Articles about Developer Tool

I'm here in San Francisco, undeterred by cancelled and delayed flights, and it's madness. At 7 am PDT, when the doors were supposed to open, the line wrapped around and down the block and around the next one. Man, you should have come. I/O closes an exciting month of developer events -- Apple's WWDC, Microsoft's TechEd, Windows Phone and surprise Surface announcement. But the last word goes to Google, which is expected today to debut the Nexus tablet, expand cloud services and delight with lots more. I'm too rushed to go through them all.

The keynote commences at 9:30 am PDT -- that's 12:30 pm Eastern Time, and all updates here will be in chronological order reversed -- meaning newest first. You'll want to refresh often.

Continue reading →

After seeing the latest information about Microsoft's new Surface tablet computers and also reading Joe Wilcox's latest article about them, I finally get Microsoft's mindset -- and I am impressed. So what does this Windows developer think of Surface? Need a tablet to appreciate what it is all about.

I don't have deep pockets, so I try to use my computers as long as possible, but after hearing about Windows 8, I knew I needed to get a tablet as soon as possible. Something big was afoot! Fortunately Microsoft made is easier for me when the Microsoft Store had an amazing deal on an ExoPC Windows tablet for only $399. I jumped on that deal, and I think it was the right one.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has released the .NET Framework Repair Tool, a compact and portable executable file that aims to detect and resolve some common .NET Framework problems.

The program focuses mainly on issues relating to installation or updates. If its tests don’t reveal anything obvious in this area, though, it can also apply a couple of generic solutions: specifically, stopping, re-registering and restarting the Windows Installer service. And as a result, the Repair Tool may also help to resolve a variety of other Windows Installer-related problems.

Continue reading →

Windows 8 gets a poor grade on a simple task. What is that task you may ask? Read on.

Every Windows computer needs a beginners programming language. Those of us from the DOS days can look back fondly on QBasic. From learning how to program, to just having a quick and easy scripting language that a business user can use to write some simple app in a few minutes, a beginners language makes sense. So what beginners programming language might fit the bill for Windows 8? Microsoft's own Small Basic!

Continue reading →

Microsoft's suite of enterprise products isn't about to let the consumer-facing ones steal the headlines. On the same day the Redmond, Wash. company announced the Release Preview of Windows 8, the company's enterprise and developer software arm announced the release candidates of .NET Framework 4.5, Visual Studio 2012 and Windows Server 2012.

Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 are available for download by anyone by visiting the Visual Studio 2012 website, while Windows Server 2012 is available only to TechNet and MSDN subscribers by visiting TechNet.

Continue reading →

Oregon developer Panic has released a brand new version of its Mac web-coding tool, Coda 2, plus launched a streamlined iPad version, appropriately titled Diet Coda. Diet Coda is designed as a companion tool to Coda for use on the move.

Coda 2 launches with over 100 new features -- many of which are based on user requests, adds 64-bit compatibility and provides a completely refreshed user interface. It’s billed as a one-stop shop for web developers, incorporating editor, terminal, CSS and files management within a single application.

Continue reading →

From independent software developers to the enterprise, everyone is looking for ways to improve software development, increasing productivity while not sacrificing performance. Software technologies continue to change, but have programmers really found the real keys to faster development cycles, more reliable software and improved performance?

While it is obvious we have more powerful software today, this does not mean we have better software today. As it becomes more complex, there are more things that can go wrong. In the old days, software was often written by a single programmer, while today software often is written by teams. The complexity alone of trying to get a team of programmers to work together is challenging enough, but add to this the size and scope of some applications that can be hundreds of thousands of lines of code, if not possibly in the millions of lines of code, and you can have a veritible nightmare trying to put it all together. Few trades today require so much attention to details at such a large scope as does programming.

Continue reading →

Code sharing site GitHub announced a client for Windows on Monday, aimed at making it easier to search for code on the platform. The move is an obvious nod to Microsoft's dominance in computing, and done more out of necessity than anything.

GitHub is built on top of the command line Git application, and has quickly begun to change the way software is developed. It makes the process of managing an open-source project a whole lot easier, and allows work on code by many developers versus a few "gatekeepers" who control what gets into daily builds.

Continue reading →

Cloud-based desktop software analytics platform Trackerbird completed its beta phase and launched to general availability on Thursday. The platform lets .NET software developers and vendors embed tracking mechanisms in their software to watch installations, trends in feature usage, user behaviour, demographics, and license conversions.

It's similar in concept to Concerity Analytics, which we launched here on BetaNews two years ago. By integrating Trackerbird's SDK into a desktop application, developers can collect anonymized reports and detailed conversion funnel analysis in real time. All software usage metrics collected by Trackerbird are totally anonymous and no IP addresses are stored. Developers can make Trackerbird analytics collection an option that the end user can choose to run.

Continue reading →

VMware is known for its work in virtualization. The company aims to change that, and announced on Tuesday a new product to assist in the automation, deployment and management of complex applications on its cloud infrastructure. vFabric Suite 5.1 is a new product that takes code acquired through VMware's acquisition of SpringSource and adds additional functionality to make it more attractive to developers.

Application deployment automation, PostgreSQL and SQLFire support, and enterprise support have been added to the SpringSource code. VMware says that the service will help provide developers with the core application services they need to run Java Spring applications either on-site or in the cloud.

Continue reading →

.NET software development tool company Xamarin on Monday launched Xamarin Designer for Android, a drag-and-drop visual environment for creating native user interfaces for Android apps from within Visual Studio or within the Mono for Android IDE.

Xamarin is a young company made up of more than twenty ex-Novell team members who built the Mono open source .NET development framework. So far, the company is responsible for releasing Mono for Android, and MonoTouch for iOS.

Continue reading →

Google has set fees for its cloud SQL storage offering, and detailed pricing on both a per-use and per-day model depending on the developer's need. The move is an effort to bolster App Engine, which is a service from Google that allows developers to run cloud applications on the company's infrastructure.

The Mountain View, Calif. company has offered Cloud SQL in a limited free beta since last October. Developers can continue to use Cloud SQL free of charge until June 12, however, after that continued use will require billing information.

Continue reading →

The issue with the soon-to-come generation of Windows mobile computers (tablets) of performance versus productivity, when it comes to software development, looms on all of us programmers who desire to write software for Windows 8. As a longtime Windows API programmer I appear to be in the minority, but I just can't help but ask the question: "Do programmers just not get it?"

I have watched the video of a talk by Microsoft's Herb Sutter entitled "Why C++?" more than once and even though I don't use C++, I just can't help but appreciate his points about the importance of performance, especially when it comes to the next generation of mobile devices.

Continue reading →

What is Metro, Windows 8's new user interace motif, really all about? Does it fill all the needs of Windows users? Is Metro for consumers or for businesses? What does this all mean for the legacy desktop? These are some of the questions I hope to answer.

First let me say that I do not dislike Metro, and I don't want to give the impression that the new user interface is somehow terrible or a mistake. Microsoft has put a lot of work into Metro and some of the reasons for it does make a lot of sense. My perspective though as a programmer is based on the fact that the majority of software I have written over the years has been for businesses and not for consumers. Metro may very well be a success with consumers, but what about businesses?

Continue reading →

Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference will take place June 11-15 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, but forget about going. That's because tickets sold out in only two hours, the fastest in the conference's history. In 2010, this took 10 days to occur, and in 2011 eight hours.

Like last year, 2012's event is expected to focus on software. Mountain Lion should be released during the event, which brings more iOS-like features to the desktop. Conversely, iOS 6 is also expected to debut at WWDC, although we seem to know a lot less there.

Continue reading →