch on the market next year
Intel promises that the first Windows-based laptops operating on 5G networks will come on the market in the second half of next year.
Intel has announced that it will develop, along with Dell, HP and Lenovo, Windows laptops with 5G connectivity with the Intel XMM 8000 Series modem. Next week, Intel promises to showcase such a laptop at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress.
The prototype is a 2-in-1 hybrid device with a Core i5 processor, where the screen is released into a tablet. The 5G connection is demoted by moving the video through the 5G test network.
Intel also promises to introduce MWC laptops, where the wifi chipset has been upgraded to support the new 802.11ax standard.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7612&via=n&datum=2018-02-23_15:57:15&mottagare=31202
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Python devs should use Pipenv
https://opensource.com/article/18/2/why-python-devs-should-use-pipenv?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Only a year old, Pipenv has become the official Python-recommended resource for managing package dependencies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to hire the right DevOps talent
https://opensource.com/article/18/3/how-hire-right-des-talentvop?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
The annual base salary for a junior DevOps engineer now tops $100,000/year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The three key CTO skills
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/the-three-key-cto-skills/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=facebook
CTO of HappyFunCorp since last year, and it has been a deeply edifying experience. Everything people told me was mostly true: I write less code; I go to more meetings, and turn up in more conference calls; I think more strategically, and less tactically; my time is spent in a more fragmented and kaleidoscopic manner.
Oh, yeah — and I’m a lot more involved in bizdev and sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Catalin Cimpanu / BleepingComputer.com:
Percentage of Chrome users who’ve loaded at least one page containing Flash content per day has dropped from 80% in 2014 to under 8% today, according to Google
Google Chrome: Flash Usage Declines from 80% in 2014 to Under 8% Today
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-chrome-flash-usage-declines-from-80-percent-in-2014-to-under-8-percent-today/
The percentage of daily Chrome users who’ve loaded at least one page containing Flash content per day has gone down from around 80% in 2014 to under 8% in early 2018.
Adobe to stop supporting Flash by the end of 2020
Flash’s demise was to be expected, though. Adobe announced last year plans to stop supporting the Adobe Flash Media Player by the end of 2020.
But while Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and all major browsers have already moved from a Flash-enabled-by-default to a Flash-click-to-play policy since last year, the massive drop in Flash usage numbers is a huge surprise for most industry experts.
This big drop could, at least in theory, be explained by the fact that most advertising networks and video streaming portals have moved away from Flash to HTML5, meaning most people can go days before encountering a website that still loads some kind of Flash object.
On the other hand, Flash’s market share —the number of computers with Flash installed— is most likely still pretty high.
Flash to be removed completely in Chrome 87
For Chrome, this means Chrome 87, expected to be released in December 2020, which is the industry-agreed cutoff date when Adobe will stop shipping updates and when other browsers also agreed to remove Flash from their stable branches as well.
However, cutting down Flash usage is not Chrome’s only major win these past years. Just earlier this month, Google announced that more than 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows and over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac, is now being sent via HTTPS. Because of this, the company plans to show a “Not Secure” label for all HTTP sites starting Chrome 68, to be released in July this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Java EE’ Has Been Renamed ‘Jakarta EE’
https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/03/04/035236/java-ee-has-been-renamed-jakarta-ee
The results are in for the vote on the new name for Java Enterprise Edition, and unsurprisingly the voters have chosen Jakarta EE. The renaming has to happen because Oracle refused to let the name Java be used. The vote was to choose between two options – ‘Jakarta EE’ and ‘Enterprise Profile’.
Java EE Is Renamed Jakarta EE
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/80-java/11596-java-ee-is-renamed-jakarta-ee.html
The results are in for the vote on the new name for Java Enterprise Edition, and unsurprisingly the voters have chosen Jakarta EE. The renaming has to happen because Oracle refused to let the name Java be used.
The need to change the name of Java EE arose because while Oracle has handed over the open source version of Java to the Eclipse Foundation, it says that the names ‘Java’ and ‘javax’ aren’t part of the handover.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Life at Eclipse
Musings on the Eclipse Foundation, the community and the ecosystem
And the Name Is…
https://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/and-the-name-is/
We are happy to announce that the new name for the technology formerly known as Java EE is….[insert drumroll]… Jakarta EE.
As we have been making progress on migrating Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation there have been a lot of moving pieces and parallel threads, especially around naming.
Note that permission for products to formally use the Jakarta EE trademark will be dependent upon passing a as-yet-to-be-defined compatibility program run by EE.next. However, as of today, it is preferred that when you are generically referring to this open source software platform that you call it Jakarta EE rather than EE4J. EE4J, the Eclipse Top-level project, is the only name we’ve had for a couple of months, but as we at least tried to make clear, that was never intended to be the brand name.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Java EE renamed to Jakarta EE
https://sdtimes.com/java/java-ee-renamed-jakarta-ee/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Java EE Is Renamed Jakarta EE
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/80-java/11596-java-ee-is-renamed-jakarta-ee.html
two alternatives of Jakarta EE and Enterprise Profile.
The Eclipse Foundation has prepared this handy table to assist with the translation from the old names to the new names.
Old Name New Name
Java EE Jakarta EE
Glassfish Eclipse Glassfish
Java Community Process (JCP) [*] Eclipse EE.next Working Group (EE.next)
Oracle development management Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J) Project Management Committee (PMC)
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Azure servers to pack Intel FPGAs as Microsoft ARM-lessly embraces Xeon
‘Intel Xeon Scalable Processor’ hailed as ‘cornerstone for new platform’ with servers customised for different roles
New Azure servers to pack Intel FPGAs as Microsoft ARM-lessly embraces Xeon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/12/all_azure_servers_to_pack_intel_fpgas_as_microsoft_armlessly_embraces_new_xeons/
‘Intel Xeon Scalable Processor’ hailed as ‘cornerstone for new platform’ with servers customised for different roles
Microsoft may have said ARM servers provide the most value for its cloud services back in March, but today it’s given Intel’s new Xeons a big ARM-less hug by revealing the hyperscale servers it uses in Azure are ready to roll with Chipzilla’s latest silicon and will all use Chipzilla’s field programmable gate arrays.
Those servers are dubbed “Project Olympus” and Microsoft has released their designs to the OpenCompute Project.
Redmond also praises the Xeon Scalable Processors as being jolly powerful and all that, which will help Azure to scale and handle different workloads. But it’s the news that Redmond’s all-in with Intel Arria FPGAs that must be warming cockles down Chipzilla way, as using Xeons as the main engine and tweaking them for different roles with FPGAs is Intel’s strategy brought to life.
IBM’s also embraced the new Xeons, gushing that it will be the first to offer them on bare metal cloud servers. But not, in all likelihood, the first to use them at all: Google has claims to have been running them since June 1st, 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Programming is on the verge of a great transition. Low-code tools are not suitable for any development work, but they are already making programming so fast and inexpensively that there is no return to old.
A couple of years ago, Kemira had a problem. The company wanted to make applications tailored to the needs of the company and its users. There was a particular need for applications for mobile devices.
A variety of traditional methods were explored for the project. Soon, however, it was noticed that development work was simply too slow and painful. The development of a new business application was typically a monthly project.
Kemira was therefore exploring new technologies, so-called low-code development tools. These applications are constructed graphically, with minimal programming or even without coding. The most suitable tool for the company’s needs was chosen from the crowd, and its use was swung from the late spring. The results were quite a surprise.
“The pace of development has been quite incredible. One developer has completed about ten different applications in half a year, ”
“We use the agility development method, where the sprint takes two weeks. Often the sprint worklist has been completed already in the middle of the first week. ”
“I see no reason why we should no longer do any application development in traditional ways,” says Vainionpää.
Kemira has used OutSystems’ low-code software and is now considering recruiting another developer. The situation will soon be similar to the IT department of more and more companies. The low-key development model is simply so fast and efficient that traditional methods can be difficult to compete against doing business applications.
According to research firm Forrester, many of the low-end market companies are now growing at a steep pace. Over the next four years, the size of the market is projected to quadruple.
The best hired craftsmanship in the world.
In application development, of course, the use of ready-made libraries and recycling the code made by others. However, a significant part of the work is still done “by hand” or by writing the code to the editor.
For example, “fourth-generation programming languages” were developed to improve the efficiency of development work. Later, we started talking about rapid application development tools.
Over the years there have been numerous different types of solutions, but often there have been problems and limitations.
In recent years, however, long development has begun to bear fruit. These products have become functional and quite general-purpose fast-track products. A couple of years ago, the concept began to be called low-code, suggesting that there is little need for hand-crafted coding to develop the application. There is also an expression no-code, which refers to the application development entirely without coding.
In low-code applications, applications are mainly developed in a graphical environment. The core of the application is constructed as a kind of flowchart describing the program’s logic. The application’s data structures are often defined in another graphical model. The user interface is also graphically assembled from the finished pieces, the appearance and content of which can then be edited.
The application developer thus makes a major part of the work visually – dragging and adjusting various symbols and interfaces of the user interface.
A large number of low-code software have become available on the market . Among the best-known ones are OutSystems, Mendix, Appia and Salesforce. In Finland, low-code tools are developed by AppGyver.
Traditional webs are also coming to the low-code world. In 2016, Microsoft announced the PowerApps, which focuses on the no-code model. Google released its own App Maker tool at the end of 2016.
The market leader in this low-code world is a bit surprisingly Salesforce.
New tools bring a surprising number of other benefits in addition to speed. One of them is cost savings. If the project for a few months is managed within a few weeks, the savings in salary costs are quite high.
On the other hand, one must remember that low-code tools also have a price. The total savings therefore vary depending on the licensing models and prices. In some situations it may be that low-code is a more expensive option, especially if the number of users is very high.
However, often the time-saving of the low-code model is so significant that traditional development is almost impossible to compete with costs.
One of the biggest strengths in the low-code model is the maintenance of applications.
Low-code tools also help companies work together
“Even though you hire a novice coder, you can still count on the platform to come out of a homogeneous code. Also security is built into the platform so it does not have to be so worried, “says Miikka Vainionpää of Kemira.
Will the new graphical tools replace the traditional application development when the benefits once are so great? The thing is not that simple. Professor Tommi Mikkonen , Professor of Software Science at the University of Helsinki, says that the current low-code tools are a continuation for several decades of development work.
“Time seems to be ripe for their wider use,” he says.
However, code-less tools can not replace any kind of traditional application development. Mikkonen points out that under the bark of low-code software, an extremely complex software structure is needed, which includes a huge number of software codes. With low-code tools, you can do only those applications that have been programmed to finish them. Some low-key tools are quite specific or may be at their best in certain industries.
At this time, low-code software is ideally suited for business applications, for example. But if it is to develop a complicated graphic game, the same tools may not be of any use.
OutSystems’s President and CEO, Petri Kiviranta, states that there are very different types of IT needs within a company, and of course one tool can not be the solution to everything.
Generally, basic systems usually use finished products if they are directly applicable to business operations. According to Kivirannu, more and more companies want to customize their basic systems, and many have used low-code software.
“Companies want to innovate, try new and quickly develop new services. Low-code is particularly well suited for the agile creation of new applications, “says Kiviranta.
Murros towards graphic software development seems to continue in the coming years. Low-key tools are evolving all the time. The more features are introduced, the more they can be used to make different applications.
The challenges of security and reliability also drive development work towards the use of finished tools. Graphic development tools help you here because the program code you create there is a tried and tested standard code that is, in principle, quite safe.
“I believe we will still have a lot of problems with software security and reliability. Many people think that code reuse is the only way to increase reliability because there is a need for a program code, “says Professor Tommi Mikkonen.
Does this mean that jobs in traditional application development are severely diminishing? “I would not be very concerned about the short term,” says Mikkonen. “One day, graphical tools can of course be so good that the situation is changing.”
Source: https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/nyt-loppuu-ohjelmointi-6704716
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get rid from unnecessary programming
I recently had the opportunity to ask Amazons Technology Manager Werner Vogels how he sees the future of the cloud. Particularly interested in what is coming up after the server-free application development. Vogels answered questions with AWS re: Invent.
Crystal ball was not available this time, but the vision of Amazons still got a clear idea. Vogels summarized the issue so that in the future applications will be programmed just for business logic. Everything else is overwhelming and can not be missed.
When you think about it, this is exactly what you have to do with the use of the cloud. First, they got rid of physical servers when they were virtualized and taken to the cloud. Server administrators were then eliminated from low-level iaas platforms to managed caas and faas services.
Next is the elimination of programmers. Or, more specifically, it is necessary to get rid of all that unnecessary programming that is not related to the very core of the application, ie business logic.
Programmers know that most work time and code rows are spent on a variety of extra adjustments around the actual core. It is necessary but does not promote the functionality of the application.
Such an elimination of unnecessary things is never 100%. It has been done step by step through history when moving from machine language to symbolic programming or from manual memory management to garbage collection. Despite advances, old paradigms are needed every now and then.
Programming of the future is mainly the combining of the finished pieces of legumes. It is essential that every bullet is not re-designed from scratch every time. It is possible, but it must not be the starting point.
Various basic services, such as databases and caches, have become standard blocks already a long time ago. The next is the shifting of data structures and algorithms. Programmers no longer need to write trivial database queries, data transformations, and artificial intelligence algorithms on line quiz.
One solution to this is managed graphql services that connect directly to data sources and provide a query interface for applications. Much of the traditional rest services can be implemented as graphql queries. One layer of unnecessary low-level program code is left between the Lego-blocks.
On the Artificial Intelligence side it can be seen that the execution of algorithms is getting out of the way.
In the use of artificial intelligence, new productivity lizards are being introduced when the cloud will be able to automatically select the best artificial intelligence model and associated hyperparameters in the future.
In the future, the application developer’s professional skills are becoming less and less programming and more and more understanding of the finished pieces of wood. If you do not know about the existence of a block, you can use a week-long time to implement a matter that would only take just a couple of minutes.
The worst thing a coder can do is to get used to the same once-learned solutions in all the projects.
In the role of the buyer, however, it is to be understood that technologies and implementations are evolving, and new and innovative solutions are becoming more and more.
Source: https://www.tivi.fi/blogit/eroon-turhasta-ohjelmoinnista-6702008
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland wants to get rid of routine programming – an artificial intelligence aid
Artificial intelligence would increase the software’s intelligence, efficiency and modularity, which at least partially would offset the labor shortage of existing thousands of programmers. Innovation developed at Aalto University would facilitate development especially in large IT projects.
Extensive information systems are currently being built by modifying and combining old systems. Now, the new innovation that is being developed at Aalto University will lower the development costs so that systems such as Apot can be started on a clean sheet.
Business Finland has contributed 678,000 euros to Aalto University researcher Jussi Rintanen’s new artificial intelligence information system innovation. Rintanen wants not only to automate the development of information systems, but also to integrate all parts of the system into a single functional entity.
At Aalto University, innovation is being developed to reduce the development costs of large-scale IT systems so that systems like the Apot used in health care can be started on a clean sheet. The invention is based on the use of artificial intelligence.
Information systems projects in the health care and state administration are very much tied to the workforce. The information system market in Finland is approximately EUR 2 billion annually, globally estimated at EUR 200 billion.
Expensive, long-term or incomplete information system projects often have the same basic problem: a huge amount of routine programming work that is difficult to manage. Building up complete systems from the very beginning in modern programming language would be extremely laborious. Therefore, it is often decided to extend and modify old systems even if they do not meet the needs of organizations or users.
- Large information systems are often based on the ancient program code and the old-fashioned programming language. For example, Apuoli’s social and health care system is built with an old program code based on the MUMPS programming language developed in the 1960s, “says Rintanen.
Innovation developed by the Rintane team will especially automate such large projects. Thanks to this, conventional manual programming is reduced and greatly simplified. The cost of development is so low that information systems can be designed from the beginning to meet customer needs.
The technology designed by Rintanen’s colleagues is based on the automation of reasoning. In the usual program development, the programmer’s attention is in the details of the program code, when in the new technology the programs are generated by automatic search methods and logical reasoning. In the future, technology will be further expanded by automatic decision-making, making information systems more intelligent.
- The aim is to make software more flexible and to better understand the world’s activities outside the information system and the basics of decision-making. For example, in health care, more intelligent information systems could take on much more responsibility for administrative tasks and decision-making.
Experimenting business and business models will also be easier when software making becomes more affordable and easier. For example, the creation and design of websites and stores are cheaper and can be easily made more complex.
Sources:
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2018/03/06/suomi-haluaa-eroon-rutiiniohjelmoinnista-tekoaly-apuun/
http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7662&via=n&datum=2018-03-06_14:53:56&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 10 S to become a ‘mode’, not a discrete product
Locked-down Windows to come to all Windows 10 editions, not just for kids
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/08/windows_10_s_to_become_a_mode_not_a_discrete_product/
When Microsoft launched Windows 10 S in May 2017, the company pitched it as a stripped-back version of Windows that would both run on hardware cheap enough for students around the world and make life easy for time-poor, cash-strapped school sysadmins.
Now the company has signalled that Windows 10 S will become a “mode” of Windows rather than a product in its own right.
Windows 10 S was introduced as a thinly veiled way for Microsoft to strike back at the rise of the Chromebook. The operating system’s lighter footprint and inability to run apps other than those sold in the Microsoft Store, and even then to run them in sandboxes, offered an experience rather closer to Chrome OS than to Windows.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 10’s next major update will include Windows ML, a new AI platform
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17089860/microsoft-windows-ml-windows-10-ai-platform
Microsoft is planning to include more artificial intelligence capabilities inside Windows 10 soon. The software giant is unveiling a new AI platform, Windows ML, for developers today, that will be available in the next major Windows 10 update available this spring. Microsoft’s new platform will enable all developers that create apps on Windows 10 to leverage existing pre-trained machine learning models in apps.
Windows ML will enable developers to create more powerful apps for consumers running Windows 10. Developers will be able to import existing learning models from different AI platforms and run them locally on PCs and devices running Windows 10, speeding up real-time analysis of local data like images or video, or even improving background tasks like indexing files for quick search inside apps. Microsoft has already been using AI throughout Office 365, inside the Windows 10 Photos app, and even with its Windows Hello facial recognition to allow Windows 10 users to sign into PCs and laptops with their faces.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why open source is so important to Microsoft
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-open-source-is-so-important-to-microsoft/
The company’s CTO of Data spoke with ZDNet about the growing importance of open source, given Microsoft now finds itself as one of the biggest contributors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Whisking Functions with Promises
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/02/26/whisking-functions-with-promises/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
In this blog I will demonstrate how to build a simple nodejs function that can do reverse geocoding using Google Maps API, and how to deploy the functions on to Apache OpenWhisk.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s next in IT automation: 6 trends to watch
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/3/what-s-next-it-automation-6-trends-watch?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Automation experts offer a peek into the not-so-distant future. Keep these items on the radar screen
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dutch Homes Get Free Heating If They Agree To Host A Computer Server
Startups in France and Germany are also pursuing the smart idea, which saves money for all involved.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3044755/dutch-homes-get-free-heating-if-they-agree-to-host-a-computer-server?partner=rss
QC•1
The first crypto heater
https://www.qarnot.com/crypto-heater_qc1/
Make heating a source of revenue,
not an expense!
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Java release train is moving faster, but will developers be derailed?
What’s new and what to expect
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/09/java_release_train_qcon/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix could pwn 2020s IT security – they need only reach out and take
Workload isolation is niche, but they’re rather good at it
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/08/will_serverless_kill_the_container_star/
The container is doomed, killed by serverless. Containers are killing Virtual Machines (VM). Nobody uses bare metal servers. Oh, and tape is dead. These, and other clichés, are available for a limited time, printed on a coffee mug of your choice alongside a complimentary moon-on-a-stick for $24.99.
Snark aside, what does the future of containers really look like?
Recently, Red Hat’s CEO casually mentioned that containers still don’t power most of the workloads run by enterprises. Some people have seized on this data point to proclaim the death of the container. Some champion the “death” of containers because they believe serverless is the future. Some believe in the immutable glory of virtual machines and wish the end of this upstart workload encapsulation mechanism.
Tomi Engdahl says:
32GT/s PCI Express Design Considerations
How to successfully design systems with the new PCIe 5.0 interface.
https://semiengineering.com/32gt-s-pci-express-design-considerations/
Today’s networking and rapidly emerging artificial intelligence (AI) applications are requiring more bandwidth in accelerators and GPUs, as well as faster interconnects to transmit and receive greater amounts of data.
Towards the middle of 2017 the PCI-SIG industry consortium announced its latest specification, PCIe 5.0, which raised the data rate from 16GT/s to 32GT/s and doubled the link bandwidth from 64GB/s to 128GB/s.
However, moving to 32GT/s designs comes with several challenges that both system and PHY designers must consider. This article describes such challenges and how designers can successfully design systems with the new PCIe 5.0 interface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DRAM prices may rise 5-10% on datacenter demand in 1H18
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180307PD212.html
Bolstered by robust demand from datacenter and smartphone sectors, the global production value of the DRAM industry is estimated to surge over 30% to US$96 billion in 2018, and price quotes are expected to rise by 5-10% in the first half of the year, according to industry sources.
The sources said that the tight supply of memory chips for servers at datacenters actively under installation by US web giants since the second half of 2017 has eased slightly in the first quarter of 2018, but price quotes have lingered at high levels.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Joins the Quantum Race
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1333058
This week Google leaped into an increasingly competitive race in quantum computing with its Bristlecone 72-qubit processor.
IBM has an operational 50-qubit quantum computer. Intel has shipped a 49-qubit quantum processor to its research partners for testing. Rigetti has an operational 19-qubit quantum computer. D-Wave has an operational 2048-qubit annealing quantum computer, and Fujitsu has an operational 1024-qubit annealing quantum computer. The last two are not so-called general-purpose systems, but they are still relevant to the industry racing to quantum supremacy.
Quantum supremacy is the crossover point when quantum computers can solve or massively accelerate relevant problems that classical computers cannot solve today. Proof of quantum supremacy also requires that the result of the quantum program can be validated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 expert budgeting tips for IT leaders
https://www.cio.com/article/3262224/budget/6-expert-budgeting-tips-for-it-leaders.html
IT budgets must not only reflect short-term strategic plans but also drive innovation. Here’s how to ensure you’re delivering tactical IT and services that produce true digital transformation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 secrets of highly innovative CIOs
https://www.cio.com/article/3245850/innovation/6-secrets-of-highly-innovative-cios.html
Forward-looking CIOs are not only modernizing legacy systems, they’re redefining how IT works. Here’s a look at how to shift from an IT order-taker to a next-gen technology leader.
The keys to modernizing legacy IT systems
https://www.cio.com/article/3249084/it-strategy/the-keys-to-modernizing-legacy-it-systems.html
Legacy technology can hinder your ability to meet changing market dynamics. Here’s how to prioritize and execute IT modernization efforts that drive business value.
Tomi Engdahl says:
JavaScript Rules But Microsoft Programming Languages Are On the Rise
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/03/12/1929217/javascript-rules-but-microsoft-programming-languages-are-on-the-rise
JavaScript remains the most popular programming language, but two offerings from Microsoft are steadily gaining, according to developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk’s first quarter 2018 ranking. RedMonk’s rankings are based on pull requests in GitHub, as well as an approximate count of how many times a language is tagged on developer knowledge-sharing site Stack Overflow.
JavaScript rules but Microsoft programming languages are on the rise
http://www.zdnet.com/article/javascript-rules-but-microsoft-programming-languages-are-on-the-rise/
Microsoft languages seem to be hitting the right note with coders across ops, data science, and app development.
JavaScript remains the most popular programming language, but two offerings from Microsoft are steadily gaining, according to developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk’s first quarter 2018 ranking.
Based on these figures, RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady reckons JavaScript is the most popular language today as it was last year.
In fact, nothing has changed in RedMonk’s top 10 list with the exception of Apple’s Swift rising to join its predecessor, Objective C, in 10th place.
The top 10 programming languages in descending order are JavaScript, Java, Python, C#, C++, CSS, Ruby, and C, with Swift and Objective-C in tenth.
TIOBE’s top programming language index for March consists of many of the same top 10 languages though in a different order, with Java in top spot, followed by C, C++, Python, C#, Visual Basic .NET, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, and SQL.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hyperscale data center spending rose 20% last year: Analysts
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2018/03/hyperscale-data-center-spending-rose-20-last-year-analysts.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2018-03-13&pwhid=e8db06ed14609698465f1047e5984b63cb4378bd1778b17304d68673fe5cbd2798aa8300d050a73d96d04d9ea94e73adc417b4d6e8392599eabc952675516bc0&eid=293591077&bid=2031882
Synergy estimates hyperscale cloud platforms spent $75 billion in capex last year, most of it on data centers.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/cloud/hyper-scale-data-center-spend-was-20-percent-2017-analysts-say
Synergy estimates hyperscale cloud platforms spent $75 billion in capex last year, most of it on data centers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Half of Notebooks Expected to Have SSDs
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333070
Solid-state drives (SSDs) will be featured in more than half of notebook PCs produced by OEMs for the first time this year as the result of falling prices, according to market research firm DRAMeXchange.
SSD suppliers have cut prices to entice PC OEMs to adopt their latest 64/72-layer 3D SSDs, according to DRAMeXchange, which tracks the price of memory chips.
Contract prices for mainstream SSDs for PC OEMs are expected to decline by 3 to 5 percent in the first quarter in the SATA-SSD sector and 4 to 6 percent in the PCIe-SSD sector, according to DRAMeXchange, a unit of TrendForce. By contrast, SSD prices rose throughout 2017, the firm said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developers Love Trendy New Languages, But Earn More With Functional Programming: Stack Overflow’s Annual Survey
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/03/13/2015215/developers-love-trendy-new-languages-but-earn-more-with-functional-programming-stack-overflows-annual-survey?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Stack Overflow has released the results of its annual survey of 100,000 developers, revealing the most-popular, top-earning, and preferred programming languages.
Developers love trendy new languages but earn more with functional programming
And most feel that AI morality is management’s problem.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/developers-love-trendy-new-languages-but-earn-more-with-functional-programming/
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 ways Apache Cassandra prepares you for a multi-cloud future
https://opensource.com/article/18/3/apache-cassandra-multi-cloud-future?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Cassandra’s flexible feature set offers a powerful open source foundation for your organization’s multiple-cloud strategy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Things to Know About Reactive Programming
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/06/30/5-things-to-know-about-reactive-programming/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
In this post, we are going to talk about Reactive Programming, i.e. a development model structured around asynchronous data streams.
1. Reactive Programming is programming with asynchronous data streams.
Events, messages, calls, and even failures are going to be conveyed by a data stream. With reactive programming, you observe these streams and react when a value is emitted.
So, in your code, you are going to create data streams of anything and from anything: click events, HTTP requests, ingested messages, availability notifications, changes on a variable, cache events, measures from a sensor, literally anything that may change or happen. This has an interesting side-effect on your application: it’s becoming inherently asynchronous.
2. Observables can be cold or hot – and it matters.
Cold observables are lazy. They don’t do anything until someone starts observing them (subscribe in RX). They only start running when they are consumed. Cold streams are used to represent asynchronous actions, for example, that it won’t be executed until someone is interested in the result.
Hot streams are active before the subscription like a stock ticker, or data sent by a sensor or a user.
3. Misused asynchrony bites
There is one important word in the reactive programming definition: asynchronous. You are notified when data is emitted in the stream asynchronously – meaning independently to the main program flow.
4. Keep things simple
As you know, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
5. Reactive programming != Reactive system
Probably the most confusing part. Using reactive programming does not build a reactive system. Reactive systems, as defined in the reactive manifesto, are an architectural style to build responsive distributed systems. Reactive Systems could be seen as distributed systems done right.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU wants to require platforms to filter uploaded content (including code)
https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filters-code/
The EU is considering a copyright proposal that would require code-sharing platforms to monitor all content that users upload for potential copyright infringement (see the EU Commission’s proposed Article 13 of the Copyright Directive).
We’d like to make sure developers in the EU who understand that automated filtering of code would make software less reliable and more expensive—and can explain this to EU policymakers—participate in the conversation.
Upload filters (“censorship machines”) are one of the most controversial elements of the copyright proposal, raising a number of concerns
Upload filters are especially concerning for software developers
EU policymakers want and need to hear from developers
Tomi Engdahl says:
How reinventing software testing can transform your business — and change the world
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/13/how-reinventing-software-testing-can-transform-your-business-and-change-the-world/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=facebook
Software isn’t “eating the world.” It’s feeding the world, healing the world, educating the world and bringing the world’s top minds together to solve our most challenging problems. At least that’s what I’ve witnessed while leading digital transformation initiatives across organizations
I am passionate about scaling innovation to create a world that is healthier and more equitable. With the converging forces of nearly global mobile connectivity, unbelievable advances in development productivity and the rise of organizations committed to bringing philanthropy into the digital age, the planets are aligned in a way that software can truly make the world a better place.
How? Well, by 2025, 95 percent of the planet will be connected on a mobile platform.
AdChoices
How reinventing software testing can transform your business — and change the world
Todd Pierce
Mar 13, 2018
Software developer programming code on computer
Todd Pierce
Contributor
Todd Pierce is the former chief digital officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and former executive vice president of operations and mobility for Salesforce.com.
Software isn’t “eating the world.” It’s feeding the world, healing the world, educating the world and bringing the world’s top minds together to solve our most challenging problems. At least that’s what I’ve witnessed while leading digital transformation initiatives across organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Genentech and Rock Health.
I am passionate about scaling innovation to create a world that is healthier and more equitable. With the converging forces of nearly global mobile connectivity, unbelievable advances in development productivity and the rise of organizations committed to bringing philanthropy into the digital age, the planets are aligned in a way that software can truly make the world a better place.
How? Well, by 2025, 95 percent of the planet will be connected on a mobile platform. I’m fascinated by this because it enables unprecedented access to the world’s poorest people. It unlocks amazing opportunities to solve problems, even in places with limited infrastructure and access to information.
For example, I recently worked on a project in Bihar, India, which probably won’t have sufficient medical infrastructure within my lifetime. Millions of babies are born there each year… but they have fewer than 50 OB-GYNs. There’s no way that we can train enough medical professionals to meet the demand and then transport them out to Bihar. However, with mobile health initiatives, we can remotely serve the women and families there — reducing the number of mothers who die in childbirth and improving the health of the babies being born.
Unfortunately, even the most promising IT projects don’t always yield the desired outcome. Every CIO I know has seen large-scale, board-visible projects suffer from massive delays — or flat out cancellation — due to late-cycle discovery of fundamental issues that they simply couldn’t “patch later.”
Across industries, this puts the organization at risk of falling behind more innovative and agile competitors. It inevitably places that CIO’s reputation and employment at risk.
AdChoices
How reinventing software testing can transform your business — and change the world
Todd Pierce
Mar 13, 2018
Software developer programming code on computer
Todd Pierce
Contributor
Todd Pierce is the former chief digital officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and former executive vice president of operations and mobility for Salesforce.com.
Software isn’t “eating the world.” It’s feeding the world, healing the world, educating the world and bringing the world’s top minds together to solve our most challenging problems. At least that’s what I’ve witnessed while leading digital transformation initiatives across organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Genentech and Rock Health.
I am passionate about scaling innovation to create a world that is healthier and more equitable. With the converging forces of nearly global mobile connectivity, unbelievable advances in development productivity and the rise of organizations committed to bringing philanthropy into the digital age, the planets are aligned in a way that software can truly make the world a better place.
How? Well, by 2025, 95 percent of the planet will be connected on a mobile platform. I’m fascinated by this because it enables unprecedented access to the world’s poorest people. It unlocks amazing opportunities to solve problems, even in places with limited infrastructure and access to information.
For example, I recently worked on a project in Bihar, India, which probably won’t have sufficient medical infrastructure within my lifetime. Millions of babies are born there each year… but they have fewer than 50 OB-GYNs. There’s no way that we can train enough medical professionals to meet the demand and then transport them out to Bihar. However, with mobile health initiatives, we can remotely serve the women and families there — reducing the number of mothers who die in childbirth and improving the health of the babies being born.
Unfortunately, even the most promising IT projects don’t always yield the desired outcome. Every CIO I know has seen large-scale, board-visible projects suffer from massive delays — or flat out cancellation — due to late-cycle discovery of fundamental issues that they simply couldn’t “patch later.”
Across industries, this puts the organization at risk of falling behind more innovative and agile competitors. It inevitably places that CIO’s reputation and employment at risk. And in many industries, it can truly change lives. It’s not uncommon for a delayed rollout to impact economic opportunities in a community. And in my industry — opening access to lifesaving healthcare and services — it really can be a matter of life or death.
Many people are surprised when I suggest that something as banal as software testing can have a tremendous impact on our ability to scale and accelerate innovation. But it’s true: developer productivity has already advanced by several orders of magnitude since 2000, but testing has hardly evolved at all. Most organizations are still focused on manual testing and script-based testing… even though they’re not delivering the desired results in terms of speed and risk. This is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
If we really want to maximize the impact of innovation, we need to make testing faster, better and cheaper.
To make software testing better, it’s important to have advanced automation, which I like to call “precision testing.”
To make software testing cheaper, we need to reduce the amount of effort and rework that it involves. Approximately 40 percent of an organization’s application development budget is spent on testing. As we make software testing faster, cheaper will be a natural side effect.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook opens Instant Games to all developers
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/15/facebook-opens-instant-games-to-all-developers/?utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Facebook’s Instant Games are now open to all developers, Facebook announced this week in advance of the Game Developers Conference. First launched in 2016, the platform lets developers build mobile-friendly games using HTML5 that work on both Facebook and Messenger, instead of requiring users to download native apps from Apple or Google’s app stores.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Quest for a Universal Translator for Old, Obsolete Computer Files
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-open-old-computer-files
To save bygone software, files, and more, researchers are working to emulate decades-old technology in the cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Study Links Video Games To Brain Damage
https://www.geek.com/games/new-study-links-video-games-to-brain-damage-1711681/
We’ve been afraid of this for a while, and now it’s here. A legitimate scientific study has just linked playing video games to brain damage. Here’s everything you need to know.
A pair of professors from the Université de Montréal and McGill University just published a paper in Molecular Psychiatry that displays a link between first-person shooters and the loss of gray matter in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that handles consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory as well as spatial navigation.
What does this mean, past all the science words? Essentially, playing first-person shooters is decreasing your ability to remember spaces, instead delegating those virtual worlds into the sphere of habit. And “habit-forming” is absolutely a phrase that’s been levied at electronic games by haters since the dawn of time.
And this could have real consequences. In an interview, West stated, “People with reduced grey matter in the hippocampus are more at risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression when they’re younger and even Alzheimer’s disease when they’re older.”
It’s important to note that this is just one study, and it’s not conclusive
One interesting part of the study is that the team set up a control group that gamed just as much, but played 3D platformers like the Mario series instead of first-person shooters. The control group did not suffer the same hippocampal degradation as the FPS group
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU wants to require platforms to filter uploaded content (including code)
https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filters-code/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Repl.it lets you program in your browser
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/15/repl-it-lets-you-program-in-your-browser/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
No matter whether you are a seasoned programmer or you simply want to take your first steps in writing code, Repl.it wants to help you get from idea to result as fast as possible — without complicated installs and setup procedures getting in your way.
Repl.it already supports virtually every programming language you can think of, no matter whether that’s JavaScript, Python, PHP or QBasic, as well as popular frameworks like Django, Ruby on Rails and Sinatra. And if you want to hurt yourself and write in Brainfuck, you can do that, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Your Engineers Should Spend More Time Writing Open Source Software Code
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/03/07/why-your-engineers-should-spend-more-time-writing-open-source-software-code/#3b95b8d64121
Engineering organizations are typically measured by their productivity and outputs — especially at high-growth companies.
the number one thing I challenge my team members to do is to take a step away from our own technical stack and focus time on contributing to open source projects
In most tech startups and big companies, working on open source software (OSS) becomes a passion project for engineers or requires a dedicated team. As an organization with a passion for open source, we wanted to change that.
1. It’s Not Just Code, It’s A Community
Typically, when engineers first start participating in open source they do it to learn and contribute. Over time, they realize that these side projects can actually come a long way in helping their career.
2. It Boosts Engineer Morale
Working on open source projects can give engineers a much-needed break from their daily routine, allowing them to tackle new challenges and go beyond their assigned tasks.
3. It Helps You Write Better Code
Writing high-quality code is something every engineer strives to do. Working on open source automatically helps set a higher standard and encourages coding best practices.
4. It Creates Industry Thought Leaders
The community-driven nature of the practice means that it is often at the bleeding edge of technology. This not only drives innovation — it also gives engineers a “stage” on which to show off their skills and position themselves as industry leaders.
5. It Attracts Top Talent
Many talented engineers are passionate about the open source community and choose their employer based on the contributions of its employees.
I encourage all leaders to share open source projects that could benefit not only your company but multiple others who seek to solve the same set of problems. The world of tech is remarkably small
Tomi Engdahl says:
Now it happens: The SSD skips the old hard drive
The Flash-based SSD recorder had to climb laptops as the most commonly used mass memory last year, but memory growth slowed down development. Now, DramExchange says that this change will take place this year: SSD will become the top player.
The development is based above all on the fact that the SSD vendors have downsized the price of the boards with the help of Samsung, as the number of UFOs grows in the manufacture of 64- and 72-layer NAND circuits. During this quarter, SSD prices are expected to drop 3-5 percent on SATA drives and 4-6 percent on PCIe-based disks.
DranExchange estimates that new 3D-based SSDs will become oversupply during the summer. This is good for consumers
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/7721-nyt-se-tapahtuu-ssd-ohittaa-vanhan-kiintolevyn