all things computed

Adobe's Scott Petersen has for some time been working on a project that could enable C and C++ code to be securely executed in a browser, inside the sandbox of the open-source Tamarin VM. In a recent blog post, Mozilla's Atul Varma summarizes Petersen's experiment, and what it may mean for Web applications.

Until recently, textual content embedded inside rich-client components, such as Flash files, were not indexed by the major search engines. Adobe announced this week that it has worked with Google to make all Flash files indexable, including Flex application files, and that Yahoo would also soon index Flash content.

In a recent blog post, Intel's Anwar Ghuloum writes that processors containing hundreds, and even thousands, of cores are just a matter of time, and that developers should "program for as many cores as possible, even if it is more cores than are currently in shipping" CPUs.

In his latest IBM developerWorks article, Brian Goetz explains how to correctly use wildcards for generic parameter types.

Doing the simplest thing that could possibly work is a frequent advice of the agile development movement. But how applicable is that advice in different kinds of development contexts?

The Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project is among the most active Eclipse sub-projects. The latest BIRT version includes better SQL query integration, crosstab report designs, multi-view report items, and script debugging. In a recent interview, BIRT project lead Virgil Dodson explains the new features.

In his latest IBM developerWorks article, Ted Neward explores Scala's collection types, with a focus on their support of functional programming concepts.

A great deal of commentary followed Apple's announcement that it would use the Sproutcore JavaScript framework for its upcoming online offerings. Most of the debate centers around the question of whether a virtual machine-based environment or reliance on browser standards are preferable when developing rich Web apps.

In a recent CIO.com article, Esther Schindler asks developers the one thing they wish their managers did to better motivate a development team.

Scala's case classes are a tool used for pattern matching and, more generally, to replace the switch/case statements that some find problematic in other languages. In a recent blog post, Cedric Beust wonders if case classes really achieve their goal of simplifying Scala code.

Jython, the JVM-based implementation of the Python language, is making headway toward a 2.5 release. In a recent blog post, Jython committer Jim Baker provides an overview of new Jython features.

JavaScript creator and current Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich was recently interviewed by InfoWorld about the future directions of JavaScript. In the interview, Eich highlights ways in which next-generation JavaScript supports programming in the large, interoperability, and Mozilla projects that allow current browsers to interpret the latest JavaScript.

During last week's The Server Side Java Symposium in Prague, it looks like scaling is the biggest issue. I've collected some pointers from presentations on the topic and will certainly return to it when we start doing this sort of stuff.

Some of the more interesting topics at this year's JavaOne conference centered around new features for Java applets. A recent Sun Developer Network article describes those features, including how they can be used in the latest JRE update.

Visualizing JPA operations can help detect performance bottlenecks and potential errors in transaction processing and querying. eoSense's new JPA visualizer generates diagrams that track the execution of JPA operations at several layers of an enterprise Java application.

Javassist is a byte-code manipulation API that provides both source- and bytecode-level access to classes. Jason Greene recently added dataflow analysis capabilities to Javassist, which he describes in a blog post.

Adobe released an update to its Integrated Runtime (AIR) desktop environment. The latest AIR release supports internationalized rich-client applications, and enhances AIR's desktop integration APIs.

In a recent JavaWorld article, Klaus Kreft and Angelika Langer take an in-depth look at the three competing Java closures proposals.

In a talk given at the recent Google I/O conference, Steve Yegge discusses why Rhino is a good option for server-side scripting, and why Scala's strong type system may pose a dilemma to Java static typing fans.

The latest release of Oracle's open-source Java database supports terabyte-size data stores, large caches, and embedded deployment on Android and Oracle VM.