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02 August 2019

The Hacker’s Tribute Vol. 16: GNU Autotools, AI, and Javalin

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Open source software, new connections, and brave new endeavours! The Hacker’s Tribute Vol. 16 brings us a summer of sharing and connectivity unlike we’ve ever seen before.

Greetings everyone!

Summertime is an extremely social time. And it’s a joy to spend time with friends and relatives in parks, on the beaches, wherever the weather permits.

In short, it’s a time for connectivity! And a time for openness and trying new things. People tend to embark on new adventures in the summer.

And in tech, that sense of openness and adventure is no different, as we introduce some of the summer’s hottest innovations.

In our special Summer Open Source Connectivity Issue, we bring you; AI powering our future navigations, new app building techniques, web frameworks, and much more.

This may be the season for recreation, but here, we put our minds into app creation!

Get building, coders!

dan

Dan ‘the Man’ Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief, the Hacker’s Tribute

1. Nice to Meet GNU!

GNU Autotools takes the concept of delivering code, and throws it clear out the window! Never heard of it? Well, you may be surprised to know that you already use it. Ritualistic writing will be a thing of the past, as it will take only 20 lines of code, for the next 4,000 to auto-generate. Miracles do happen.

https://opensource.com/article/19/7/introduction-gnu-autotools

2. Open Source Messenger God

Hermes, the Greek messenger god, held a formidable curriculum vitae. Holding true to his name, is the new Open Source JavaScript engine released by Facebook, used to run React Native apps on Android. Prepare for speed, glorious speed, in your app start up times.

https://hub.packtpub.com/facebook-released-hermes-an-open-source-javascript-engine-to-run-react-native-apps-on-android/ 

3. Artificial Intelligence, Real Mapping

Cartographers need not worry; they won’t be replaced by robots. But for millions of users, roads are still yet to be mapped across rural areas. The painstaking work of manual satellite image review will be provided AI Mapping relief, by none-other than Facebook – a mid-sized social media agency based in the US. Big ambitions, very fitting to a big network.

https://tech.fb.com/ai-is-supercharging-the-creation-of-maps-around-the-world/

4. Ride of the Valhalla

Incredible news! Brian Goetz takes us through an in-depth journey with the new Project Valhalla. Discover the new venue designed to incubate and explore advanced Java VM, and Language features. He discusses “L-World Inline Types”, Generic Specialisation, Enhanced volatiles, and much more! Click here, for the video, as well as download build links.

https://youtu.be/1H4vmT-Va4o

5. Javalin: The Meeting of Minds

Javalin is the very best of both worlds, and it’s here to stay! The lightweight web framework for Kotlin and Java is designed with blocking, and simplicity in mind. What started as a fork of the SparkJava framework, has been quickly turned into a fresh-new protégé of JavaScript framework, koa.js.

https://www.infoq.com/news/2019/07/javalin/

6. Lazy vs. Eager – Kotlin Sequences

Florina Muntenescu explains it in the simplest of forms – collections and sequences in Kotlin. Read the post, for incredible insights into the two schools of thought; Eagerness, using Collections, and Laziness, using Sequences. The differences are stark, and depending on your data size, one beats the other!

https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/collections-and-sequences-in-kotlin-55db18283aca

Knowledge is free, and shared. We’re always on the lookout for new insights into the world of App Development. Get in touch with us, and we’ll give you a heads up on your next big idea.

We’ll be in touch with more news, as it happens!



Author

Hackers of the world dream to be him. And that’s an understatement. With methods decades ahead of cyberspace, he’s proceeded only by his own reputation. ‘The Man’ infamous for single-handedly causing the ’08 global financial meltdown, he dropped off-grid searching for purpose. He twice-dominated each of the Himalayan peaks, negotiated the rift valleys of Africa, and swam the Amazonian Basin end-to-end. It was in Siberia where we caught up to him – convincing him to work for the ‘good guys’. The veteran’s veteran of coding, now confidently within our ranks, is finally a force for good. Just don’t test him.