Unixster

What is the most popular programming language used by open source developers? The answer depends on how you define popularity. According to a new study from Black Duck, a software-license code analysis vendor, C represents more than 40 percent of all code written for open source software. Black Duck made its determination by counting the actual lines of code. While C is the leader by that measure, PHP and JavaScript are on the rise when you look at the broader picture of how open source projects use programming languages.

Chipmaker AMD has integrated the open standard OpenCL specification for parallel programming into its ATI Stream development environment.

A new Google project, Simple, aims to be as BASIC as possible. Simple is very much a work in progress, but currently consists of a compiler and runtime for the Simple language, which is a dialect of BASIC specifically for developing Android Applications. Simple programmers can define static or dynamic forms and manipulate them with BASIC like commands. The hope is that a simple programming language, based on BASIC, will open up programming Android devices to a wider audience.

FlameDesktop is a place where everybody could browse in a really inovative and user-friendly way for good Linux software. FlameDesktop aims to be a good entrance door to the Linux world. Based on concept that things should be easy to learn and intuitives to everyone. Think of FlameDesktop as a kind of Synaptic build for the web. The main goal is to have all the good software for Linux and software of the Ubuntu repositories (instalation with one click – apt-url) posted on FlameDesktop. There are already good sites for browsing Linux software like www.gnomefiles.org, www.kde-apps.org and sourceforge.net, among others. But the thing is that some only post software related to a especific programming language like GTK, QT, Java etc.. and others are, in my opinion, not very user-friendly. FlameDesktop dont care about divisions of software based on their written languages, or if they are open source, proprietary, or commercial ones. If it is usefull and well designed it will be there. Sooner or later.

This chapter is an excerpt from Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language , authored by Mark Summerfield, published in the Addison-Wesley Professional Developer’s Library, Dec. 2008, ISBN 0137129297, Copyright 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. For more info check out Summerfield’s new Digital Short Cut: Advanced Python 3 Programming Techniques

The Android operating system provides a powerful, open platform for mobile development. It leverages the power of the Java™ programming language and the Eclipse tools platform. Now you can add the Scala programming language to that mix. In this article, see how you can use Scala as the primary development language on Android, allowing you to write mobile applications using a more-expressive, but also more type-safe, programming language.

According to wordnetweb.princeton.edu, Computer Science is “the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures”. It’s the study of computer architectures, languages, and mathematical structures as applied to the process of computing. So what have Campbell, et al produced in this book…a Computer Science textbook that teaches Python? Kind of. Imagine you wanted to learn how the computer is used in the various scientific disciples. Further, you wanted to learn how computer programs and programming is used in this context to construct tools, perform investigations, and to solve problems. You also want to use a single programming language as your example. Welcome to “Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python”. Not a book about learning Python as such, but an introduction to the discipline of Computer Science with Python as your guide.

Love Jazz? So does Don Wolff, who brings us the “I Love Jazz!” program on Higher Education Channel Television. HEC-TV, “the leading producer of education, arts, and cultural” TV programming in St. Louis, produces award-winning programming that “makes you think.” And, in the case of “I Love Jazz!” encourages a greater appreciation of a uniquely American art form.

OpenBill 1.2, a Java-based invoicing and contract management application, has been released by South African developer Jumping Bean. The new release includes both a number of bugfixes as well as a few key feature additions.

Three of the new features in OpenBill 1.2 include the ability to add variable selling price line items to contracts, ability to send customers credit notes via email and an enhanced contract management interface.

Open Bill has its roots as a billing and contract tracking application developed in-house for Cyber Connect, a mobile broadband service provider in South Africa. Joseph Neusu, Cyber Connect’s divisional manager, says that when the company first experienced significant growth in sales, it looked at the other open source offering available at the time but none suited their needs for handling a large number of relatively low value contracts with recurring billing. “So we asked Jumping Bean, an internal partner, to develop a custom application for us,” says Neusu.

having developed the software, Jumping Bean decided in June 2008 to release the software as open source software under a GNU Public Licence “as a way of giving back to the community,” says Mark Clarke, lead developer of Open Bill. OpenBill is hosted on Java.net.

“Beside the great feeling of being able to contribute back, we also got some extra business in the process,” says Clarke. “We now have several customers who we provide on-going support and customisation services to for the application.”

OpenBill is written in Java and makes use of a number of open source libraries and frameworks to provide enterprise level billing services, says Clarke. Some of the technologies used in OpenBill include the Spring framework for dependency injection and aspect orientated programming, Java Persistence API (JPA) for the data access and domain model layer and Apache Velocity templates for invoice and email templating.

“Now that the release is out-the-door we will be upgrading all our customers to the new version and encourage any other users of the application to do so as well”, says Clarke.