News (17)

PHP, Perl and Python pass Homeland Security test

Coverity, which creates automated source-code analysis tools, announced late Monday its first list of open-source projects that have been certified as free of security defects. Read more »

Google open sources 'Protocol Buffers'

Google has open sourced an internal development tool called 'Protocol Buffers', a data description language that forms a basic part of the operation of the company's vast computing cluster. Read more »

Flaws found in open source codes

A project funded by the US Department of Homeland Security has praised improvements in open source security, while outlining some common errors. Read more »

Adobe tools put desktop apps in the browser

Adobe is preparing to open source development tools that will enable existing desktop and server software to run in Web browsers, according to reports. Read more »

BBC opens up its code

Software developed by the broadcaster's researchers has been collated in a new section of the BBC's Web site. Read more »

Google takes open source back to school

Google Highly Open Participation Contest is a global program that is an analogue of the Google Summer of Code program (SoC) targeted at high school students. Read more »

Developers want Ballmer to show money

Australian developers have asked Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer what the company will do to address a Microsoft coding landscape that hasn't offered financial rewards like those available to iPhone and Facebook developers. Read more »

Google open sources XML-alternative Protocol Buffers

XML, it seems, has run out of steam for Google. Google said Monday that it has created an open source project for a data interchange format called Protocol Buffers. Read more »

Cisco cleans up with SOAP alternative?

Cisco has announced an alternative to the Web-services protocol SOAP — and made it open source. Cisco says its Etch messaging protocol will be more efficient than the SOAP standard and the company will release the source code. Read more »

Google courts open-source developers

Google has launched a new site intended to serve as a central resource for developers working on applications related to the popular search engine. Read more »

Features (26)

Huffman coding in Python

We'll show you how to implement Huffman encoding, which is useful when dealing with small sets of items, such as character strings, in Python. Read more »

A Quick Start to Python

With the final release of Python 2.5 we thought it was about time Builder AU gave our readers an overview of the popular programming language. Builder AU's Nick Gibson has stepped up to the plate to write this introductory article for beginners. Read more »

Python in the enterprise: Pros and cons

Python has developed quite a following among a small-but-growing cadre of self-described Pythonistas. This article highlights the pros and cons of building enterprise-class application in Python. Read more »

Generating functions rather than lists in Python

There are situations where list comprehensions are useful, but also situations where you're better served by using some other form. In this article we'll take an example of where a function factory is the better choice. Read more »

Less painful getters and setters using properties in Python

It's a popular design guideline to require class attributes to be managed by methods, usually referred to as getter and setter methods. These methods increase the safety of your attributes, but come at a cost of simplicity and verbosity. With Python properties, you can have it both ways. Read more »

Faster, smaller, clearer: Python iterator tools

With Python's itertools module you can quickly and simply perform some of the more complicated operations you'll need to do on lists. It will make your code perform better and become easier to read. Read more »

Pick up some Python with this script walk-through

In Python, loops and flow control statements aren't terminated, which can get a little confusing. Here is a script walk-through from Builder.com to help you with Python. Read more »

One virtual machine to rule them all

The Java platform can be used to interpret more than just the Java language -- it has expanded its coverage to include Ruby, Python with PHP to follow shortly. Read more »

Will C# benefit Microsoft, or the industry?

Now that C# has been approved by the ISO, one question looms large: Will Microsoft use its intellectual property rights to make it difficult for developers to comply with the standard? Read more »

Wrap your mind around Python

Python is an open source scripting language that emphasises speed and clarity in the code. Although the syntax is relatively simple, Python is powerful. Read more »

Blog (3)

No, you can't have private attributes in Python

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- Is the lack of privacy a real shortcoming of the language, or is our judgment clouded by the old conventions of C++ and Java? Why do we need private variables anyway -- at what point does defensive programming become paranoia? Read more »

CodeGear Q&A

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- CodeGear is the new name for Borland's developer tools business. Builder AU spoke to CodeGear about the handover and direction of the developer tools business under the new banner. Read more »

How to manage a team of geniuses

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Hiring a team of developers and techies that are smarter than you is inevitable. As a manager how do you cope with this and keep things on track? Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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