Articles by David Bolton

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  Substitute PostgreSQL for Your NoSQL Needs

  Over the past five years or so, NoSQL databases have enjoyed a spike in popularity compared to relational (i.e., SQL-driven) databases, thanks in large part to industries such as online gaming. A…
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  Python 3 String-Processing Causing Problems?

  Widely known as a general-purpose programming language, Python is excellent at string handling—but a few things have changed between Python 2 and Python 3. This article is a reminder of what Pyth…
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  Here's Why Apple Rejected Your iOS App

  After six years, do you think the number of submissions to the App Store has stayed level, climbed, or fallen? As demonstrated by this chart of the App Store’s metrics (hat tip to Pocket Gamer),…
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  Building Apps in Swift: Using Storyboards

  In our previous article on building apps with Apple’s Swift, we demonstrated how to use view controllers and views in code to craft a simple app. Before we begin with this next lesson, using stor…
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  A Look at 5 Free Python Editors

  Python programming can be done from the command line, but an IDE makes life so much easier. With so many options out there, which one should you use? To help you decide, I've looked at five Pytho…
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  How to Build Apps in Swift

  Earlier this year, Apple executives unveiled Swift, which is meant to eventually replace Objective-C as the programming language of choice for Macs and iOS devices. While Objective-C remains popu…
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  Passing Functions as Parameters

  When I first started programming in the late 1970s, I was heavily into Pascal and the concept of passing an address as a parameter was just unheard of outside of academic circles. Procedural prog…
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  Creating Random Access Text in C#

  Back in April I looked at disk folders as a possible alternative to NoSQL or using a relational DB. My conclusion wasn't encouraging—I was concerned about poor performance, especially on Linux. T…
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  6 Developer Tips for Better Disaster Recovery

  You go through life thinking that it won't happen to you, but someday it will: Your development PC suddenly goes from being state-of-the-art to having the computing power of a brick. How quickly…
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  Is the Time Right to Learn Python 3?

  Python is an excellent and very popular programming language, considered one of the best-designed. It has a simple, clear syntax and runs very fast (faster if you compile it with CPython), but th…