Java Wins Programming Beauty Pageant, But C and Objective C Gussy Up

The Java programming language, bolstered by the adoption of Android-based smartphones and tablets in the market, has regained the crown as the top language in the Tiobe Programming Community Index put together by programming tool maker Tiobe Software.

The index is based on a number of different factors, including the availability of courses and training, the popularity of searches in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, YouTube, and Baidu search engines, and the number of engineers with specific programming skills based on their employment and job searches. The Tiobe Index has been around for more than a decade, and it is as much for fun as it is for information.
Java was the number one language in the Tiobe Index for February, with a rating of 18.4 percent, up 1.34 points over the past year. C was second with a 17.1 percent rating and climbing 56/100ths of a point, followed by Objective C, with a 9.8 percent rating but climbing 2.74 points. (Objective C is the variant of C that is used on Apple iOS.) Objective C has jumped two spots, passing by C++, the new-and-improved, object-oriented version of C that stopped short of becoming Java, and C#, which is Microsoft's Java-C mashup for its Common Language Runtime that was supposed to be enough like a JVM to make everyone happy except Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) and IBM. Python, Ruby, VisualBasic.NET, Pascal, Bash, Matlab, and Assembly are all climbing among the top 20 programming languages in the February ranking.
Venerable COBOL has a rating of 0.514 percent among the top 50 languages and ranked just behind the SAS statistical programming language and just ahead of Fortran (used in supercomputers) and the R open source statistical language. Good ole Report Program Generator for IBM i and OS/400 ranked number 38 on the February 2013 list, with a rating of 0.247 percent. It jumps around a lot, sometimes kissing 1 percent. This time around, it is behind Smalltalk and ahead of OpenCL.

My guess is that there are around 15 million or so programmers in the world--meaning people who get paychecks for their work--so if you apply the Tiobe numbers to this figure, you won't get anything that makes sense. It is commonly believed that there are around 10 million Java programmers in the world, and if you multiplied the Tiobe index against the raw population, you would bet something on the order of 2.7 million Java programmers. Like I said, this is more for fun than fact.

As for RPG, if there are 150,000 customers worldwide as IBM has told us, and the average shop has between two and three programmers (with the so-called CIO being a programmer with system administration and budget responsibilities), then there should be maybe on the order of 300,000 to 450,000 RPG programmers in the world (okay, so maybe 5 percent to 10 percent of them are actually COBOL programmers on the IBM i platform. If you use the Tiobe numbers percent against the raw number of 0.247 percent for RPG, you get a number that is an order of magnitude lower than this. Again, this was meant to be fun.

Source: IT Jungle

VMware releases micro version of Cloud Foundry PaaS

Everything in the cloud seems to be getting bigger or smaller. VMware today went the small route, releasing an updated micro version of the company's popular open source platform as a service (PaaS), Cloud Foundry.

In that aspect, VMware's micro instance of Cloud Foundry seems like a natural move. VMware launched it in 2011 and today the company updated it. As a PaaS, Cloud Foundry is used by developers as a cloud-based tool for creating and deploying applications. Traditionally these PaaS deployments live on large cloud environments made up of multiple virtual machines. But a micro instance, like the one released by VMware today, gives another tool for a developer to more easily test and play around with Cloud Foundry on a single machine.
The sixth paragraph now reads:
VMware says Micro Cloud Foundry has all the same features and functionality of the regular Cloud Foundry, the only limitation will be the power of the single VM that it runs on. In addition to announcing the micro version today, VMware also announced new features that will come with the Micro Cloud Foundry release. These include support for standalone apps, and enhanced support for various programming languages, including Ruby, Java and Node.js.

Source: ComputerWorld

Explore the Power of Data-Centric and Data-Driven Android Applications with Android Database

Packt is pleased to announce Android Database Programming, a book that strives to weave together the exciting worlds of mobile programming and data management with both conceptual and practical code-filled examples.

Android is a mobile operating system based upon a modified version of the Linux kernel. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further development of Android. The Android operating system software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java based object oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation.

Android Database Programming is a book meant to prepare its readers for this new world we live in. It's a book that not only strives to teach its readers all the different data storage methods available, but which also strives to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of each method – placing a greater emphasis on conceptual thinking.

By the end of this book, readers will be able to craft an efficient, well-designed, and well thought out data-centric application

This book is ideal for readers with a wide range of technical backgrounds, ranging from those with a limited Android programming background but who may be well-versed in database designs, to those who are experienced in Android programming but who may need to brush up on database schemas and database queries. The book is out now and available from Packt in print and popular eBook formats. To read more, please visit the Packt website.

Fedora 17 is now Available for Download

The Fedora Project has officially released version 17 of its leading-edge Linux distribution, adding the latest update to the OpenStack cloud computing platform, JBoss Application Server 7 and oVirt, a virtualisation management tool.

Available now, Fedora 17 is a free-to-download Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat, where many cutting-edge technologies are given a shake-down before future inclusion into Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
OpenStack was first included in Fedora 16, but the new version updates this to the latest "Essex" build of the open-source cloud platform, which introduced the Dashboard user portal and OpenStack Identity authentication service as stable core modules.

Fedora 17 debuts oVirt, an open-source project designed to manage virtualised infrastructure, and focused on the KVM hypervisor that is integrated with the Linux kernel.

Also new in this version is JBoss Application Server 7, the latest release of the Java-based application server software, now owned by Red Hat.

On the desktop front, Fedora 17 comes with the Gnome 3.4 user interface, which features new search capabilities, improved themes and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications.

"The addition of projects such as oVirt and JBoss Application Server 7, enhancements in OpenStack and continued support for fresh releases of desktop environments demonstrate the Fedora Project's commitment to deliver rich features and capabilities," said Fedora project leader Robyn Bergeron.

Fedora is offered with no official technical support, with users relying on community forums to find a solution to any problems. The platform is a rapidly evolving one, with new releases roughly every six months.

They say "May the Best win". Google wins patent fight with Oracle

Judge William Alsup has become The Decider in what could become a landmark case in software intellectual property.

Chances are there might not be another lawsuit involving open source licensing and application programming interfaces for a long while. They're just too darn difficult to argue, explain and win.

Juries of regular people, by and large, do not understand the software development process and its licensing business, nor should they be expected to do so. They are peers to IT professionals as persons, but not as professionals. A case the nature of Oracle v. Google, which has been in the news for two months and has the potential to be a landmark case, would have been better served by a qualified jury that knows this topic.

But because that would open a can of worms in the U.S. court system that nobody even wants to consider, the courts proceed in the conventional manner.

Google Wins Second Round
Oracle learned firsthand, and the hard way, that it isn't such a simple proposition to nail a forker of open source software to the legal cross. In the closely watched Oracle v. Google trial on May 23, Google and the open source community logged into the record a solid legal victory when a 12-person jury unanimously found Google not guilty of infringing on two of Oracle's Java patents.

As my colleague Darryl K. Taft reported here in eWEEK, the jury found that Google did not infringe on the two Java patents that Oracle had asserted in the case—U.S. Patent No. RE38,104 and U.S. Patent No. 6,061,520.

The judge in the case, William Alsup, has dismissed the jury, but he still must decide on leftover issues from the copyright phase of the trial. Alsup said he would come to that determination within a week.

Those leftover issues involve Google's so-called "fair use" of the Java APIs. And they are very important. Turns out the jury of regular people couldn't agree as to whether Google overstepped its bounds in forking Java to help build its popular Android mobile device operating system a few years ago.

The truth, however, is this: Java has been forked hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in its 17-year history, by many developers. But those developers haven't been sued by a huge company with many lawyers like Oracle, either.

Forking Forgoes "Pure Java"
When Java gets changed for a specific purpose, it then forgoes the label "Pure Java" and is disowned by Oracle's Java franchise. No support, no updates, no nothing -- you're on your own. But it's still Java, it delivers code across the Internet, and it gets the job done most of the time.

That was the whole idea back in the early '90s, when Dr. James Gosling and his Sun Microsystems band of developers created the now-ubiquitous programming language. Gosling his gang designed Java as a key link to connect what he called "Big Hunk" servers to desktops, to cars, to mobile devices, to TVs -- to basically anything.

When Sun released Java to the open source community in 2006, it was not only a gift to the world, but it also was a nod to the fact that Java had already been copied and forked thousands of times in 11 years.

Java is so everywhere in the Internet, moving code from place to place and activating applications, that it has became an integral part of the infrastructure background, like XML or TCP/IP. It's just there, it works, and it keeps on working 24/7.

Java Taken for Granted?
Java is easy to take for granted, and Oracle knows it. It is simply trying to protect what it owns; it's just very difficult to prove negligence against a competitor when it comes to open source and APIs.

Java's APIs are the central issue in this trial. APIs are a combination of several components: software, instructions, best practices and techniques. And techniques are not copyrightable, so that begs the question: Are APIs in their entirely copyrightable?

That was the core of Oracle's case against Google. The jurors couldn't agree. So this now goes to The Decider: Judge Alsup.

Google and Oracle have both won parts of this case, but it isn't over until the judge sings. Even then, appeals may come into the picture. It's an important case.

Waterloo earns Top 10 spot at global coding contest

Traditional Canadian favourite University of Waterloo scores ninth place overall at ICPC at the University of Warsaw.

The University of Waterloo once again had the best Canadian showing at the Association of Computing Machinery's (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) finishing in ninth place overall at the University of Warsaw today.

The “Battle of the Brains” contest is sponsored by IBM Corp. and pits the best student computer programmers in the world against each other in a five-hour marathon coding competition. This year, 112 teams of three students each competed to solve a slate of 12 coding problems using C++ and Java languages. The University of Waterloo will take home a bronze medal for its Top 10 showing.

There was a dramatic ending as the University of Warsaw had a shot to win the contest after submitting a solution with just 30 seconds left on the clock. But in the end, the home team had to settle for second place as the solution was wrong. St. Petersburg University of IT, Mechanics & Optics from Russia won the 2012 World Championship by solving nine problems.

Three other Canadian teams competed in the contest. The University of Toronto placed 76th with three problems solved, University of Alberta got 42nd spot with four solutions, and the University of British Columbia came 34th with five problems completed.

“When people come to play together competitively, when they challenge each other, they have an amazing ability to achieve,” says Bill Poucer, the executive director of ACM ICPC.

The ICPC World Finals are the culmination of a months-long process involving regional competitions in 85 countries around the globe, attracting more than 25,000 student contestants. The contest serves as a recruiting tool for IBM Corp., who makes a point of extending job offers to at least the medal winners.

The best North American school to finish was Harvard University, in seventh spot. Waterloo won a bronze medal at the 2011 World Finals, finishing in 12th place there.

Java is less use than C, but index's precision is doubted

 The C language, which displaced Java as the most popular language in the Tiobe Programming Community monthly assessment in April, has maintained its number 1 spot in the May report released this week. But a high-profile member of the PHP community is questioning the accuracy of the index itself.

The May release of the index, which gauges the popularity of programming languages, had C used by 17.346% of developers, as opposed to 16.599% using Java. The index is based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors interested in the particular languages. Examinations of search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo are used to calculate ratings; other sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, and Baidu are factored in as well.

But Andi Gutmans, who is a key developer of PHP and CEO of PHP tools maker Zend Technologies, dismisses Tiobe's index, citing its tendency to fluctuate. "It's very questionable how they come up with those numbers," Gutmans said. Tiobe's index for May has PHP as the sixth-most-popular language, but used by just 5.711% of developers. Gutmans insists PHP usage is growing quickly. He cited other industry figures showing 50% of the Web running PHP.

Tiobe Managing Director Paul Jansen defended the index, saying most criticism comes from declining programming communities. "Of course, we use a very simple algorithm so it is easy to shoot at if [it] doesn't fit your expectations, but it shows something about the visibility of each language on the Internet over time," Jansen said. "It is not scientific but at least it is the best try I have seen so far. If Andi Gutmans has some suggestions [for] how to improve the Tiobe index, I really would like to know. We are willing to adjust the index if he shows up with a good suggestion."

Tiobe in its report said the top 10 languages in its index had not changed much in the past eight years, apart from Objective-C moving into a slot and Delphi moving out. New language adoption appears to be much harder than expected. "The main reason for this is probably that it is very difficult to migrate a large code base from one language to another one. So changes are slow. But even if we take this into account, there are no new languages that show a slow but constant [rise]," Jansen said in the report.

Tiobe cited Scala as an example of a language that has not had much movement over the years, even if it is becoming a hot topic in Internet discussions. Currently ranked 46th, Scala entered the Tiobe index at number 57 in 2006 and moved up to number 48 a year later.  "Not much happened to the language after that," Jansen said in the report. Other examples of languages not moving forward much in the index include F#,  ranked in the 40th spot now and 38th six years ago; Groovy, now 32nd and ranked 36th in 2008, and Erlang, which is now ranked 44th and was ranked 35th in 2006. "So where is that next big programming language? Let us know," said Jansen.

Also in Tiobe's top 10 for the month were: C++, in third place used by 9.825% of developers, followed by Objective-C with 8.309% and  C# at 6.823%. Ranking after PHP were Visual Basic with 5.457%; Python with 3.819%; Perl with 2.805%, and JavaScript with 2.135%.

Generating Ext JS and Java CRUD Applications with CDB.

Clear Data Builder for Ext JS (CDBExt) is an open source tool that automatically builds Ext JS/Java EE CRUD applications given one or more annotated Java interfaces. The generated JavaScript and Java code enforce best Ext JS and Java EE practices and is deployed on the development version of the Tomcat ready to run. A tiny library of Ext JS components accompanying CDBExt – Clear components – enables transactional data sync with the application server, including deeply nested hierarchical data transaction, features not supported in native Ext JS 4.