Topic: Computing/Software (Page 3)
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🔗 Fourth-Generation Programming Language
A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is any computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each of the programming language generations aims to provide a higher level of abstraction of the internal computer hardware details, making the language more programmer-friendly, powerful, and versatile. While the definition of 4GL has changed over time, it can be typified by operating more with large collections of information at once rather than focusing on just bits and bytes. Languages claimed to be 4GL may include support for database management, report generation, mathematical optimization, GUI development, or web development. Some researchers state that 4GLs are a subset of domain-specific languages.
The concept of 4GL was developed from the 1970s through the 1990s, overlapping most of the development of 3GL, with 4GLs identified as "non-procedural" or "program-generating" languages, contrasted with 3GLs being algorithmic or procedural languages. While 3GLs like C, C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript remain popular for a wide variety of uses, 4GLs as originally defined found uses focused on databases, reports, and websites. Some advanced 3GLs like Python, Ruby, and Perl combine some 4GL abilities within a general-purpose 3GL environment, and libraries with 4GL-like features have been developed as add-ons for most popular 3GLs, producing languages that are a mix of 3GL and 4GL, blurring the distinction.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were efforts to develop fifth-generation programming languages (5GL).
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- "Fourth-Generation Programming Language" | 2022-04-27 | 120 Upvotes 103 Comments
🔗 I never realized how useful netcat is
netcat (often abbreviated to nc) is a computer networking utility for reading from and writing to network connections using TCP or UDP. The command is designed to be a dependable back-end that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and investigation tool, since it can produce almost any kind of connection its user could need and has a number of built-in capabilities.
Its list of features includes port scanning, transferring files, and port listening, and it can be used as a backdoor.
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- "I never realized how useful netcat is" | 2009-09-16 | 190 Upvotes 32 Comments
🔗 Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License
WTFPL is a GPL-compatible permissive license most commonly used as a free software license. As a public domain like license, the WTFPL is essentially the same as dedication to the public domain. It allows redistribution and modification of the work under any terms. The title is an abbreviation of "Do what the fuck you want to Public License".
The first version of the WTFPL, released in March 2000, was written by Banlu Kemiyatorn for his own software project. Sam Hocevar, Debian's former project leader, wrote version 2.
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- "Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License" | 2022-09-13 | 18 Upvotes 4 Comments
- "Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License" | 2013-05-19 | 38 Upvotes 63 Comments
- "WTFPL" | 2010-03-01 | 64 Upvotes 34 Comments
🔗 Project Xanadu
Project Xanadu ( ZAN-É™-doo) was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it an improvement over the World Wide Web, with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents."
Wired magazine published an article called "The Curse of Xanadu", calling Project Xanadu "the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry". The first attempt at implementation began in 1960, but it was not until 1998 that an incomplete implementation was released. A version described as "a working deliverable", OpenXanadu, was made available in 2014.
Discussed on
- "Project Xanadu" | 2021-02-21 | 132 Upvotes 82 Comments
🔗 Fred Fish (Fish Disks)
Fred Fish (November 4, 1952 – April 20, 2007) was a computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his series of freeware disks for the Amiga.
The Amiga Library Disks – colloquially referred to as Fish Disks (a term coined by Perry Kivolowitz at a Jersey Amiga User Group meeting) – became the first national rallying point, a sort of early postal system. Fish would distribute his disks around the world in time for regional and local user group meetings, which in turn duplicated them for local distribution. Typically, only the cost of materials changed hands. The Fish Disk series ran from 1986 to 1994. In it, one can chart the growing sophistication of Amiga software and see the emergence of many software trends.
The Fish Disks were distributed at computer stores and Amiga enthusiast clubs. Contributors submitted applications and source code and the best of these each month were assembled and released as a diskette. Since the Internet was not yet in popular usage outside military and university circles, this was a primary way for enthusiasts to share work and ideas. He also initiated the "GeekGadgets" project, a GNU standard environment for AmigaOS and BeOS.
Fish worked for Cygnus Solutions in the 1990s before he left for Be Inc. in 1998.
In 1978, he self-published User Survival Guide for TI-58/59 Master Library, which was advertised in enthusiast newsletters covering the TI-59 programmable calculator.
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- "Fred Fish (Fish Disks)" | 2023-08-16 | 169 Upvotes 44 Comments
🔗 Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
Eazel was an American software company operating from 1999 to 2001 in Palo Alto and then Mountain View, California. The company's flagship product is the Nautilus file manager for the GNOME desktop environment on Linux, which was immediately adopted and maintained by the free software movement. As the core of Eazel's business model, it is an early example of cloud storage services in the form of personal file storage, transparently and portably stored on the Internet. Renamed to Files, this application continues to be a centerpiece of some free Linux-based desktop environments.
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- "Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup" | 2024-08-27 | 147 Upvotes 65 Comments
🔗 MSX-DOS
MSX-DOS is a discontinued disk operating system developed by Microsoft for the 8-bit home computer standard MSX, and is a cross between MS-DOS v1.25 and CP/M-80Â v2.2.
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- "MSX-DOS" | 2023-07-20 | 161 Upvotes 49 Comments
🔗 Namecoin
Namecoin (Symbol: â„• or NMC) is a cryptocurrency originally forked from bitcoin software. It is based on the code of bitcoin and uses the same proof-of-work algorithm. Like bitcoin, it is limited to 21 million coins.
Namecoin can store data within its own blockchain transaction database. The original proposal for Namecoin called for Namecoin to insert data into bitcoin's blockchain directly. Anticipating scaling difficulties with this approach, a shared proof-of-work (POW) system was proposed to secure new cryptocurrencies with different use cases.
Namecoin's flagship use case is the censorship-resistant top level domain .bit
, which is functionally similar to .com
or .net
domains but is independent of ICANN, the main governing body for domain names.
Discussed on
- "Namecoin" | 2014-03-16 | 150 Upvotes 51 Comments
🔗 Ralf Brown's Interrupt List – a comprehensive CMOS settings, port addresses
Ralf Brown's Interrupt List (aka RBIL, x86 Interrupt List, MS-DOS Interrupt List or INTER) is a comprehensive list of interrupts, calls, hooks, interfaces, data structures, CMOS settings, memory and port addresses, as well as processor opcodes and special function registers for x86 machines from the 1981 IBM PC up to 2000, most of it still applying to IBM PC compatibles today.
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- "Ralf Brown's Interrupt List – a comprehensive CMOS settings, port addresses" | 2023-03-06 | 136 Upvotes 65 Comments
🔗 C Minus Minus
C-- (pronounced C minus minus) is a C-like programming language. Its creators, functional programming researchers Simon Peyton Jones and Norman Ramsey, designed it to be generated mainly by compilers for very high-level languages rather than written by human programmers. Unlike many other intermediate languages, its representation is plain ASCII text, not bytecode or another binary format.
There are two main branches:
- C--, the original branch, with the final version 2.0 released in May 2005
- Cmm, the fork actively used as the intermediate representation (IR) in the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC)
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- "C Minus Minus" | 2022-10-17 | 128 Upvotes 71 Comments