Articles by David Bolton

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  How Does Visual Studio Code for Linux Work?

  As names go, Visual Studio Code (VSC) is perhaps a little misleading. Visual Studio is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) produced by Microsoft, a company not exactly known…
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  Using Frameworks to Simplify JavaScript

  Have you ever gone to a restaurant and had trouble selecting a dish because there were too many to choose from? The word for this is “overchoice,” and it’s how I feel about the various JavaScript…
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  Web Development in Python and web2py

  PHP is the traditional server language for developing Websites. It’s free and ubiquitous, undergirding hundreds of open-source applications such as WordPress and Drupal. Getting started is very e…
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  Why It's Worth Learning the R Language

  If you’re a developer, chances are good you’ve heard about the programming language R, used for statistical computing and graphics. Although nowhere near as ubiquitous (or popular) as programming…
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  5 Reasons to Use C++ for Android Development

  Although Apple and Google champion specific programming languages for mobile development (Objective-C/Swift for Apple’s iOS, and Java for Google Android), independent developers spend a lot of ti…
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  Five Ways to Simplify Your Code

  Most of us aren't lucky enough to spend our programming lives working on so-called “green-field projects,” i.e., ones that allow you to create the initial code. Since 2000 I've probably spent ten…
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  Try Out Intel DAAL to Process Big Data

  Big Data is the generic term for massive amounts of data generated mainly (but not exclusively) by human activities. The growth in structured and unstructured data has accelerated year after year…
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  Can C# Ever Match C++ for Speed?

  Can C# beat out C++ for speed of execution? If you asked me that question, I’d generally say “No.” But interested in testing the idea out, I recently took a program written in C++, converted it t…
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  Developing in C/C++? Consider Clang

  In order to better understand Clang, a compiler front-end for C, C++, Objective-C++, and Objective-C, you have to start with the LLVM project. LLVM is short for Low-Level Virtual Machine; it’s an…
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  Choosing PostgreSQL Over MySQL, MariaDB

  Check out this recent chart from Google Trends, which shows interest in PostgreSQL largely holding steady over the past ten years, even as MySQL faces fairly significant declines. It’s a good jum…