Articles about Developer

Amazon has written a "Hello World" example for building an Alexa Skill. At first glance, it looks like just what you need to get into Alexa Skills development because it's short and clear. But take a second look and you'll notice it requires an external dependency.

It brings in the alexa-sdk npm package. I'll show that not only don't you need the alexa-sdk to teach Alexa a Skill but you might actually be better off without it.

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Have you seen Star Trek? If you haven’t, you should. One of the pieces of future tech that is quietly on display throughout the show is the ability to talk to the computer. Whether it’s asking the computer where someone is or ordering a cup of earl grey tea, the computer has no problem understanding the questions it is asked, and who’s asking them.

Amazon’s Alexa products claim that they are this shining vision of the future! Not only that, you can write your own apps for the platform. Amazing! Right? Well, we’re not quite there yet. So, what are the challenges and limitations? Is there anything we can do to hack our way through the tough parts? Can we achieve our dreams even if we emerge a bit bloody and beaten? Let's find out.

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If you are a developer looking to earn some serious cash, you might want to consider becoming a machine learning specialist. According to a new report by Stack Overflow, entitled "Developer Hiring Landscape Report," machine learning specialists earn 24 percent more than what’s the average among developers on the British Isles.

That's £56,851 a year.

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For the last couple of weeks, Graham, Marcel, Sinem and I, from Red Badger, have been experimenting with Amazon’s Alexa Echo Dot. An Electric Hockey Puck that uses voice recognition powered by Amazon Alexa voice assistant.

In this post, I’d like to explain how one goes about creating their first Alexa skill.

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A team of us at Red Badger, which consisted of myself, Marcel, Graham and Roman, had two weeks to play around with Amazon’s Alexa and build a sommelier skill to recommend wine pairings to your food. We’re writing a four-part series to take you through what we learned from our varied perspectives.

There’s been so many blog posts written about the rise of chatbots and Voice User Interface (VUI), some even marking 2017 to be the year of the bots.

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The software space is incredibly diverse and this is reflected in the sheer number of programming languages that you can learn today. If you are just starting out choosing one can seem daunting -- this list of the most-popular programming languages should help narrow down your options.

Each of the major programming languages has its fair share of fans, as you might have realized by now, but JavaScript, Java and Python have the most followers. RedMonk, which just posted its latest Programming Language Rankings, looked at both GitHub and Stack Overflow to give you an answer that reflects what developers are using and talking about in 2017.

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Thousands of Alexa developers can now build and host most Alexa skills for free using Amazon Web Services (AWS), thanks to a newly released Amazon program.

Previously, developers have had at their disposal the AWS Free Tier, offering a million AWS Lambda requests and a total of 750 hours of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) -- monthly, for free. However, exceeding these limits also meant monthly fees.

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Today's technology companies are focused on delivering new ideas fast, resulting in systems being rebuilt around the needs of developers, and companies piloting and adopting new technologies like microservices and containers in search of speed.

Automation specialist Chef Software has released the results of a survey of over 1,500 IT practitioners and decision-makers across app, infrastructure, security and cross-functional teams. The findings show technology rollout increasing faster than headcount.

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Without a hint of irony, Facebook has told developers that they may not use data from Instagram and Facebook in surveillance tools.

The social network says that the practice has long been a contravention of its policies, but it is now tidying up and clarifying the wording of its developer policies. American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change and the Center for Media Justice put pressure on Facebook after it transpired that data from users' feeds was being gathered and sold on to law enforcement agencies.

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It's something that Gmail users have been asking for for ages now -- the ability to use third-party add-ons to extend the capabilities of the email service. Today at its Cloud Next conference in San Francisco, Google announced that plugins that can integrate with Gmail are on their way.

While "add-ons" are already around, they exist in the form of browser extensions. What Google is talking about now is native add-ins that are not dependant on Chrome extensions, and will therefore work online in any browser, on just about any device -- including iOS and Android.

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Microsoft today releases Visual Studio 2017 and the fourth preview of Visual Studio for Mac. The latest official version of its longstanding IDE for Windows adds improvements related to productivity, performance, mobile apps, cloud development, DevOps and the ecosystem surrounding Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2017, according to Microsoft's blog post announcing the release, features an improved startup and project load times, better navigation, the ability to edit files without having to open a project or solution, CMake support and Linux support for C++, Xamarin Forms Previewer, a new Connected Services experience, the ability to build .NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.1 apps, support for Azure App Service and more.

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One of the best things about the Linux kernel (and associated operating systems) is the ability to work on various hardware types, including ARM. Microsoft's operating systems, by comparison, are far more narrow. True, there is the lightweight Windows 10 IoT for ARM boards, but it is hardly a factor nowadays.

Today, Ubuntu Core comes to the i.MX6-based and ARM-powered TS-4900 Computer on Module. While Android and other Linux options were already available for the IoT-friendly CoM, Ubuntu Core is still a major win. Canonical's revolutionary snap packages should work beautifully here.

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Android or iOS? Or both? It’s a question anyone who’s been involved in building a mobile app will have asked. Android is still the major player in the development world, due to the simple fact of the size of the market, but it’s foolish to write anything that’s grown from Apple off.

As with just about every trend in technology, it appears that flexibility and fluidity is the choice route. Here are five things developers will need to consider to stay relevant in 2017 and beyond.

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The results of a new study to be released tomorrow, but seen exclusively by BetaNews, reveal a severe misalignment between the way IT leaders talk about change management and the strategies they have in place to execute these initiatives.

The survey of more than 320 IT leaders by document productivity company Nitro shows that change management strategies vary between organizations, but many fall short.

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The app development business is being plagued by long development times, skills gaps and large backlogs according to a new report.

The study from low-code development platform supplier OutSystems identifies the critical issues that the industry needs to address if it’s to avoid missed opportunities and lost revenue.

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