David Intersimone's Most Recent Posts

Just when we thought development was boring and done, along comes a plethora of new hand held devices, tablets, pads, smart devices and phones.  Apple, with it's iPhone and iPad, has turned the thermostat up for developers.  Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows Phone 7 have all raised the level of capabilities and programmability way beyond the mobile development of the past 10 years.

I am in Tokyo Japan for my daughter Molly's graduation from International Christian University (ICU).  While I am in town, I am meeting with members of the Japanese developer press to talk about the "Innovation of IT Technology and Software Development and Tools".  I am really looking forward to this press meeting.  While I am doing some of the talking, we will also have a group discussion about some of the market trends and also gaze into the future of developer tools.

I've created my top eleven list (in alphabetical order by last name) of best programming and software engineering book authors (some are a combination of authors that often write together as well as individually) and listings of some of their definitive works.

We -- the software engineers, computer scientists, programmers, developers and coders of the world -- declare that 1) we aspire to build great software, 2) we care about the software we develop and deliver to our users, and 3) we will help move the state of our art forward for all to benefit. 

In this chapter, I point to NoSQL Internet resources, past and upcoming events, and highlight some of the comments posted about the first two parts.

In "The end of SQL and relational databases? (part 1 of 3)" I covered some background on the SQL language and relational databases, the current and future for relational databases, the rise of frameworks that hide some of the complexities of database programming and the rise of the NoSQL databases. In this second installment I will take a walk through (some of) the currently available open and closed source NoSQL databases.

The road to SQL started with Dr. E.F. Codd's paper, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks", published in Communications of the ACM in June 1970.

Happy New Year and Decade to all software developers.  I hope you many software development successes in 2010.  Over the holiday break, I spent some time thinking about the tools that I use for my own development.  In my work at Embarcadero Technologies, I mostly use integrated development environments (IDE).

Does the world need a new beginner's programming language? In the 1960s, BASIC, FORTRAN, LISP and ALGOL were the primary introductory programming languages. In the 1970s and 1980s, Pascal, C ad Scheme were the teaching programming languages of choice. In the 1990s, with object-oriented extensions to the C language, C++ took over from C as the lingua franca for students.

When I ask developers "what programming language do you use?", the answer I usually get is a single language.  Most developers define themselves as a Java, C++, Delphi, C#, Visual Basic, PHP, Ruby or Python developer.  Some web developers will say they use JavaScript.  In fact most developers, today, use several programming languages.  Who doesn't also use JavaScript, HTML, XML, WSDL, SQL and other languages (domain specific, procedural, markup, functional, object-oriented, etc.).

The C++0x language standards committee meeting is taking place this week in downtown Santa Cruz, California, near where I live. 

C++0x is the informal name for the more formal designation: ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG21 - The C++ Standards Committee.  To unpack that:

Touch applications have been around for decades.  You see many of these early single touch applications in supermarkets, bank ATMs, restaurants and airport check-in kiosks.  With the advent of the iPhone and Windows 7, multitouch applications are entering the mainstream of hand-held and desktop computing. 

The name of this blog, Once More into the Code, is a modification of the opening line from William Shakespeare's King Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1 that starts "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead."    As developers we are constantly diving into new projects, exploring old projects, and deeply engaged inside our current projects.  Forty years ago this month, I wrote my first program as a college freshman at Cal P