It's only a few weeks since the first developer preview of Android N was released, but now it's time for the second. Google has announced the availability of Android N Developer Preview 2 packed with bug fixes and a raft of new features.

Among the new tools for developers to play with is Vulkan, a new 3D rendering API which Google says provides a big performance boost for certain apps. Other key additions include support for the more human-looking Emoji Unicode 9, and new launcher shortcuts that can be used to quickly jump to specific actions within an app.

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APIs are the glue that holds much of the digital world together, connecting systems, apps and data. But a new survey reveals that many organizations are failing to place enough emphasis on API security.

Research company Ovum in partnership with bot detection and mitigation firm Distil Networks, surveyed 100 IT and security professionals. They found that 30 percent of APIs are planned out with no input from the IT security team and 27 percent of APIs proceed through the development stage without the IT security team weighing in.

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JavaScript may be today’s go-to for front-end programming, but in many ways it’s a language that mimics what has come before. Just like COBOL, C, C++, C#, Java and Python, JavaScript is a procedural language. There’s nothing distinctive about JavaScript, with one big exception: JavaScript has a code complexity problem.

How could JavaScript, a language based on the same paradigm as many others, have a complexity problem that is so singular? The answer is temporality. JavaScript sits in a unique spot in software development history, rising squarely in the midst of a shift from mostly back-end to mostly front-end development, which was spurred by the mobile revolution.

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Apple has been hugely successful in building up an app ecosystem over the years, Microsoft rather less so. Today at Build, the Windows 10 manufacturer announced a tool that it hopes will bolster the number of apps that appear in the Windows Store: Desktop App Converter, part of the Project Centennial program.

The tool has been designed to make it possible for developers to convert legacy desktop apps into Windows Store-compatible AppX apps. The quick-and-easy conversion to Universal Windows Platform apps will enable developers to bring their creations to not just Windows 10 on the desktop, but also Xbox One and the Windows Mobile platform.

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With Live Tiles, Microsoft has promised much but delivered little. This could be about to change. We're just days away from Build 2016, and there's a great deal of excitement about what could be revealed. Live Tiles, it seems, could be about to evolve into something useful.

The schedule for the developer conference has been posted online, and it sees Microsoft is entering full-on tease mode.  At a session called 'What's New for Tiles and Toast Notifications', Microsoft promises a couple of surprises. Build is aimed at developers so it's hard to predict exactly what's in store, but Microsoft's description of the session is certainly titillating.

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For the last couple of years I’ve been struggling a bit with the idea of DevOps. At the root of it was my own lack of clarity about what it is. My question remained unanswered and it wasn’t for the want of trying.

I went to conferences, attended talks, read articles and met with people in our business. I gathered logically inconsistent lists of things that it was and wasn’t. In the end, I concluded that there isn’t a consensus, so I had to work out what DevOps means to me.

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Ready to compete with the already-established Apple Pay, Google's Android Pay is due to make its first foray into Europe when it launches in the UK in the coming months. To make things easy for retailers, Android Pay can be accepted anywhere that already supports contactless payments.

In addition to places such as Starbucks, Costa, KFC and Waitrose, Android Pay can also be used to pay for Tube, bus and train journey with Transport for London. The UK debt will follow a successful US launch and growth into Australia, but Google has not yet revealed whether the reward schemes enjoyed by those in the US will also make their way to the UK.

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The shortage of tech talent in the UK is not as straightforward as we thought -- it’s not just about the country not having enough actual people. The problem is also in the recruiters, a new and comprehensive study suggests.

The study was done by the Stack Overflow website for developers, and surveyed more than 56,000 people living in 173 countries. According to the survey, 73 percent of developers in the UK are either actively looking for new jobs, or are "open to new opportunities".

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Microsoft has been keen to consigne Internet Explorer to the history books, but for a long time there has been a glaring issue with its successor, Microsoft Edge: a lack of extensions. With the release of Windows 10 Redstone build 14291 this finally changed.

While Microsoft Edge may now have extensions, it's still very early days and it's likely you'll find that most of your favorites are yet to make an appearance. But Microsoft has a plan. To make developers' lives as easy as possible, the company is working on a tool that will make it possible to port Chrome extensions to Edge.

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OS X and Linux are nowhere near as popular as Windows when we look at the PC market as a whole, but the two platforms are actually extremely popular with a certain crowd. According to a StackOverflow survey, 26.2 percent of developers use Apple's Mac operating system, while distributions based on the open-source kernel are not that far behind, having a combined 21.7 percent usage share.

This may come as a bit of a shock, but, yes, OS X and Linux are nearly as popular as Windows among developers. In fact, according to StackOverflow, "If OS adoption rates hold steady, by next year's survey fewer than 50 percent of developers may be using Windows" -- and, obviously, OS X and Linux will come out even more popular in the process.

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The slogan "there is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer", accompanied by an image of a worried looking cloud, has been doing the rounds for some time now. It’s overly simplistic but it neatly sums up the mistrust that some computer users have about cloud technology.

The inference being that people who trust the cloud and believe the hype are in some way naïve. The extension of which is that, if you’re giving your data to someone else, how can you be sure it’s safe? This is why cloud security needs to be part of the software development lifecycle.

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As the battle between iOS and Android rages on, it can be said that both operating systems are wonderful. True, Apple's offering allows more timely updates, but Google's mobile OS is available to many manufacturers for various device types. It is clear why Android is the most-used mobile operating system in the world -- it allows affordable devices, while Apple simply doesn't.

Today, Google shocks the tech world by releasing the first official Developer Preview of Android N -- the successor to the wonderful Marshmallow. It is available for many Nexus devices, and you can install it now. Google even shares a handy how-to guide below.

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In theory, the scrum methodology is an excellent way to make the product development cycle more efficient. Scrum is better able to incorporate customer feedback by delivering the product in small iterations in close collaboration with the customer. Dividing one long marathon into a series of "sprints" creates a customer-centric, agile mentality that significantly improves upon an inflexible waterfall approach.

But in reality, scrum is just a piece of the puzzle, a good first step on a longer journey. Scrum only works as it’s intended when it’s functioning within a fully agile environment -- otherwise, any efficiency gained from scrum is lost when it inevitably encounters other departments using more traditional productivity methods. Agile can’t just be a process a company executes: it’s something a company must become.

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A walled-garden approach to apps for operating system is something we've become used to in the mobile world. Apple, in particular, has been incredibly successful in creating a closed-off eco-system that ensures it remains -- broadly speaking -- in control of what hits the App Store. With Windows 10, Microsoft is trying to blur the boundaries between mobile and non-mobile, and developers -- especially game developers -- are not happy.

Windows 10's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is described by Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney as a "closed platform-within-a-platform". More than this, Sweeney says that it is the "most aggressive move Microsoft has ever made", warning that the company is trying to monopolize app distribution to the detriment of consumers and the entire PC industry. Writing for the Guardian, Sweeney bellows out a call to arms saying that UWP "can, should, must, and will die".

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If a few years back we were laughing off Microsoft's efforts in the mobile market, today we are looking at the software giant in a different light. That "mobile first, cloud first" mantra that Satya Nadella introduced us to when he became CEO now defines Microsoft, which has quickly evolved into one of the most important players in the mobile space afterwards.

Under Nadella, Microsoft has tackled mobile in a more meaningful way, refocusing its strategy so that it could become a major developer for more than Windows and Windows Phone. Today, the software giant's best services and products are also found on Android and iOS, the most important mobile platforms, and more have been added following high-profile acquisitions like Acompli and SwiftKey. Now, Microsoft adds Xamarin to its mobile portfolio, proving once again that it is dead serious about conquering mobile.

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