JDK 24: The new features in Java 24

Java Development Kit (JDK) 23 having arrived September 17, work already has begun on JDK 24, with two features so far proposed for the release: the use of JNI (Java Native Interface) and a late barrier expansion for the G1 garbage collector. A multitude of other...

Breaking through AI data bottlenecks

As AI models become increasingly commoditized, the data required to train and fine-tune them has never been more critical. While procuring high-quality data is expensive and raises privacy concerns, there is a powerful alternative that companies like Google and...

The worst programmer I know

If all code is legacy code, then we are all maintainers. I carry an image in my head of a vast sea of silent, diligent, dedicated coders who silently maintain much of the code that makes the world go round. I carry this image because I am one of those coders.  For the...

The battle cry of 2025: Do cloud local!

Microclouds can have many names and offer many features. They can be hosted by a regional cloud provider or specialize in a specific use case, such as the rise of GPU cloud providers focusing on the exploding AI space. They could even be clouds that don’t have an...

Two good Visual Studio Code alternatives

The conductor of my choir famously tells us singers, “I only want everything all the time.” Well, as a developer, my mantra for code editors and IDEs (integrated development environments) is exactly that: I only want everything all the time. What’s “everything” in...

JRuby 10 due to arrive in early-2025

JRuby, which dates back to 2001 as a Ruby language implementation for the JVM, is set to arrive at version 10 shortly after the new year. JRuby 10 promises to be fully compatible with Ruby 3.4.0, a planned update to Ruby that brings changes for frozen string literals...