Building applications at scale is nothing compared to building an operating system like Windows, especially when it comes to source code control. How do you manage the repository (or repositories) for such a software behemoth, with thousands of developers and testers, and with a complex build pipeline that’s continuously delivering fresh code? Microsoft’s history with internal source control systems is convoluted. You might think it used the now discontinued Visual SourceSafe, but that was most appropriate for local file systems and smaller projects. Instead, Microsoft used many different tool ..read more

Java services are the most-impacted by third-party vulnerabilities, according to the “State of DevSecOps 2024” report just released by cloud security provider Datadog. Released on April 17, the report found that 90% of Java services were susceptible to one or more critical or high-severity vulnerabilities introduced by a third-party library. The average for other languages was 47%. Datadog’s report analyzed tens of thousands of applications and container images and thousands of cloud environments to assess application security. Following Java in the vulnerabilities assessment were JavaScript ..read more

Code commonly flows downstream, from an open-source project into an organization’s own products. Upstreaming is the process of reversing that flow—contributing code back to an open-source project. The value proposition of upstreaming includes harnessing the strength of an open-source community to examine code, find and fix problems, and add their own features that make the code more valuable to everyone using it. As someone who has been deeply involved with open-source projects for many years—I’ve committed code to the open source FreeBSD operating system project for over a decade now, served ..read more

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company, has updated its Assistants API with a faster, more accurate file search tool, vector stores, and a tool choice parameter. OpenAI announced the Assistants API update on April 17. The new file_search tool can retrieve as many as 10,000 files per assistant. It connects models with developers' data to assist in building applications relevant to an organization or use case. The tool works with the new vector store objects for automated file parsing, chunking, and embedding. New token controls, tool-choice capabilities, and added support for ..read more

The ECMAScript specification is like a portrait of the JavaScript language that is repainted every year. As is typical of modern JavaScript, the spec and real-world practice move in tandem. The newest version of the spec, ECMAScript 2024, includes seven new JavaScript features and is expected to be finalized in June. This article introduces four of the new features that are already available in browsers and server-side environments, and ready for you to use today: Promise.withResolvers is a powerful mechanism for managing asynchronous operations when external control over resol ..read more

As the use of ever more powerful AI models continues to grow, ensuring trust and accountability must be at the top of the list of goals, on par with any of AI’s potential benefits. It won’t happen overnight, nor will it result from any single step, such as better code, government regulations, or sincere pledges from AI developers. It will require a substantial cultural shift over time involving people, processes, and technology, and it will require widespread collaboration and cooperation among developers and users. Despite any misgivings about AI’s shortcomings, business leaders can’t ignore ..read more

A change to Java’s G1 garbage collector would lower the memory and processing overhead and speed the execution of Java’s C2 optimizing JIT (just-in-time) compiler, benefiting cloud deployments, under a proposal in the Java community. The OpenJDK proposal would simplify the implementation of G1’s barriers, which record information about application memory accesses, by shifting their expansion from early in the C2 JIT's compilation pipeline to later, the proposal states. Underlying this proposal is the increasing popularity of cloud-based Java deployments, which has led to a stronger focus on re ..read more

Open-source database provider Qdrant has made available Qdrant Hybrid Cloud, a dedicated vector database to be offered in a managed hybrid cloud model. Qdrant, the open-source foundation of both Qdrant Cloud and Qdrant Hybrid Cloud, is a vector similarity search engine and vector database written in Rust. Qdrant offers a set of features for performance optimization and can handle billions of vectors with scale and memory safety, the company said.  To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Modern software applications are underpinned by a large and growing web of APIs, microservices, and cloud services that must be highly available, fault tolerant, and secure. The underlying networking technology must support all of these requirements, of course, but also explosive growth. Unfortunately, the previous generation of technologies are too expensive, brittle, and poorly integrated to adequately solve this challenge. Combined with non-optimal organizational practices, regulatory compliance requirements, and the need to deliver software faster, a new generation of technology is needed ..read more

In the past two years, I’ve been involved with generative AI projects using large language models (LLMs) more than traditional systems. I’ve become nostalgic for serverless cloud computing. Their applications range from enhancing conversational AI to providing complex analytical solutions across industries and many functions beyond that. Many enterprises deploy these models on cloud platforms because there is a ready-made ecosystem of public cloud providers and it’s the path of least resistance. However, it’s not cheap. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more