Articles by David Bolton

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  5 Python Features That You May Not Be Familiar With

  Python, for all its ease of learning, has some pockets of real complexity. If you’ve ever read through the programming language’s documentation, you’ve probably gotten a sense of that. If you’re…
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  Visual Studio Code and Python: Getting Started

  Four years ago, Microsoft released an open-source cross-platform IDE called Visual Studio Code that became very popular. (I rate it as the best IDE on Linux, which is somewhat ironic given Micros…
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  Kotlin in 2020: 'A Better Java' Continues to Mature

  Kotlin is an open-source programming language that’s often pitched as a Java replacement; it’s also a “first class” language for Android development, according to Google. Over the past few years,…
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  Is Desktop Development Dead? Or Still Worth It?

  I started my first programming job in October 1981, developing desktop computer software on Apple II and Act Sirius. For the next twenty years, although I changed jobs, the tasks still involved d…
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  New Python Programmer? Learn These Concepts First.

  As a novice Python developer, the world is your oyster with regards to the type of applications that you can create. Despite its age (30 years—an eternity in tech-world terms), Python remains a d…
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  Running Android on PC: A Developer's Overview

  As a developer, I occasionally have to test software on non-PC platforms. Naturally, it's easier if this testing takes place on a PC, as it makes debugging much easier. For example, what if you w…
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  .NET Core 3.0: A Close Look for Developers

  Before we plunge into .NET Core, it's worth revisiting some of .NET's dense, tangled history. Twenty years ago, Microsoft was preparing the .NET framework for launch; in 2001, it produced the fir…
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  C++ and C: How These Languages are Diverging

  C++ started life as “C with Classes” back in the 1980s, though it was quickly renamed “C++.” For much of the past thirty-odd years, C++ has been regarded as a superset of C; any C program could b…
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  4 Reasons to Employ Older Developers

  Despite legislation making it overtly illegal, ageism persists in the technology industry. The fear is particularly acute because of fears that automation and A.I. will erode the overall number o…
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  5 Reasons to Use a VM for Development

  I started using virtual machines (VMs) on my development PC about six years ago; I was keen to learn Linux, having been a Windows developer since the mid-1990s. At first, I used an old Windows PC…