"The terms 'allowlist' and 'blocklist' describe their purpose, while the other words use metaphors to describe their purpose," reads a change description on the source code for Android -- from over a year ago. 9to5Mac calls it "a shortened version of Google's (internal-only) explanation" for terminology changes which are now becoming more widespread.

And Thursday GitHub's CEO said they were also "already working on" renaming the default branches of code from "master" to a more neutral term like "main," reports ZDNet: GitHub lending its backing to this movement effectively ensures the term will be removed across millions of projects, and effectively legitimizes the effort to clean up software terminology that started this month.

But, in reality, these efforts started years ago, in 2014, when the Drupal project first moved in to replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica." Drupal's move was followed by the Python programming language, Chromium (the open source browser project at the base of Chrome), Microsoft's Roslyn .NET compiler, and the PostgreSQL and Redis database systems... The PHPUnit library and the Curl file download utility have stated their intention to replace blacklist/whitelist with neutral alternatives. Similarly, the OpenZFS file storage manager has also replaced its master/slave terms used for describing relations between storage environments with suitable replacements. Gabriel Csapo, a software engineer at LinkedIn, said on Twitter this week that he's also in the process of filing requests to update many of Microsoft's internal libraries.
A recent change description for the Go programming language says "There's been plenty of discussion on the usage of these terms in tech. I'm not trying to have yet another debate." It's clear that there are people who are hurt by them and who are made to feel unwelcome by their use due not to technical reasons but to their historical and social context. That's simply enough reason to replace them.

Anyway, allowlist and blocklist are more self-explanatory than whitelist and blacklist, so this change has negative cost.
That change was merged on June 9th -- but 9to5Mac reports it's just one of many places these changes are happening. "The Chrome team is beginning to eliminate even subtle forms of racism by moving away from terms like 'blacklist' and 'whitelist.' Google's Android team is now implementing a similar effort to replace the words 'blacklist' and 'whitelist.'" And ZDNet reports more open source projects are working on changing the name of their default Git repo from "master" to alternatives like main, default, primary, root, or another, including the OpenSSL encryption software library, automation software Ansible, Microsoft's PowerShell scripting language, the P5.js JavaScript library, and many others.

After seven years, Lego has finally unveiled a new Mindstorms kit, reports PC Magazine -- the Lego Mindstorms Robot Inventor, available this fall for $359: The Robot Inventor kit lets kids (or adults) build five different robot models out of 949 pieces, ranging from a four-legged walker to a bipedal wheeled robot that can give high-fives. All of these robots can be programmed to perform different tricks, like grabbing items, firing plastic projectiles, avoiding obstacles, and playing various sports with a ball.

The kit includes four low-profile, medium-angular motors; a color and light sensor; and a distance sensor, which work together with the Intelligent Hub block to power these robots and execute commands. Of course, like all Mindstorms kits, you can build your own robotic creations with the tools at hand, and add Lego Technic and System pieces for more complex projects.

The Intelligent Hub serves as the brain of Lego Mindstorms, and the block that houses the Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit is the most advanced one yet. It features six input/output ports for sensors and motors, a six-axis gyro/accelerometer, a speaker, and a five-by-five LED matrix. The Intelligent Hub and all robots built with it can be controlled wirelessly over Bluetooth with the Lego Mindstorms Robot Inventor app for Android, iOS, Windows 10, and macOS. The app supports programming in both the tile-based Scratch language and in Python, for more complex projects that require the precision of written code.

The creators of the Kotlin programming language — the Czech software development company Jetbrains — announced results from their annual "State of the Developer Ecosystem" survey. This year's survey involved 19,696 developers in 18 countries, and found that:

• JavaScript is the most used overall programming language. Websites are the most common type of application developers work on.

• Python has overtaken Java in the list of programming languages used in the last 12 months. And it is also the most studied language. In the last 12 months 30% of respondents have started or continued to learn Python — even more than last year.

• Go, Kotlin, and Python are the top 3 languages developers are planning to adopt or migrate to.

JetBrains also gathered some statistics from programmers for a special section on Lifestyle and Fun:

• 65% said they preferred laptops, while 33% preferred desktops.
• 52% said they contributed to charity.
• 20% said they owned a cat; another 20% said they owned a dog.
• 16% said they owned cryptocurrency.

And when asked if they contributed to open-source projects:

• 44% said "No, but I would like to."
• 20% said "I have only contributed a few times."
• 16% said "Yes, from time to time (several times a year)."
• 11% said "Yes, regularly (at least once a month)."
• 4% said "No, and I would not like to."
• 3% said "I work full-time on open-source code and get paid for it."
• 2% said "I work full-time on open-source code but do not get paid for it."

Also interesting were the answers to the question: If your country's government replaced your courts with AI, would you trust it? The results were:

• Probably not (26%)
• Definitely not (24%)
• Maybe (26%)
• Probably yes (20%)
• Definitely yes (5%)

Stack Overflow has released the results of its 2020 survey of nearly 65,000 developers, revealing their favorite and most dreaded programming languages, tools and frameworks. From a news writeup: The survey shows that TypeScript, Microsoft's superset of the widely-used JavaScript programming language, has overtaken Python as the second most beloved programming language behind Rust. This year 86% of respondents say they are keen to use Rust, while 67.1% want to use TypeScript, and 66.7% want to use Python. Stack Overflow attributes TypeScript's rising popularity to Microsoft's embrace of open source software as well as the existence of larger and more complex JavaScript and Node.js codebases.

Rust has been the most loved programming language for five years running, despite few developers having experience with it. This year, just 5.1% developers report having used Rust, compared with the 68% who use JavaScript, which is the most commonly used language. [...] Meanwhile, the top 10 most dreaded programming languages are VBA, Objective-C, Perl, Assembly, C, PHP, Ruby, C++, Java and R.

The report also looks at average salaries of each developer role. In the US, engineering managers attract the highest salary at $152,000 per year, followed by site reliability engineers who earn $140,000 per year. Salaries across the globe for these roles are lower, at $92,000 for an engineering manager and $80,000 for a site reliability engineer. Other high-paying roles with an average salary of at least $115,000 in the US include data scientist and machine learning specialist, DevOps specialist, engineer, back-end developer, embedded application developers, mobile developers, scientist, desktop application developer, and educator.

May 23rd marks the 25th anniversary of the day Sun Microsystems introduced Java to the world, notes InfoWorld.

Looking at both the present and the future, they write that currently Java remains popular "with enterprises even as a slew of rival languages, such as Python and Go, now compete for the hearts and minds of software developers." Java continues to rank among the top three programming languages in the most prominent language popularity indexes — Tiobe, RedMonk, and PyPL. Java had enjoyed a five-year stint as the top language in the Tiobe index until this month, when it was overtaken by the C language, thanks perhaps to the combination of C's wide use in medical equipment and the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, Java represents a huge ecosystem and source of jobs. There were an estimated nine million Java developers worldwide in 2017, according to Oracle. A recent search of jobs site Dice.com found nearly 12,000 Java-related jobs in the USA, compared to roughly 9,000 jobs in JavaScript and 7,600 in Python. Plus, Java has spawned an enormous ecosystem of tools ranging from the Spring Framework to application servers from companies such as IBM, Red Hat, and Oracle to the JavaFX rich media platform.

The developers behind Java — including Oracle and the broader OpenJDK community — have kept the platform moving forward. Released two months ago, Java 14, or Java Development Kit (JDK) 14, added capabilities including switch expressions, to simplify coding, and JDK Flight Recorder (JFR) Event Streaming, for continuous consumption of JFR data. Up next for Java is JDK 15, set to arrive as a production release in September 2020, with capabilities still being lined up for it. So far, the features expected include a preview of sealed classes, which provide more-granular control over code, and records, which provide classes that act as transparent carriers for immutable data. Also under consideration for Java is a plan dubbed Project Leyden, which would address "longterm pain points" in Java including resource footprint, startup time, and performance issues by introducing static images to the platform.

"The makers of the widely used JavaScript server-side runtime, Node.js, have released Deno 1.0, a new runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript that addresses 'design mistakes' in Node.js," reports ZDNet: Just like Node.js or Node, the Deno runtime is for executing JavaScript outside a web browser. However, unlike Node.js, Deno offers first-class support for Microsoft's increasingly popular Typescript, a superset of JavaScript designed for large projects... "With the changing JavaScript language, and new additions like TypeScript, building Node projects can become an arduous endeavor, involving managing build systems and other heavy-handed tooling that takes away from the fun of dynamic language scripting," writes Node.js creator Ryan Dahl in a blogpost co-authored by fellow Deno developers Bert Belder and Bartek Iwanczuk...

Deno is based on Google's Chromium V8 JavaScript engine.
While its standard modules are all written in TypeScript, Infoworld points out that Deno "can be a replacement for utility scripts that may have been written in Python or Bash... Deno was designed as a series of Rust crates to allow integration at different layers." (A blog post by its developers notes Deno "makes it easy to bind Rust future-based APIs into JavaScript promises.")

But "Like a web browser, it knows how to fetch external code," the developers wrote, calling Deno "a web browser for command-line scripts" while arguing that with Node, "the mechanism for linking to external libraries is fundamentally centralized through the NPM repository, which is not inline with the ideals of the web... Also like browsers, [Deno] code is executed in a secure sandbox by default. Scripts cannot access the hard drive, open network connections, or make any other potentially malicious actions without permission." In an interview Dahl tells JAXenter they're already keeping an index of third party modules that work on Deno at https://deno.land/x/.

"It's important to understand that Deno is not a fork of Node," the developers' blog post explains. "It's a completely new implementation..."

"One last thing," the blog post concludes. "Consider supporting this open source software work by pre-ordering a Deno v1.0 hoodie."

Ivan Mehta, writing for The Next Web: For years, IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) have tried to make development quicker by predicting the next part of a developer's code. Now, startups like Codota are using AI to help developers with code completion on any code editor. The Israel-based startup was found in 2015 by Dror Weiss and Eran Yahav. Codota's free-to-use autocomplete plug-in supports major languages such as Java, Python, Javascript, PHP, and Rust across major IDEs such as Eclipse and Android Studio. Yahav told me that Codota differs from other code completion AIs as it's able to predict the next token completion by leaning on an AI-based code 'dictionary.'

The Python Software Foundation and JetBrains collected over 24,000 responses for the third annual Python Developer's Survey. Among its findings: 59% said they used Python for data analysis, "followed by web development at 51%, and machine learning at 40%," reports ZDNet: Other major applications of Python include DevOps and system administration (39%), programming web tools like crawlers (37%), software testing (31%), education (26%), software prototyping (25%), network programming (21%), desktop development (18%), computer graphics (14%), embedded system development (8%), game development (7%) and mobile development (6%).

However, at 28%, web development remains the top purpose when respondents were asked what they used Python for the most. It is followed by data analysis (18%), machine learning (13%), and DevOps, and system administration (9%).

Good news given that the final version of Python 2 was just released, the survey found that 90% are using Python 3, up from 84% in 2018. Of those still on Python 2, 45% are using it for web development, and 41% are using it for DevOps and system administration. PSF speculates that web development's dominance in Python 2 is because of legacy code...

Some 68% of Python developers are building on Linux, followed by Windows at 48%, while macOS has a 29% share...

The PyCharm integrated development environment (IDE) from JetBrains is once again the top IDE with a 33% share, followed by Microsoft's open-source cross-platform editor VS Code with a 24% share.

Python adoption is often attributed to its moderate learning curve. The survey found that 44% of users have just two years' experience and 30% had three to five years' experience.

Charlotte Web writes: Since 2001 the TIOBE Index has been ranking top results for the search query +"<language> programming" on the top 25 search engines. "This month, C moved up past Java and entered the number one position," reports JAXenter.

"There's a new number one. (Or, should we say an old number one?)"

"Java and C were already very close in April, but this month C surpasses Java again," explains Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software. He also points out that the last time C was number one was back in 2015, suggesting that today embedded software languages like C and C++ "are gaining popularity because these are used in software for medical devices."

"On another note, it is also worth mentioning that Rust is really getting close to the top 20 now (from #27 to #21 within one month)."

"Perl, on the other hand, might be on its way off of the charts," argues JAXenter, "if it continues its downward trend. This month it saw a rate of change of -0.51%. It is currently number 18 on the list, but in May 2019 it was number 13."
Python also passed C++ to take the #3 spot, while C# overtook Visual Basic for the #5 spot. ("Classic Visual Basic" also lost the #16 spot to PL/SQL).

Even PHP rose a notch, pushing past SQL to take the #8 spot, and Scratch also moved up one, overtaking Objective C for the #19 position.

Lots of developers really want to learn Go, a programming language for large systems created by Google, meanwhile most developers are sick of attending meetings, and most of those working at multinational corporations aren't happy there. From a report: That's according to the results of a survey of over 16,655 developers from 76 countries carried out by HackerEarth, a company with offices in India and San Francisco that provides tools for recruiters to remotely assess developer coding skills. Go comes out top of the languages most developers want to know. The survey finds that 32% of experienced developers pick Go as the programming language they want to learn, well ahead of Python, which 24% say they want to learn. The desire for learning Go lines up with the results of a similar survey by remote developer hiring firm HackerRank. Go is used at Google, Netflix, American Express, Salesforce, IBM, Target, Twitch, Twitter, Uber, and Dropbox.

Inkscape, the free and open-source vector graphics editor, has released version 1.0 for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It comes after three years in development and over 16 years after Inkscape's initial release. BetaNews reports: "Built with the power of a team of volunteers, this open source vector editor represents the work of many hearts and hands from around the world, ensuring that Inkscape remains available free for everyone to download and enjoy. In fact, translations for over 20 languages were updated for version 1.0, making the software more accessible to people from all over the world. A major milestone was achieved in enabling Inkscape to use a more recent version of the software used to build the editor's user interface (namely GTK+3). Users with HiDPI (high resolution) screens can thank teamwork that took place during the 2018 Boston Hackfest for setting the updated-GTK wheels in motion," explains the developers.

The devs further explain, "The extensions system has undergone some fundamental changes in version 1.0. Over the years, Inkscape users have become used to working with third-party extensions, such as various ones used for laser cutting and exporting to file formats which are not a native part of Inkscape. While outreach to extension developers was undertaken as Inkscape migrates towards Python 3 and a more logical and fully tested extensions API (now hosted in a separate repository), not all third-party extensions have been brought forward to be compatible yet. This will mean that 1.0 may not allow some users to continue with their normal extensions workflow." The blog post, official release notes, and download page are available at their respective links.

This week Python's core developer blog announced the very last production release of Python 2.7. Hackaday reports: The intention was for it to coincide with PyCon 2020, but just like so many of the events planned for the first half of the year, the in-person conference had to be canceled in favor of a virtual one due to the COVID-19 epidemic. That might have stymied the celebration somewhat, but the release of Python 2.7.18 will still be looked on as a special moment for everyone involved.
"Thank you @gutworth for being the 2.7 release manager during 11 long years," Guido van Rossum announced on Twitter.

"It's time for the CPython community to say a fond but firm farewell to Python 2," reads the announcement on the core developer's blog. Python 2.7 has been under active development since the release of Python 2.6, more than 11 years ago. Over all those years, CPython's core developers and contributors sedulously applied bug fixes to the 2.7 branch, no small task as the Python 2 and 3 branches diverged.

There were large changes midway through Python 2.7's life such as PEP 466's feature backports to the ssl module and hash randomization. Traditionally, these features would never have been added to a branch in maintenance mode, but exceptions were made to keep Python 2 users secure. Thank you to CPython's community for such dedication.

Python 2.7 was lucky to have the services of two generations of binary builders and operating system experts, Martin von Löwis and Steve Dower for Windows, and Ronald Oussoren and Ned Deily for macOS. The reason we provided binary Python 2.7 releases for macOS 10.9, an operating system obsoleted by Apple 4 years ago, or why the "Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7" exists is the dedication of these individuals.

Python 3 would be nowhere without the dedication of the wider community. Library maintainers followed CPython by maintaining Python 2 support for many years butalso threw their weight behind the Python 3 statement. Linux distributors chased Python 2 out of their archives. Users migrated hundreds of millions of lines of code, developed porting guides, and kept Python 2 in their brain while Python 3 gained 10 years of improvements.

Finally, thank you to GvR for creating Python 0.9, 1, 2, and 3.

Long live Python 3+!

Python knocked C++ out of the top 3 on TIOBE's index of the most popular programming languages this month, while C# rose into the #5 position, overtaking Visual Basic.

But the biggest surprise was when last month's #26 most popular programming language suddenly jumped six spots into the #20 position, writes the CEO of TIOBE Software. "At first sight this might seem a bit strange for a programming language that is designed to teach children how to program." But if you take into account that there are in total more than 50 million projects "written" in Scratch and each month 1 million new Scratch projects are added, it can't be denied any more that Scratch is popular...

Since computers are getting more and more an integral part of life, it is actually quite logical that languages to teach children programming are getting popular.
TIOBE notes that Scratch is sponsored by major tech companies like Google and Intel (as well as the Cartoon Network and LEGO Foundation). But Jaxenter also applauds how the Scratch interface lets users remix or comment on existing projects in addition to sharing their own: The community not only introduces children to teamwork, creative problem solving, logical thinking, and collaboration, but it also introduces concepts such as open source communities and code review. They will learn concepts that might later become useful in Agile software development and DevOps.
TIOBE bases its rankings on the number of search engine results for courses, third party vendors, and programmers -- making the programming news site DevClass wonders if the spike came from "school aged children...stuck at home while schools are closed."

TIOBE still shows Java as the #1 most popular programming language (followed by C, Python, and C++). And this month's index also shows PHP rising into the #9 position -- overtaking SQL.

And COBOL is now #26 on the list, making it more popular than Rust.

The narration begins customarily, with the play-by-play announcer enthusiastically welcoming his audience live to a competition unfolding on the screen. But this is no ordinary competition. From a report: "It's the final of the two lonely blokes in a park contest," the announcer, Nick Heath, begins, setting the scene of two men idly kicking a ball in a park. When one of the men clips the ball and sends it rolling in the opposite direction, Mr. Heath observes: "Oh, that was absolutely terrible. It's what we've come to expect really from these two." He finishes the video with "Looking forward to the third- and fourth-place playoff later." Without live sports to cover because of the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. Heath, a freelance rugby commentator, has turned to covering everyday life in London.

His 20- to 30-second videos capture people in his neighborhood doing mundane tasks, like shoppers at a market ("Regional Qualifiers Market Bartering") or people pushing strollers ("International 4x4 Pushchair Formation Final. Live.") Marked with the hashtag #LifeCommentary, the clips have become a fun social media distraction for his more than 70,000 followers on Twitter. The clips blend irreverence and a sense of the absurd with a veneer of straight narration reminiscent of Monty Python's "Upper Class Twit of the Year" competition. Fans have found the videos wildly amusing thanks to Mr. Heath's over-the-top rapid delivery.

An anonymous reader shares some free streaming media options: There's over 10,000 public domain audiobooks at LibriVox.org, created by volunteers reading public domain works. (If you've got time, why not record yourself reading your own favorite public domain poem or novel?) And there's also a lot of free audiobooks (and ebooks) available through Hoopla, a free "digital media" service that's partnering with many public libraries across North America. They're not just offering books; there's also movies, music, TV shows, and even comic books.

As always, Amazon's audiobook service Audible offers a free one-month trial. But they've now also announced a new free service for "as long as the schools are closed... Kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories..."
You can also stream over 6,500 full-length movies over at archive.org, including Night of the Living Dead and The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.

They've even got a collection of classic cartoons, like Tom and Jerry, Betty Boop, the Pink Panther, and lots of Popeye (including one where Popeye runs for president against Bluto.)

And an archive.org blog post explains that that's just the beginning: If gaming is more your speed, then check out the MS-DOS Games in our Software Library. This collection includes dozens of classic favorites such as Pac-Man, Sim City, The Oregon Trail, Doom, Prince of Persia, Donkey Kong, and Tetris, as well as many more lesser-known titles such as Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! and Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist. Enjoy simulations of popular board and card games such as Monopoly [press F1 to begin], Stratego, Hearts, or Mah Jong, as well as flight simulators, sports games, and this treat for Monty Python fans.
They also have recordings of old-time radio shows -- as well as an archive of live music. ("Our most popular collection by far is The Grateful Dead, but you could also explore Smashing Pumpkins, Robert Randolph (and the Family Band), Disco Biscuits, Death Cab for Cutie, John Mayer, or Grace Potter and the Nocturnals...")

And then there's this: Relive the 80's and 90's (and learn how to style your scarf) with the Ephemeral VHS collection, or roam the cosmos with the NASA Image of the Day gallery. Learn about the history of advertising with this collection of retro TV ads or enjoy some psychedelic screensavers. No matter how long you're stuck indoors, the Internet Archive will have something new to offer you — so happy hunting!
Share your reactions -- and your own finds and suggestions -- in the comments! And in these days of social distancing, what are the best free entertain sites that you've found?

America's Supreme Court will soon decide whether Google infringed on a copyright that Oracle says it holds on the APIs of Java. But this week Oracle's executive vice president also wrote a blog post arguing that Google "sought the support of outside groups to bolster its position" by using friend-of-the-court briefs to "create the impression that this case is of great import and controversy, and a ruling in Oracle's favor will impede innovation."

"Upon closer inspection, what these briefs reveal is a significantly different picture, one where Google is the outlier, with very little meaningful support outside the purview of its financial fingerprints." As we discussed in a previous post, this case is not about innovation, it is about theft. Google copied verbatim more than 11,000 lines of software code, and now attempts post hoc to change the rules in order to excuse its conduct... As those of us that have watched Google over the past few decades know, Google's view boils down to the self-absorbed position that the work it is doing is of such consequence that the rules shouldn't apply to them. The problem for Google is that very few outside of its self-generated atmosphere agree.

Let's be clear, it is not commonplace or foundational in the software industry to steal other developer's software code. Rather, what is commonplace is a confluence of interests where code is licensed to facilitate its widespread deployment, with the owner choosing the terms... Java embraced choice, with three different licensing alternatives, including a freely deployed open source license, and a commercial license designed to maintain interoperability. And it turns out that nobody except Google found it necessary to steal despite Java's enormous popularity. It is not in dispute in this matter that Google destroyed Java interoperability so it is unbelievable that many of its amici take the position that Google needs to prevail in order to protect interoperability...

Out of 26 briefs, we found:

- 7 briefs representing 13 entities that received "substantial contributions" from Google;

- 8 briefs filed by entities or individuals that have financial ties to Google through grants, dues, cy pres settlement proceeds or employment of individual amici;

- 2 briefs filed by companies with a clear commercial interest in Google prevailing;

- 1 brief filed by several former U.S. government employees all of whom worked for a small government agency run by a former Google executive, despite the U.S. government itself filing a brief in favor of Oracle;

- 4 separate briefs representing a total of 7 individuals;

- A few other briefs where Google financial ties are likely;

- 1 brief submitted by a serial copyright infringer repeatedly sanctioned by the Courts;

What masqueraded as a mass show of support for Google, may not be much more than an exercise in transactional interests.
The groups Oracle is criticizing include the American Library Association, EFF, and the Python Software Foundation, as well as a brief by 83 computer scientists which included Doug Lea, a former memeber of the executive committee of the Java Community Process. Oracle's blog post also makes the argument that besides Microsoft and IBM, "not a single brief from the other 98 of the Top 100 tech companies was filed."

There was a response on Twitter from Joshua Bloch, who worked on the Java platform at Sun before leaving in 2004 to become Google's chief Java architect for the next 8 years. He called Oracle's blog post "nonsense." For example, Doug Lea -- who is in no small measure responsible for Java's success -- accepted one small grant from Google fourteen years ago, and promptly doled it out to deserving undergrads who were testing java.util.concurrent. Have you no shame, Oracle?

We are not Google shills. We are scientists and engineers. Some of us laid the theoretical groundwork for the profession, some designed the computers you grew up on, and some wrote the software you use every day.

We depend on the right to reimplement each others' APIs, and we are truly afraid that your irresponsible lawsuit may deprive us of that right, which we've enjoyed throughout our long careers.

The tech jobs marketplace at Hired.com crunched their data on more than 400,000 interview requests and job offers over the last year to produce their annual "State of Software Engineers" report. Among its surprising insights: software engineers with more than 10 years of experience get 20% fewere interview requests than engineers with 4 to 10 years of experience.

Other insights: Demand for AR/VR talent is up by 1400%, mirroring blockchain's 517% demand growth last year... In large U.S. tech hubs AR/VR engineer salaries range from $135k - $150k... 46% of software engineers rank AR/VR as one of the top 3 technologies they'd like to learn in 2020... If you work in AR/VR, you may want to move to San Francisco, where they pay $150k/year on average.
The next-highest growth in demand came for "gaming engineers" and "computer vision engineers" -- with both positions seeing a 146% increase in demand over 2018. The next-highest demand growth was for "search engineers" (increasing 137%) and for "machine learning engineers" (increasing 89%). Demand for "blockchain engineers" increased by just 9%.

But they also report that demand for frontend and backend engineers "grew steadily by 17%, which shows that all companies -- not just Silicon Valley tech giants -- are evolving into being tech companies..." The worldwide process of digital transformation, while something of a buzzword, reflects a critical truth: every company is now a technology company. Whether the company is Bank of America, Alaska Airlines, Sainsbury's, or Tesla, investment in top software engineering talent isn't a future ambition, it's a matter of survival.
And the #1 most-desired coding skill was Go (for the second year in a row), "garnering an average of 9.2 interview requests for every Go-skilled candidate..." But there may be a larger trend. All told, the number of interview requests across all languages remained nearly constant year-over-year, with only minor fluctuations in average requests, and zero change in how each language ranked against others. This could suggest that supply for these skills has not yet caught up with demand...

According to Robert Half, 67% of IT managers plan to expand their teams in areas such as security, cloud computing and business intelligence, but 89% reported challenges in recruiting that talent. Those challenges in hiring are even greater for roles related to machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.
Their analysis concludes the most in-demand programming languages are Go, Scala, Ruby, TypeScript, Kotlin, Objective C, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, Java, HTML, and then Python -- though Python, JavaScript, and Java are engineers' favorite coding languages, "largely because of their useful and well-maintained libraries and packages..."

"Ruby, PHP and Objective C are ranked the least favorite (and least fun) languages for software engineers."

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: Python is tying with Java as the second most popular programming language behind JavaScript, according to developer analyst RedMonk's latest ranking.

The second spot for Python is the highest position it's ever attained in RedMonk's list of top programming languages, which is based on an analysis of GitHub and Stack Overflow data. Historically, Python has been steady in fourth position but it rose to third spot three years ago in RedMonk's tables... Python has been rising across several programming language popularity indexes, including Tiobe and IEEE Spectrum.

Microsoft-maintained TypeScript for large-scale JavaScript projects has also risen one place to ninth position along with C... Rust is a popular language among developers who discuss technical challenges on StackOverflow, but it hasn't moved from its spot at 21.

"Now budding Python developers can read up on the National Security Agency's own Python training materials," reports ZDNet: Software engineer Chris Swenson filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA for access to its Python training materials and received a lightly redacted 400-page printout of the agency's COMP 3321 Python training course. Swenson has since scanned the documents, ran OCR on the text to make it searchable, and hosted it on Digital Oceans Spaces. The material has also been uploaded to the Internet Archive...

"If you don't know any programming languages yet, Python is a good place to start. If you already know a different language, it's easy to pick Python on the side. Python isn't entirely free of frustration and confusion, but hopefully you can avoid those parts until long after you get some good use out of Python," writes the NSA...

Swenson told ZDNet that it was "mostly just curiosity" that motivated him to ask the NSA about its Python training material. He also said the NSA had excluded some course material, but that he'll keep trying to get more from the agency... Python developer Kushal Das has pulled out some interesting details from the material. He found that the NSA has an internal Python package index, that its GitLab instance is gitlab.coi.nsa.ic.gov, and that it has a Jupyter gallery that runs over HTTPS. NSA also offers git installation instructions for CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Windows, but not Debian.

Phoronix's Michael Larabel is doing some performance testing on Walmart's $199 Motile-branded M141 laptop (which has an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U processor, Vega 3 graphics, 4GB of RAM, and a 14-inch 1080p display).

But first he compared the performance of its pre-installed Windows 10 OS against the forthcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux distribution.

Some highlights: - Java text rendering performance did come out much faster on Ubuntu 20.04 with this Ryzen 3 3200U laptop...

- The GraphicsMagick imaging program tended to run much better on Linux, which we've seen on other systems in the past as well.

- Intel's Embree path-tracer was running faster on Ubuntu...

- Various video benchmarks were generally favoring Ubuntu for better performance though I wouldn't recommend much in the way of video encoding from such a low-end device...

- The GIMP image editing software was running much faster on Ubuntu 20.04 in its development state than GIMP 2.10 on Windows 10...

- Python 3 performance is still much faster on Linux than Windows.

- If planning to do any web/LAMP development from the budget laptop and testing PHP scripts locally, Ubuntu's PHP7 performance continues running much stronger than Windows 10. - Git also continues running much faster on Linux.
Their conclusion? "Out of 63 tests ran on both operating systems, Ubuntu 20.04 was the fastest... coming in front 60% of the time." (This sounds like 38 wins for Ubuntu versus 25 wins for Windows 10.)

"If taking the geometric mean of all 63 tests, the Motile $199 laptop with Ryzen 3 3200U was 15% faster on Ubuntu Linux over Windows 10."