#dev
- The Software Year That Ended With Everything on Fire
Looking back at 2021's biggest software and security stories, from Log4Shell to Copilot to Gopher, as the year closes out.
- Log4j Fatigue Is Real, and It's Teaching Us the Wrong Lesson (Sort Of)
Three Log4j patches in under two weeks left security teams exhausted — and exposed a deeper problem: nobody actually knows what's in their software.
- Skillsoft Buys Codecademy for $525 Million: What It Means for Learn-to-Code
Corporate e-learning giant Skillsoft is acquiring Codecademy in a ~$525 million cash-and-stock deal, betting big on developer upskilling.
- Copilot Writes Fast. Does It Write Safe?
New academic research digs into how often GitHub Copilot's AI-generated code suggestions contain insecure patterns.
- Apache Rushes Out a Patch for a Nasty Log4j Flaw
A maximum-severity remote-code-execution bug in the ubiquitous Apache Log4j library got its first fix today, and the fallout is only beginning.
- Serverless and Edge Functions Are Quietly Eating the Server
Why more web developers are shipping request-driven code to Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions, and Lambda@Edge instead of managing servers.
- Microsoft Ignite Makes Its Pitch: Windows 11 Is the Hybrid Work OS
At Ignite, Microsoft leaned hard into Windows 11 for enterprises, expanded Windows 365, and previewed autoscaling for Azure Virtual Desktop.
- Low-Code Is Eating the Backlog
Why Power Apps, Airtable, Retool, and Bubble are showing up in every software team's toolkit this year.
- Rust's Third Edition Is Here, and It's Barely Noticeable (That's the Point)
Rust 1.56 shipped the 2021 Edition with small, opt-in changes that quietly smooth out years of rough edges.
- GitHub Copilot Is Done Being a VS Code Exclusive
Copilot's new Neovim and JetBrains plugins mean the AI pair programmer isn't tied to one editor anymore.
- Copilot Packs Its Bags: GitHub's AI Pair Programmer Leaves VS Code Behind
GitHub shipped a Copilot plugin for Neovim, with JetBrains support landing days later, taking the AI coding assistant beyond its VS Code roots.
- The New MacBook Pros, One Week Later: The Reviews Are In
A week after Apple's Unleashed event, early M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro owners are reporting big real-world speedups for developers and video editors.
- Rust 2021 Edition Is Here, and It's the Good Kind of Boring
Rust 1.56.0 and the 2021 Edition shipped today with disjoint closure captures, array IntoIterator, and new macro or-patterns.
- Silverlight Is Officially Dead, and Almost Nobody Noticed
Microsoft ended support for Silverlight on October 12, 2021, quietly closing the book on the browser plugin era that Flash's death began.
- Windows 11 Is Here, and the TPM Wall Is the Real Story
Windows 11 began rolling out October 5 as a free upgrade, but its TPM 2.0 and CPU requirements are locking out a surprising number of otherwise capable PCs.
- Windows 11 Arrives This Week — What Actually Changed
A look at what's really new in Windows 11 ahead of its October 5 rollout, from the redesigned Start menu to the Android apps that aren't ready yet.
- GitHub Copilot's Preview Is a Glimpse of How We'll All Code Soon
GitHub's Copilot technical preview pairs Codex with VS Code, nailing Python functions on the first try 43% of the time.
- Who Owns the Code an AI Writes for You?
As Copilot and Codex go live in preview, developers and lawyers are fighting over whether AI-generated code exposes companies to copyright risk.
- Why ARM-Based Laptops Are Suddenly Interesting
The M1 proved ARM laptops can beat x86 on performance-per-watt, and now Qualcomm and Windows OEMs are scrambling to catch up.
- OpenAI Cracks Open Codex, the Brain Behind GitHub Copilot
OpenAI's new Codex API, a GPT-3 descendant trained on 54 million GitHub repos, solves over 70% of its benchmark problems and already powers Copilot.
- Poking Around the Windows 11 Insider Builds
A look at what's actually in the early Windows 11 Insider Preview builds ahead of a promised Holiday 2021 launch.
- Is GitHub Copilot Actually Going to Change How We Write Code?
GitHub's AI pair programmer is autocompleting whole functions in VS Code, and developers are split on what that means for the craft.
- GitHub Copilot Is Great at Autocomplete. Whose Code Is It Actually Using?
Weeks into Copilot's preview, developers are asking hard questions about training an AI coder on public repos, including copyleft-licensed code.
- Python 3.10 Beta 4 Closes the Book on New Features
Python 3.10.0 beta 4 arrived July 10, marking the last beta before feature freeze and the road to October's final release.
- GitHub Copilot Wants to Finish Your Sentences
GitHub and OpenAI launched Copilot, a Codex-powered AI pair programmer that suggests code as you type, starting as a free VS Code preview.
- The Rumor Mill Around GitHub's AI Pair Programmer Is In Overdrive
Developers are swapping screenshots of a mysterious GitHub tool that autocompletes whole functions from a comment, and OpenAI's Codex looks like the engine.
- The App Store's Fate Is Now in a Judge's Hands
Closing arguments in Epic v. Apple wrapped last month, and developers are stuck in limbo waiting on a ruling that could reshape app-store economics.
- Stack Overflow Just Sold for $1.8 Billion — and It Says a Lot About Who Runs Software Now
Prosus is acquiring Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion, a striking sign of how much value the industry now places on developer-first platforms.
- Visual Studio 2019's Quiet Build 2021 Win: Git and GitHub Actions Baked In
A look at the Visual Studio 2019 productivity update from Microsoft Build 2021 and why its Git and container tooling matters more than the AI headlines.
- Microsoft Build 2021: Low-Code Meets GPT-3, and Linux GUIs Come to Windows
Build 2021 kicks off with Power Fx, a GPT-3-powered formula language for Power Platform, plus native Linux GUI app support in WSL.