The Continuing Decline of Tech Magazines, Chapter 38

Forbes has a few-hundred word article on the decline in tech-sector print media. (via \<a href="http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView%3fshowComments%3dtrue%26entry%3d3362119884"" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">James Robertson) Nothing specific to the software development industry, but still, another data point...

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Virtual Earth MapCruncher

This tool from Microsoft Research:

lets users quickly convert existing maps into an online format that's as fast and easy to use as Virtual Earth. PDF and raster maps can be converted in minutes just by clicking on corresponding landmarks on the user's map and the global maps in Virtual …

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Concurrency Tutorials Via LOLCuteness

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I figure I'll be the #1 programming blog by the end of the month.

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Need To Draw (Mathematical-Style) Graphs? Try This Free Layout Engine for .NET

I've fiddled around with the examples of GLEE, Microsoft's layout engine for graphs and wish I'd had it for some visualization projects I did a few years ago. Looks like a nice library to add to your collection.

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Microsoft eScrum: Scrum for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

Microsoft has made available a VSTS tool for teams using Scrum: Download details: Microsoft eScrum Version 1.0

Scrum is, I've concluded, The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work for software project management. It's also over-hyped, as the first line of the Wikipedia entry shows.

I'd like to talk about …

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"New Scientist" (My Favorite Magazine) is Offering a 74% Subscription Discount

The British science weekly New Scientist is my favorite magazine (barring SD Times, of course!). The front of the magazine is devoted to brief discussions of recent findings and then there are usually several longer articles that, while generally over-credulous (string theory and many-worlds being perennially batted back and forth …

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Moving Beyond The Typing Debate?

Maybe the readers of my blog are more astute (and better looking!) than average, but I was happy that several comments to my recent post on type inference were properly dismissive of what one called "the static vs. dynamic holy war." As I said when writing about the myth of …

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Type Inference: Nice, But Environment Support Is Crucial

Bill Venners, recently intrigued by Scala, talks about the \<a href="http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp%3fthread%3d209353"" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">advantages of type inference in this post. Type inference means that type assignments are implicit but static (that is, the programmer need not "finger type …

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Bit Twiddling Hacks

Comes a time in every performance-oriented programmer's life when you can speed things up tremendously by working directly with bits. In such a situation, this page of bit twiddling hacks would be very useful: Bit Twiddling Hacks (via \<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7er/LessIsBetter/%7e3/130989829/drjflam"" target …

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