Tech News - Programming

The .NET team has announced that have completely moved the .NET Core platform to RyuJIT, the compiler written in-house by Microsoft. The team had been long working on this shift to make the compilation faster for .NET Core applications given that web applications today take time to start up. JIT compiler is a program that converts the instructions written in .NET Core to native machine code so that it can be sent to the processor for processing action. The JIT compilers have become a standard to support the compilation for various platforms. They are an improvement over the traditional compilers which require the programs to re-compile when using on different computer systems. RyuJIT is developed by the .NET Core team as the next generation 64-bit compiler that will compile programs twice as fast. The .NET Core compiled with this JIT compiler is recorded to have 30% improved faster start-up time. Also the apps compiled with the RvyJIT produce great code that run efficiently on the servers. The most important factor that helped the performance was basing the RyuJIT to x64, shifting from x86 codebase. One of the major stability factors this will bring is that .NET programs will perform consistently across various architectures and will provide compatibility for .NET programs across the platforms like ARM, mobile, among others. This will help developers maintain a codebase that compiles on both 64-bit and 32-bit compilers and perform on both types of systems. The .NET team has promised the stability of the platform after this move and are expecting the performance to improve. The team is inviting developers to join the community and has put the documentation for the RyuJIT on the GitHub repository. Applying Single Responsibility principle from SOLID in .NET Core Microsoft Open Sources ML.NET, a cross-platform machine learning framework What is ASP.NET Core?

The Linux Foundation has made Chinese tech giant Tencent a platinum member, it announced today (June 25). The move means Tencent now joins a small and exclusive group of tech companies, including IBM, Huawei, and Cisco, that are regarded as top level members of the foundation. For Tencent, the announcement is important because it underlines the organizations' strategic focus on open source. For the Linux Foundation, meanwhile, it's a source of hefty support. Tencent are now in a position to provide the foundation with even more support - technologically and financially. It has already, for example, announced that it will be contributing its open source microservices project TARS to the foundation. Expect more to follow. Given a (relatively) tough year for a number of Silicon Valley companies, and the increasing visibility of other Chinese tech giants Alibaba, perhaps we're seeing the start of a subtle shift in power from California to China. What is Tencent? Tencent is a Chinese company worth $500 billion. That's more than Facebook. It owns a huge range of digital services, including China's popular messaging app WeChat and the Tencent Video Service, China's answer to Netflix. According to analysts (and this Guardian profile) Tencent's services are used by "more than two-thirds of the Chinese population". From the Linux Foundation's perspective you can see just how important it is to have an organization of this size supporting it. It's worth noting that Tencent has supported the Linux foundation for some time. For example, it was one of the founding members of the Linux Foundation's deep learning project, which launched at the start of 2018. However, with Platinum membership, the company is putting itself in the middle of the emerging intersection between the open source and corporate tech worlds. What the Linux Foundation and Tencent said about each other Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation was enthusiastic about the announcement saying: “Becoming a Platinum member of The Linux Foundation clearly reinforces the importance of open source to Tencent, and its commitment to the open source community... As Tencent’s contributions to open source continue to accelerate, The Linux Foundation is thrilled to work more closely with the company to provide more resources and support to the community. We look forward to collaborating with Tencent to enable more innovation and development to spur the creation of new and exciting technologies in the days ahead.” Clearly, Zemlin's is keen to underline the importance of how Tencent can support the open source intiatives that the Linux Foundation works hard to cultivate across the tech landscape. Tencent's general manager Liu Xin was also, as you'd imagine, enthusiastic about the move. "We look forward to strengthening our relationship with the international open source community and promoting innovation in cutting edge technology" he said. "Together, we will help to build a welcoming and energized global open source ecosystem.” Read the press release. Read next Alibaba Cloud partners with SAP to provide a versatile, one-stop cloud computing environment

Oracle has announced a major shift in the pricing structure for various offerings of Java. Currently, there are many offerings for the core Java language in terms of Java binaries, Java for desktops, commercial offering, among others. Java binaries are offered free for developers under the General Public License 2 (GPL 2). Java SE is offered, at an entry-level support, for $2.50/desktop for a month, or $25/CPU for a month. Under the free offering for developers, Oracle will provide OpenJDK builds (the backend that keeps Java running on any system) under the GPL + CPE license. To make the offering more flexible, Oracle is working on Oracle JDK which would support Java SE 11 (the LTS release) set to launch in September 2018. With Oracle JDK, Oracle is trying to make the offering of Java binaries simpler for the developers as it would be royalty-free for open-source development, testing, etc. For the commercial license, Oracle will be offering the Java SE Subscriptions combined with the technical support and access to all the updates that will follow the Java SE release cycle. Apart from the commercial offering, Oracle also has varied pricing for offerings through Oracle Academy. With the new Java SE Subscription, comes with a feature called Java Advanced Management Console. This feature will enable the license holders to identify, manage, and tune Java SE use in systems used across the enterprise. It also includes Oracle Premier Support, to enable support for Java across current and previous versions. Oracle, in their press release, mentioned the update in the subscription model is inspired by how Linux provides support for updates in the platform. It mentions "the subscription model for updates and support has been long established in the Linux ecosystem". By this new subscription model, Oracle ensures that anyone requiring the additional level of support for Oracle products can receive it with flexible pricing and still keep a balance between its open source and commercial offerings. For all the details on these subscriptions, you can visit the Java SE subscription FAQs. Oracle reveals issues in Object Serialization. Plans to drop it from core Java. 5 Things you need to know about Java 10 Oracle Apex 18.1 is here!

Innovation is a word that seems to have emanated from the tech world and entered mainstream discourse. It's a term that has stuck to contemporary notions of progress and improvement. But is innovation and change really that great? Are we in danger of valorizing novelty at the expense of reliability, security and functionality? The "Boring Software" Manifesto, published on tqdev.com yesterday (18 June 2018) says yes. Written by software architect Maurits van der Schee, the "Boring Software" manifesto argues "as software developers we are tired of the false claims made by evangelists of the latest and greatest technology." Just days after we revealed data on developer attitudes to 'ninjas' and 'rockstars' the manifesto is further evidence of tension within the tech world. The tension is perhaps not so much one between 'innovators' and those concerned with ideals of security and reliability, but more about those actively selling innovation, speed, and efficiency and those with a more pragmatic approach to software engineering. Boring software vs. hyped and volatile technologies Schee's manifesto takes aim at what he calls 'hyped and volatile technologies'. He also appears to suggest that the demands of industry actually conflict with these 'hyped' technologies. Implicit in the piece is the idea is that there is a counter-industry of hype and evangelism that undermines how software can best serve industry today. 'In pursuit of "agility and craftsmanship", Schee writes, 'we have found "boring software" to be indispensable.' The most intriguing part of the manifesto features a number of examples that demonstrate the tension in the software world really clearly. For example: 3-tier applications are tried, tested and reliable; microservices, meanwhile, are hyped and volatile. Relational databases are 'simple and proven', while NoSQL is not, in Schee's view. Page reloads - also proven, whereas SPAs remain hyped. Unsurprisingly, reaction to the Boring Software manifesto is split. Many people have welcomed the intervention: https://twitter.com/overstood/status/1008956402050560000 Others, however, were more cautious. Innovation and invention only opens up new options, they argued: https://twitter.com/priyaprincess20/status/1008960699677081600 One Twitter user summed up the situation by suggesting the truth is probably somewhere between the two: https://twitter.com/ardave2002/status/1008984843403833344 This is likely to be a debate without a conclusion. However, the manifesto is a useful intervention in a discussion about how we should build software and what we should value most. What do you think about "boring software"? Is Maurits van der Schee correct? Or do we need to be open to new and emerging technologies and trends, even if they pose new challenges? Read next How Gremlin is making chaos engineering accessible [Interview] Are containers the end of virtual machines? Technical debt is damaging businesses

GitLab Web IDE, aimed to simplify the workflow of accepting merge requests, is now available in GitLab 10.7, along with other features focused on improving C++ and Go code security and improving Kubernetes integration. The GitLab Web IDE was initially released as a beta in GitLab 10.4 Ultimate. The primary goal of this IDE was to streamline the workflow to contribute small fixes and to resolve merge requests. This allowed developers to contribute without storing their changes and switching to a new branch locally, then back.This could be of particular interest to developers who have a significant number of PRs to review, as well as to developers starting their journey with Git. GitLab Web IDE has the familiar layout of many graphical IDEs, with a left panel showing the files belonging to the project and a middle panel allowing to view and edit their contents. The right panel in GitLab Web IDE is the commit panel, which allows developers to keep track of which files make up the commit, to review changes, edit the commit message, and control whether the commit goes to the master branch or to a new branch, and whether to merge the changes or not. GitLab Web IDE GitLab has made its Web IDE open source with the goal of letting the developer community contribute to its development and improvement. Setting up a local development environment, or needing to stash changes and switch branches locally, can add friction to the development process. Using the Web IDE you can change multiple files, preview Markdown, review the changes and commit directly all from a browser. You can even open the diff from a merge request and get a side by side view of the changes. The latest release of Web IDE comes with performance improvements and the ability to contribute small fixes and resolve merge request feedback. GitLab 10.7 also released SAST for Go and C/C++ Additionally, GitLab 10.7 also extends GitLab Static Application Security Testing (SAST) by adding support for C/C++ and Go. GitLab SAST is a set of security tools aimed to analyze source code to detect known vulnerabilities. In addition to C/C++ and Go, SAST supports Python, Java, and Ruby on Rails. GitLab SAST is somewhat reminiscent of GitHub Security Alerts, which support Ruby and JavaScript, while Python support is in the workings. Another interesting change brought by GitLab 10.7 is Deploy Tokens, which provides support for long-lived read-only authenticated sessions for specific needs, such as when using Kubernetes to orchestrate a bunch of containers in a CI pipeline. Indeed, to flawlessly handle pod restarts and auto scaling, Kubernetes requires ongoing access to the container registry. This was previously available through CI job token, which had the downside of expiring once Kubernetes completed its task. As a workaround, personal access tokens could be used, but this could be undesirable when the access token had to be shared among multiple users. Deploy token provides a solution to both limitations. GitLab 10.7 includes many more new features, such as parametrized CI/CD control flow, project badges, subgroup issues boards, and others. Do not miss the official announcement for full details. The Microsoft-GitHub deal has set into motion an exodus of GitHub projects to GitLab GitLab’s new DevOps solution Microsoft is going to acquire GitHub

The Qt team, in their blog, announced the official release of Qt with Python support. This is the first official of Qt framework with the support for Python and this release is tagged as Qt for Python 5.11. Previously  Python support for Qt developers was provided through the development of PySide module and now the work is said to have been done on PySide 2 to provide Qt for Python. However, Qt team has been working on the core Qt framework for quite some time to incorporate Python support and this is the first breakthrough in that direction. Adding to this, the Qt team has also informed that r version of Qt earlier than v5.11 will not support Python. In the release notes, the team has mentioned that the following versions of Qt will continue supporting this project and make the support for Python, stable going ahead. This is said to be the preview release, with a list of known issues for early adopters. The team is hoping to receive the feedback from the users so that it can make the binding more smooth and rectify the bugs. A lot of work has also gone into keeping the Qt syntax unchanged for flexible migration from C++, the de facto language for developing UI with Qt, to Python and the other way round. It mentions in the release blog, that the major roadblock in providing the Python binding for the C++ based Qt was the size of packages. This made the team to work on using external tools for Qt scripting with Python, which had resulted in the development of PySide in 2009. To extend the support for Python, the work has been done on C++ headers in Qt framework, so that the developers can write modules in Python. These efforts resulted in the latest PySide 2 which has very less overhead for using Python and Qt for GUI development. The Qt team has worked on developing the documentation for this and has provided examples enables you to understand the binding. Along with the Python binding for the core Qt framework, the team has also extended support for various Qt toolkits like Qtwidgets and QML to build interactive GUI with Qt and Python. For the early adopters of Qt for Python, to report a bug you use the Qt for Python project on bugreports.qt.io. The team can be reached on Freenode with #qt-pyside. Read more Qt 5.11 has arrived! WebAssembly comes to Qt. Now you can deploy your next Qt app in browser

Julia 0.7  announced by the Julia developer team was speculated for a long time after v0.6 was released last year. This sets the gate open for Julia v1.0 since we had seen discussions and forecast about the v1.0 after v0.6 was out. Most features included in Julia v0.7 are the feature set for Julia v1.0 with few improvements and bug-fixes. Nothing is confirmed by the Julia team yet but the community is predicting Julia v1.0 to be next after Julia 0.7. Important features in Julia 0.7 are as follows: New macros defined for testing the local variable. Destructuring in function arguments so that the variable in a function expression gets unpacked into the local variable. Keyword argument containers will be named tuples. Keyword arguments will be required in the declaration to avoid the exceptions. To know the whole list of specifications, check out the release notes page here at Julia’s GitHub repository. Julia 0.7 will be released with exceptions in compatibility for functionalities of Julia 0.6. These exceptions will, however, discontinue in Julia 1.0. Apart from this, Julia 1.0 will add some functionality that will be prevented in Julia v0.7. It seems to be a bit complicated compatibility planning by Julia community, which is expected to get sorted with Julia 1.0. The community hinted Julia 0.7 and 1.0 to be identical. This means programs that are running on Julia 0.7, will work exactly the same on 1.0 without any warnings. The release time for Julia 1.0 is expected to be short after Julia 0.7. Julia 0.7 is said to be stable and production ready, but the community advised to keep the deprecations of features in mind. Additionally, when developers upgrade to Julia 1.0, they will have to run the tests and use cases all over again. Basics of Programming in Julia Computer vision is expanding quickly. Here’s why. Visual Studio 2019: New features you should expect to see

Microsoft announced Visual Studio 2019, the next major version of its signature IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for software design. This exciting news has come right on the heels of Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub. According to Microsoft, the company is still in the "early planning phase" for Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio for Mac. Release timing will be shared “in the coming months,” with the company simply promising “to deliver Visual Studio 2019 quickly and iteratively.” Along with general improvements to make the developer tool more reliable and more productive, Microsoft has some concrete goals in mind. Last month at Build 2018 developers conference, Microsoft demonstrated two new Visual Studio previews: IntelliCode and Live Share. The former uses AI to offer intelligent suggestions that improve code quality and productivity, and the latter lets developers collaborate in real time with team members who can edit and debug directly from Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Specific features that will be delivered in VS2019 are not provided, rather Microsoft lists various themes that the project will address. Here are the major new features Microsoft will bring in Visual Studio 2019 in coming days : It will continue to explore connected capabilities such as Live Share, for users to collaborate in real time on the same code base worldwide. It wants to investigate making cloud development situations, such as working with online source repositories, smoother. Enhancements for AI-assisted development via IntelliCode and use of the Azure cloud to deliver AI-powered assistance to developers. Operational enhancements such as additional refactoring, quicker application load, faster builds, improved navigation, and improved debugging. The release date for VS2019 is not available yet, but VS2017 was released in March 2017 and was preceded by several preview builds throughout 2016. Similarly, one would expect the first preview build of VS2019 in late summer / early autumn this year.  Fortunately VS2019 is being designed to install side-by-side with existing VS2017 builds, so it will be easy to try out the new release when it is available. A key fact about this next release, according to Microsoft, is that it will remain a 32-bit application and will support Windows 7. Initial developer reactions indicate there are concerns about the unresolved issues and code quality problems with VS2017, and that it is premature to shift to VS2019.  Microsoft does not offer specifics, but does indicate that they are working to improve this with the development team. Microsoft is going to acquire GitHub Unit Testing in .NET Core with Visual Studio 2017 for better code quality What’s new in Visual Studio 1.22  

Oracle has announced the release of Java 10 version on March 20. While this is not an LTS version, there are few changes in this version which are worth noting. In this article we’ll look at  5 of the most important things you’ll need to watch out for, especially if you’re a Java developer. Java releases long term support versions in every 3 year. As per this scheduling, their future long term support version, Java 11 will be releasing in Fall 2018. Java 10 is a precursor to that and contains some important changes which will take a clearer shape in the next version. Java 10 is trying to emulate some of the popular features of Scala and Kotlin. One of the primary reasons can be the growing popularity of Kotlin in both web and mobile development domain and also the dynamic typing capability in Scala and Kotlin both.  The introduction of local variable type is one of them. This feature implies that variables can now be declared as “var” and when you assign a certain integer or a string to it then the compiler will automatically know what type of variable it is. Although this doesn’t make Java a dynamically typed language like Python, still this allows a lot more flexibility for the programmers and lets them avoid boilerplates in their code. There are 2 JEPs in JDK 10 that focus on improving the current Garbage Collection (GC) elements. The first one, Garbage-Collector Interface (JEP 304) will introduce a clean garbage collector interface to help improve the source code isolation of different garbage collectors. In current Java versions there are bits and pieces of GC source files scattered all over the HotSpot sources. This becomes an issue when implementing a new garbage collector, since developers have to know where to look for those source files. One of the main goals of this JEP is to introduce better modularity for HotSpot internal GC code, have a cleaner GC interface and make it easier to implement new collectors. Java 10 promises to become much faster than its previous version by making the full garbage collector parallel. This is a welcome move and change from the version 9 since this allows the developers scope to better allocate memory and use the GC (Garbage Collector) in parallel. The GC  in the previous versions didn’t have the capability to load values in parallel and that made it heavy and difficult to operate for complex applications. The present parallel GC removes that factor and makes it much more lightweight and efficient. Java 10 enables programmers to allow heap allocation on alternative memory devices. This feature lets the Java VM decide on the most important tasks and then allocate maximum memory for those priority processes with other processes are allocated to alternative memory. This helps in fastening up the overall process. This change is important for the Java developers because this will help them in better and efficient memory management and hence will increase the performance of their applications. With these changes, Java 10 has opened up the doors for a more open and flexible language which is looking towards the future. With Kotlin breathing down its neck as a worthy alternative, the stage is set for Java to work towards a more dynamic and easy to use power packed version 11 in 2018 fall. We would be waiting for that along with the Java developers for sure. What can you expect from the upcoming Java 11 JDK? Oracle reveals issues in Object Serialization. Plans to drop it from core Java. Java Multithreading: How to synchronize threads to implement critical sections and avoid race conditions  

In one of the most interesting developments in tech for some time (and that's saying something), Bloomberg are reporting that Microsoft has acquired GitHub. Spokespeople from Microsoft and GitHub declined to comment when asked by Bloomberg, but the deal could be announced later today. With 24 million users on the platform, this move could well have an impact across the software world. However, while it may seem surprising, it isn't perhaps quite as shocking as it immediately appears. Microsoft has embraced open source in the last few years; the company is one of the top contributors to the site, according to The Verge. When were rumors of Microsoft's intention to buy GitHub first reported? Reports of Microsoft's intention to acquire GitHub were first made in Business Insider just a few days ago, at the beginning of June 2018. According to the website, sources 'close to both companies' said that serious talks have been happening for the past few months. Informal discussions on the issue have taken place over the last few years - it's only now that they have become more serious. With GitHub's CEO Chris Wanstrath set to leave in August, it makes sense for Microsoft to take the opportunity to make a move to acquire the company now. Why would Microsoft want to acquire GitHub? Microsoft has been playing catch up with the open source revolution. It's attitude towards open source has changed significantly in recent years. It has open sourced a growing number of its tools, including PowerShell, Visual Studio Code and .NET. Back in 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux a "cancer" (he did later retract his statement). Today, under Satya Nadella, it's a completely different story. For that reason, the acquisition of GitHub represents an important step in the evolution of Microsoft's relationship to the open source world. There are questions around how much Microsoft is really committed to open source. To cynics, embracing open source is as much about business than values. Billion dollar acquisitions don't exactly scream 'free and open software'. However, it is still early days. How the acquisition unfolds, how it will be received by the developer community will be interesting. Whatever you think of the Microsoft's move, GitHub isn't exactly thriving from a business perspective; GitHub lost $66 million in three quarters in 2016. Read next 10 years of GitHub Microsoft releases Windows 10 Insider build 17682! Epicor partners with Microsoft Azure to adopt Cloud ERP

Apache foundation announced the RC release of NetBeans 9.0. They also announced the feature set and tools applicable for Java development, including Java Swing, JavaFX, and the support created specifically for Java 9. Apache in its release note mentioned that the focus for this release is mainly on: IP clearance of the Oracle code donation Support for the latest Java SE versions - Java 9 and Java 10 The following are some of the most important features that will be the part of NetBeans 9.0 release: Supporting Local Variable Type Inference: The type inference associated with local variables is used by JDK for definition inside methods, initialization blocks, for-loops, and other blocks like if-else. Supporting the Jigsaw Module System: The Jigsaw module system was announced under Project Jigsaw with a primary goal of making the development easy for large applications that include calling a lot of libraries. It was implemented to maintain libraries, secure and maintain the Java SE platform, and scale the performance of JDK based on the size of the applications. NetBeans 9.0 will be supporting the modules system for Project Jigsaw. New Java Modular Application project type: The modularity feature is considered to be one of the most emerging technology features introduced in Java 9. It helps developers to build productive and easily maintainable software that uses Java, especially for enterprise applications. NetBeans 9.0 will see the full support for modularity. Java Shell support: Java Shell (jShell) is a command line introduced in Java 9 to help write smaller programs efficiently without the hassles of declarations, creating classes, etc. NetBeans 9.0 provides integrated console-like UI for the Java Shell and hence making the development, a bit more hassle-free. You can read more about the known issues in the RC release on the confluence page. The source and binaries for NetBeans 9.0 RC1 can be downloaded from Apache’s mirrors. What can you expect from the upcoming Java 11 JDK? Forget C and Java. Learn Kotlin: the next universal programming language

The Java team is planning to remove the Java Serialization feature from core Java language. This is owing to some security issues with the object serialization API. What is Java’s Object Serialization feature? The Serialization API converts the message in a data communication system into a sequence of bytes which can be processed further. The sequence of bytes is made into an object and written in a Java file. This file can be read and deserialized to recreate the message in the memory. Why is Oracle calling it a mistake? Approximately one-third of all the vulnerabilities in the Java systems have serialization involved. Mark Reinhold, chief Architect from Oracle mentioned that Oracle has been receiving reports that revealed the security weakness in Java Serialization. They have found a lot of applications servers receive serialization data streams on unprotected ports of a server. The attackers can use the easy use case of the serialized object and deserialize to recreate the object. Adding to the overhaul, Reinhold called the serialization feature as a “horrible mistake” made in 1997. To counteract these vulnerabilities, Oracle has added a filtering capability in Java to provide a defense mechanism for the network using serialization and receiving untrusted data streams. Oracle also mentioned their plans to remove serialization from Java as a long-term plan under Project Amber, focussed on streamlining the release cycle of Java and to enhance the productivity of the Java language in the Java 11 release. Looking ahead To continue to support the serialization in Java language, Oracle is planning to add a Serialization feature that will enable object serialization in a safe way. The framework will also be developed to support graphs, that supports JSON or XML to provide serialization of any record. Why Oracle is losing the Database Race What Google, RedHat, Oracle, and others announced at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2018 What can you expect from Java 11

Soft skills have been high on the tech agenda for a while now. This was largely down to the stereotypical (and unfair) image of the IT team as quiet, uncommunicative and awkward. But it is also related to broader changes in tech. Today, more people have a stake in software related projects. Product and project managers, even financial managers, will have their work impacted by software. That means everyone's communication around it is so important. This year's Skill Up report clearly highlights that developers are aware of how valuable soft skills really are. A huge 96% of respondents said they believe that developing soft skills is important: The Skill Up 2018 report will be available to download on Monday 4 June. Perhaps this isn't that surprising. We all know how much of a difference effective communication can make on a project. Without good communication, the technical bits of work become even harder. Why soft skills are important to developers working today If we go back to the stereotype of the ring-fenced IT team, it's not hard to see why soft skills are so valued by business leaders and management figures. It's almost as if trainers and consultants and management have conspired, saying 'we need these engineers to be more like us'. But whatever the management industry want from tech pros, it's clear that the real advantage of developing soft skills are for developers themselves. Here are just a few reasons why soft skills are so important for developers: It makes collaboration easier. You can't of course, collaborate if you don't communicate. And in today's Agile-centric software world, clear communication is crucial. When you're working to tight deadlines, being clear about your challenges and problems is vital. Soft skills can change how you focus on problems. Communication changes the way you understand problems. It changes the way they are framed. For example, is the database issue simply a technical issue, or is there a wider point about what the knock on effect for the user will be? There's usually a number of technical solutions, but to select the best one, you often need a frank and clear discussion about the impact different decisions might make. Soft skills open up your career path. When you develop your soft skills you find that you occupy a subtly different role within your team or even within your organization. You become more visible to other people - maybe even more trusted. That can only be a good thing. At a superficial level it's about status; but more importantly it allows you to push forward your own interests. How often have you found your opinions and ideas discounted or ignored? Yes, maybe your ideas were just really bad, but maybe you just didn't quite communicate them properly. Similarly, soft skills are also essential for anyone networking. True, networking is rarely anyone's favorite pastime, but doing it well could do wonders for your future. Also, meeting people is sometimes fun! Good people do exist! It makes work more enjoyable. Work isn't going to be great every day. But anyone who's worked in a job they hate will probably know that communication challenges are often at the root of their dissatisfaction. Of course, sometimes other people are the problem. But if you can keep up your end of the bargain, you've done all you can. And if you can start to help other people develop soft skills then you're well on your way to becoming an important and valuable leader. You learn more when you communicate. This really comes back to collaboration, but it's a little more specific than that. When technology changes so quickly and there are so many options out there - from what you learn to how you learn it - engaging with others can be so important. This might just be about the conversations you have with colleagues. But it's also the wider conversations you take part in within a given community. Perhaps you contribute to a forum, or maybe just like tweeting - either way you're not only playing an important role in the community, you're also pushing your knowledge and understanding forward. The reasons why soft skills are important could be huge. And given 96% of developers believe it to be important, it would seem that no one really needs convincing. However, it is important to see how soft skills impact different parts of your job, and even your life. Yes it's about writing great emails, but it isn't just that. Yes it's about learning how to network at conferences but it's also much more than that. You can't have great technical skill without soft skills The bottom line is that it's hard to be a great technician without soft skills. It's possible, but very rare. Nothing technical happens in a vacuum - technical things are always about people. Forget management speak and training courses: that, really, is the one thing you need to remember. Read next Soft skills every data scientist should teach their child ‘Soft’ Skills Every Data Pro Needs

Netflix in their tech blog announced that their popular cloud gateway Zuul 2 is now open-source. Zuul 2 was announced back in 2016 is Netflix's Java-based API gateway that handles all the request for Netflix's user base. Zuul 2 is the front door, acting as a filter to any request that comes into the Netflix's server. This gateway monitors the request and routes the request to the appropriate service to then act on the request. Zuul, in a way, is responsible for keeping Netflix standing strong and fulfilling your streaming requests. Netflix is known for open sourcing a lot of the tools developed in-house for the community. Zuul 2 is a battle-tested tool as it has been handling the massive Netflix infrastructure. Since its open sourcing, the developers have an option of a more resilient tool that can be used in their infrastructure architecture. Netflix promises to keep the security aspect intact for the open source Zuul 2. Also to add to this news, Netflix announced some more features for Zuul 2. Here are the feature additions: Server protocols: Zuul 2 has full support for HTTP/2 connections. Also, Mutual TLS will enhance Zuul's operation in secure infrastructure. Resiliency features: To increase the availability, Netflix will be adding a feature called Adaptive Retries that is used on Netflix. Also, it would be adding configurable concurrency limits for protecting the origins from getting overloaded and separating the other origins that run behind Zuul. Request Passport: This feature will enable the Zuul server to track all events that occur for each request. This will allow you to compute the asynchronous requests for better availability of your services. Status Categories: This feature helps you categorize the requests by extending the success and failure state in terms of HTTP status code. Request attempts: It tracks all the proxy attempts and provides you the status of each attempt. This really helps to identify the retries and to debug the routing. Zuul also has enhanced self-service routing, load balancing, anomaly detection, among other primary features that Netflix uses to keep the infrastructure secure and running. Netflix has released several other tools including Titus (container management), Conductor (microservice orchestration), Hystrix (cloud management), Vizceral (traffic management), among other efficient tools that can be used in large infrastructures. You can read Netflix's announcement blog to get more insights on the future development in Zuul 2. What software stack does Netflix use?

Qt 5.11 has been released ahead of the planned schedule. Qt is one of the most popular cross-platform software development framework for embedded and desktop applications. It holds a variety of new features and bug fixes. Qt for Web assembly and Python Qt for Web assembly version 1 has been released to allow users to target the web and browsers as a platform for Qt applications. In addition, Qt is actively working on supporting Qt on Python and the first release is planned for June. Qt Core and Network Both the Qt Core and item model have received a couple of updates. Most importantly, Qt Core now has Unicode support. So, QChar, QString, QTextBoundaryFinder and Qt algorithm for bidirectional text are now fully compatible with Unicode 10. In the Qt network, ALPN and HTTP/2 are now supported on iOS. Qt GUI and Widgets Accessibility support on Windows is now based on Microsoft UI automation. Widget styles on Windows are also updated to better support High-DPI displays. Qt widgets have received support for quick text selection by mouse in QLineEdit, along with a number of bug-fixes. The print dialog on Linux now also features much better support for all the CUPS provided options. Qt QML Engine The Qt QML compiler pipeline is completely re-written with major improvements in performance and maintainability. This pipeline always compiles QML to a platform-independent bytecode. You can also generate the bytecode ahead of time, using the qmlcompiler feature. The new bytecode interpreter has vastly improved and reaches 80-90% of the performance of the JIT in Qt 5.10. Qt Quick Qt Quick, now supports loading compressed textures in the image element. As this feature stores images in a format that is directly digestible by the GPU, it reduces application startup time and memory consumption. Qt Quick also supports both .ktx and .pkm container file formats. Qt Location Qt Location now includes experimental support for turn-by-turn navigation. It also has an experimental API to create map objects that are not bound to QQuickItems. In MapPolyline objects,  layers are now working in combination with Map items. Routing and Places API are extensible and there is a newly added element, known as WayPoint. Qt 3D and Qt 3D Studio Qt 3D Studio 2.0 is currently in beta and the complete release will soon be available with a fully rewritten runtime, that’ll be based on top of Qt 3D. With this work, Qt 3D has also received numerous new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes. Qt Webengine The Chromium version underneath Qt Webengine has been updated to Chromium 65. In addition, Qt now supports embedded DevTools without requiring the use of a separate browser, an installable cookie filter and quota permissions. Other items qdoc now uses libclang to parse C++ giving a much better support for modern C++ in the documentation. Qt Serialbus and Bluetooth have now improved support for CAN bus and BTLE. To read the complete coverage, visit the release notes page. Qt 5.11 free version will be supported for one year. For longer support periods, developers should prefer Qt 5.9 which will be supported until June 2020.  An extended lifetime support can be purchased from the Qt Company if required. The next release, Qt 5.12 is planned for November and will be a long-term supported release. How to create multithreaded applications in Qt How to Debug an application using Qt Creator 3 ways to deploy a QT and OpenCV application