Articles by David Bolton

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  XNA is Dead; Long Live MonoGame

  Back in January, Microsoft announced it was going to phase out XNA, the development framework that powered Xbox development. It also said it was no longer evolving the DirectX API, which has been…
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  A Free C++ Compiler for Android, But...

  Intel has just launched a C++ compiler for Android that compiles C++ source code and generates Android compatible bytecode. It isn't the first C++ compiler to do it: The c4droid C++ compiler and…
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  A Walk Through the Java Ecosystem

  To a new developer, the world of Java can be a very confusing place. While Java itself is a relatively straightforward programming language to learn, there are a number of associated technologies…
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  Backend as a Service is Burgeoning

  Anyone doubting the viability of Backend as a Service (BaaS) only needs to look at Facebook's acquisition of Parse.com this year and the growth of BaaS over the past eight years. Facebook's acqui…
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  Why I Stopped Playing Candy Crush Saga

  Ramin Shokrizade's article in GamaSutra on the top F2P monetization tricks was the reason I quit King’s Candy Crush Saga in July after playing it nearly every day since January. I'd got up to abo…
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  New Vulnerabilities in Older SIM Cards

  It's just over 22 years since the first SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards appeared and now they're everywhere in cell phones and other mobile devices. They're mandatory in GSM devices. And n…
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  Why You Should Learn to Use LINQ

  One of the biggest steps forward for C# came in C# 3.0/.NET 3.5 when Microsoft introduced Language Integrated Query (LINQ). The easiest way I've come up with to explain LINQ is that it's almost a…
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  What is a Lambda Expression?

  Java 8 will include Lambda expressions. They’re being added in as part of Project Lambda. But what is a Lambda expression? The term “Lambda” comes from mathematics, where it's called lambda calcu…
• When and Why You Should Use C++

  Now in its 25th year, C++ sits a little awkwardly in the modern world. It grew enormously in the late 80s and early 90s, even overcoming the Department of Defense's 1987 "Only Ada code to be used…
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  Why Should I Care About the JVM?

  Possibly the cleverest thing that Sun ever did was create the JVM that underpins Java. JVM is short for Java Virtual Machine and it comes as quite a surprise to many Java developers to find out t…