languages

C# set to take Java's crown as Java drops 50 percent

Using book sales as surrogate tea leaves, Mike Hendrickson of the O'Reilly Radar finds life bleak for pretty much every major programming language except C#, Javascript, and Ruby. Java? It has plunged by 50 percent since 2003.

Sun Microsystems is hedging its bets on web scripting languages, recently adding Python experts to its fold. So perhaps Sun will weather the storm. Regardless, even despite its five-year slide, Java still holds the biggest share of the book-buying market, as this chart shows:… Read more

Sun hires Python pros in dynamic languages push

Correction 10:45 a.m. PST: This blog initially misspelled the name of one of the Python programmers hired by Sun. His name is Frank Wierzbicki.

Sun Microsystems has hired high-profile Python programmers Ted Leung and Frank Wierzbicki, stepping up its bet on open source and scripting languages.

Sun has already hired other open-source luminaries such as Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock, in an effort to capitalize on open source and diversify beyond its roots in Java and Solaris.

Python is one of several dynamic, or scripting, languages that have grown in popularity over the past several years. Developers are … Read more

SpeakLike translates chatting as you go

SpeakLike uses quick automatic translation and human translators to break down language barriers over instant messaging.

It appears like an ordinary chat application as you type. Choose which languages you want to speak in. You can see what you're typing in your own language and what the other person is seeing translated. If a word or phrase is more complex, SpeakLike will go to a human translator and make sure it's accurate. The company says the more you use it the smarter it becomes and the faster it will return results in the future.

You can also add … Read more

Google Translate bug mixes up Heath Ledger, Tom Cruise

UPDATE: Google representatives informed CNET News.com on Thursday that this "internal issue with Google Translate" has been fixed.

Gawker has unearthed a rather odd bug in the Google Translate software: its English-to-Spanish translator converts the name of the actor Heath Ledger, who died tragically on Tuesday, to the name of another actor--Tom Cruise. So if you enter in "I will miss Heath Ledger," Google Translate will come back with "Voy a perder Tom Cruise."

This looks like a simple bug in the system, perhaps the work of a bored Googler somewhere in the … Read more

Professors: Java 'damaging' to students

Bring back the basics. Two computer science professors at New York University complain that universities aren't preparing students for today's software industry. They claim that students trained in Java "found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging."

Read the full story on Slashdot: "Professors slam Java as 'damaging' to students" … Read more

Wait, what does that mean?

Regardless of my cohort Tim Moynihan's beliefs, words mean something, and definitions are usually pretty clear in every field except, let's face it, technology. When tech gets involved, an "icon" ceases to be a conventional religious image and becomes a little graphic on your screen and "boot" means a startup process instead of cowboy footwear.

Global Language Monitor, analyzer of words and publisher of top-10 buzzword lists, today released its Top 10 Most Confusing (yet widely used) High Tech Buzzwords for 2007. Topping the list is the near-ubiquitous but apparently misleading iPod: "What … Read more

Mango offers language learning online

It's clear that a lot of work went into Mango's compendium of online language lessons. If the choice of 13 languages doesn't impress you, how about the fact that more than 100 lessons constitute each course, and between 70 and 150 slides or more add up to a single lesson? Or how about conversational lessons appearing in their own alphabet, with AJAX pronunciation pop-ups to reinforce the visual and phonetic learning combo?

To begin, choose a language from among Asian and Romance languages (or Pig Latin) for English speakers, or English lessons in Spanish and Polish. Like most language software, Mango shows and plays conversations between two people in a variety of social relationships. The next hundred or so slides dissect and recombine the conversation line by line and word by word until you've become familiar with the phrases by dint of repetition if not actual absorption. Each ensuing level builds on skills learned in the last.… Read more

'Lips Phone' is ready for pillow talk

Valentine's Day is six months away, but we sense a disturbing trend already in the works. Just yesterday we mentioned the nauseating "I Love You" mouse, a heart-shaped gadget that professes its feelings for whomever lays hands on it. Today, we see that the weirdos at Hong Kong-based Brando appear to be in an amorous mood as well (shudder) with the "Lips Phone," a Warhol-esque retro throwback to the '60s in, of course, a pink gloss finish. We're just thankful that it's a land line, so we don't have to witness people … Read more

Microsoft releases initial code for IronRuby

Continuing to warm up to Web developers, Microsoft released an early version of IronRuby that will let programmers write .Net applications with the Ruby language.

In tandem with the "first code drop" of IronRuby, Microsoft will be taking code contributions from outsiders, John Lam, program manager on the Common Language Runtime team at Microsoft, wrote in his blog on Monday.

Lam said that the company intends to fully release IronRuby on RubyForge and take a wider range of contributions by the end of August. The software is available under the open-source style Microsoft Permissive License.

IronRuby uses the … Read more