C++11 and Ada 2012 – renaissance of native languages?

Date Posted: June 22, 2012 06:22 PM

Author: Quentin Ochem

In terms of language popularity, much of the late 90s and early 2000s revolved around so called “managed” languages, such as Java or C#. Currently however, industry seems to be turning back more and more to native languages, and in particular two mainstream ones – C++ and Ada. Interestingly, both of these languages have been undergoing major revisions, resulting in the almost synchronized releases of C++ 11 and Ada 2012. This article will describe the most notable additions to the two languages, and show how they relate one to the other.

IEEE Experts to Discuss Trends at CES

January 5, 2012 9:48 AM

IEEE and its experts will be discussing the 12 top consumer electronics trends in 2012 at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The discussion will take place at Booth #35883 and on IEEE’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ieeeorg, which will also feature video discussions from the show floor.

The top trends are:

1. Powering Connections – The concept of a fully connected society will shift the way people work, think and live. If the technology can be connected, it will be. Ubiquitous, nonstop connectivity is what is next, predicts Dr. Henry Samueli, IEEE Fellow, chief technology officer at Broadcom Corp., and a keynote speaker at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), co-located with CES. According to Dr. Samueli, that means improving global business operations with real time cloud-based data sharing, and seamlessly accessing information and entertainment in our homes and cars. Advances in miniaturized sensors will further enhance this connected world as we are able to monitor our health and our environment in real time, opening up endless new opportunities for innovative new healthcare models.

2. A Tipping Point for Video Entertainment on the Web – Streaming web-based video on televisions has steadily gained popularity with consumers, but in 2012, the U.S. will reach a tipping point when users will extend beyond the tech-savvy and early adopters of Wi-Fi enabled TVs, says Richard Doherty, IEEE Senior Member. The upswing can be credited to widespread availability of video capable devices. Doherty predicts that by the end of 2012, nearly 50 percent of U.S. households and 35 percent of Canadian households will watch Internet video on full-sized TV screens (24-inch TVs or larger) from embedded IP video capable devices or add-ons such as videogame consoles, Blu-ray players or net media players.

3. Patient Monitoring Technology Moves Into the Home – Advanced health monitoring technology will finally be available for use in homes and not just clinics and hospitals, says IEEE Fellow Stuart Lipoff. These new devices will allow consumers to take charge of their health care, finding ways to streamline their care to reduce costs. New patient monitoring systems, now only in hospitals, will be battery-powered and portable enough to be carried like a cellphone. These devices will monitor and communicate vital signs to a patient’s doctor, saving patients from making time-consuming and costly trips to the hospital.

4. Convergence of Home Networking Technologies – The number of networked devices consumers own is growing exponentially, including mobile phones and tablets. At the same time, says IEEE Associate Member Oleg Logvinov, consumers expect their content to be easily accessible – and secure – across all those devices. As a result, we will begin to see a new breed of simple, plug-and-play devices capable of finding all available network connections as soon as they are turned on, and the networks themselves will become smarter so that the right quality of service is delivered on every connection for the least amount of energy. According to Logvinov, these innovations are possible because we are seeing new technologies in the semiconductor industry that integrate many different networking technologies into a single chip in a cost-effective way.

5. Advancing Long Term Storage with Ceramic – Digital files can’t last forever. Family photos, music and other archived information have a limited lifespan on today’s storage devices. However, IEEE Senior Member Tom Coughlin says we will see new advancements in hard drive technologies in 2012. Storage devices that etch data in ceramic will make it possible for stored information to last up to 1,000 years.

6. Consumerization of IT Continues Relentlessly – Dr. Nahum Gershon, IEEE Senior Member, says in-home technology’s influence on business technology decisions will continue to build in 2012. According to Dr. Gershon, who will be presenting at the 2012 International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), the consumerization of IT will drive companies to provide more access to social media networks and applications, as well as issue more mobile devices like tablet computers to their increasingly tech-savvy employees. A recent example is the increasing use of video chat applications such as Skype to connect business professionals working in different regions, says Gershon. In 2012, he predicts that people will begin using tablets and smartphones with geo-location applications to inform colleagues where they are working (e.g. in the office or off-site).

7. Consumer Electronics as a Service – In 2012, electronics manufacturers will more widely pair their devices with services, applications and content provided to consumers via a remote server online (i.e. the Cloud). Apps for the Apple iPhone and Android phones are well-known current examples, but IEEE Fellow Stuart Lipoff predicts there will be more devices such as Apple TV and Internet-connected TVs drawing on content and services like email, calendars or address books that are maintained on remote servers. According to Lipoff, consumers will see more inexpensive devices with longer battery life because taxing hardware functions such as storage and computing power will be leveraged in the cloud rather than in the device.

8. Smartphone Hacking to Increase in 2012 – John McCanny, IEEE Fellow, predicts that mobile security will be a rapidly increasing issue, due to convergence in mobile architectures, mobile phones becoming the dominant web platform and the expanding number of mobile users. In fact, 2012 will see a rapid growth in mobile malware given consumers’ increasing preference for accessing the Internet from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Businesses will also be vulnerable as more professionals demand access to corporate networks from personal devices, increasing the risks of cyber attacks and cyber espionage.

9. Natural Disasters Raise Global Consumer Electronics Prices – The electronic industry is feeling the impact of natural disasters, as major flooding in Thailand has disrupted manufacturing facilities, leading to a short supply of hard disk drives (HDDs) – a key component for everything from DVRs to videogame consoles to laptops. According to Tom Coughlin, IEEE Senior Member, the ramifications of that shortage will more clearly surface in 2012 and production costs will surge in the short term. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, there was a shortfall of 60-70 million drives vs. anticipated demand. In 2012, there will be a total shortfall of 120-150 million units vs. demand according to a study conducted by data storage consulting firm Coughlin Associates.

10. Private Companies, Not the Military, Will Drive Major Technology Innovations – Radar, satellites, GPS, the Internet – military research has been the driving force behind some of the most important technology innovations in history. That will be much less the case going forward, predicts IEEE Senior Member Nahum Gershon. Private companies will start to play an even larger role in developing cutting-edge technology and products that will change the way individuals and business think and operate.

11. Vehicles That Aid Drivers’ Awareness of Surroundings – Consumers will begin to see more vehicles that can monitor their surroundings and warn drivers of traffic signs, pedestrians, other vehicles and lane departures, says IEEE Senior Member Alberto Broggi, who rode in a driverless car from Italy to China in 2010. More cars will apply advanced sensors to enable vehicles to detect and warn drivers of any immediate stops or dangers in the way of the vehicle, which can significantly decrease the likelihood of vehicle accidents.

12. Automated Metadata Generation Makes Personal Content More Useful and Available – Information about information may sound redundant, but enabling devices to automatically aggregate and generate data such as location and timestamp can significantly improve how consumers manage and protect their personal photos, videos and music. In 2012, IEEE Senior Member Tom Coughlin says we will see new devices such as cameras that will automatically generate metadata information for all photos and videos from the device.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-25-places-to-live-if-youre-starting-a-startup-2012-4#ixzz1rqjkfJ00

From the IEEE. It’s always interesting to see how the different regions of the country compare in compensation

Silicon Valley Tech Workers Best Paid in US

March 16, 2012 9:20 AM

Tech workers in California’s Silicon Valley are the best paid in the nation, according to a CyberCoders analysis.

CyberCoders checked out some 3,000 tech jobs and salaries to come up with a list of the top 10 highest paying cities for tech jobs.

On average, tech workers in top-ranked San Jose get paid about $119,000 a year. Workers in San Francisco, No. 2 on the list, get more than $112,000. New York’s “Silicon Alley” came in third with workers netting, on average, about $105,192.

Here’s the full list:

1. San Jose – $119,412

2. San Francisco – $112,739

3. New York – $105,192

4. Washington D.C. – $99,618

5. Boston – $99,099

6. Los Angeles – $96,705

7. Brooklyn – $96,696

8. Philadelphia – $95,929

9. Chicago – $94,899

10. Dallas – $94,799

As overall salaries differ from city to city, so do average salaries for specific positions, according to CyberCoders’ analysis. The average salary for a .NET developer in San Francisco, for instance, is nearly $99,000. Head south a few hundred miles to Los Angeles, and the average pay for the same position is about $87,000.

May 16, 2012 – Internet of Things

Reprint from

 

Incontrovertible Trends

Societal shifts can be hard to identify from the vertex, but let’s look at a few statistics that show us the path that’s being carved:

• Global IP traffic has increased eightfold over the past five years.
• By 2015, the number of devices connected to IP networks will be twice as large as the global human population.
• More Internet traffic is originating with non-PC devices. Projections show PC-based traffic expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 33%, while machine-based module traffic is forecast to grow at an incredible 258%.
• By 2015, traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic generated by wired devices. Specifically, wired devices will account for 46% of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 54%. (In 2010, wired devices accounted for 63% of IP traffic.)
• The IPv4 addresses that we’ve come to know and love have become quaint artifacts of the past. Only 4 billion addresses were possible, and it wasn’t enough. That led to the creation of the IPv6 system. Hopefully its 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses will give us a little breathing room.
• Cellular subscribers in the U.S. outnumber the total population. Machines have started using the phone.

The Wireless World

Henry David Thoreau once questioned the need for a telegraph that would connect Maine and Texas by saying, “Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” He may well have had a point. The telegraph charged you by the word. You didn’t use it to send people a bunch of drivel.

However, modern communications have become so cheap, as demonstrated by the incessant texting of today’s generation, that the content’s importance has become irrelevant. It’s been a good thing for consumers, but it has saturated the cell-phone market, forcing cellular companies to look elsewhere for growth. Minutes of talk time per connection have flattened out.

Texting, interestingly enough, continues to climb at an annual rate of 74%, despite the fact that it’s possibly the crudest form of human-to-human communication since the pictograph. Still, even when combined with sales of additional consumer data plans, it can’t produce the kind of sustained growth required by cellular companies.

The real future for cellular networks lies in M2M communications. Moore’s Law tells us that connecting machines will steadily become cheaper and easier. Meanwhile, Metcalfe’s Law tells us that connecting hundreds of millions of machines, all around the world, will add incredible value to the cellular network.

The cellular network is a managed infrastructure. Wi-Fi dominates the unmanaged infrastructure category , taking on functions that once required physical connections. As was the case with wired Ethernet, Wi-Fi makes you responsible for your own infrastructure. But you needn’t give a second thought to interoperability, transportability, or scalability since they’re built in.

Wi-Fi is only just beginning to get interesting, though. For example, improvements in range and bandwidth continue unabated. New energy harvesting and micropower technologies are beginning to come online, too. In fact, Wi-Fi can claim victory as the uncontested winner of the unmanaged infrastructure wireless race, and it’s only getting better.

As important as Wi-Fi has already become, there’s still plenty of room for Bluetooth. The new sensor-targeted, low-power extension included in the Bluetooth 4.0 standard looks very promising. It’s being driven by the personal-area-network (PAN) infrastructure made available by every cellular handset in the world. Expect an explosion of micropower Bluetooth 4.0 clients in applications that involve PANs collecting wireless sensor data.

Other semi-standard wireless technologies do exist, but they will be hard-pressed to survive.

Conclusion

Looking backward, we can see how technology drove the shift from hunter to farmer, from farmer to factory worker, and from factory worker to knowledge worker. Looking forward, it’s become clear that the convergence of Metcalfe’s Law, Moore’s Law, and the Internet of Things will produce another of these pivotal societal changes in just the next few decades.

It is, of course, impossible to predict every potential change. Whatever happens, though, it’s going to be much more interesting than dragging rocks around to build a pyramid.

May 17, 2012 – Future Demand for Software Engineers

The following reprint is from DICE and I found it especially interesting since I work more in the Software Systems Developers than Application Developers and it’s rare that you find an analysis that addresses these two segments individually …

 

Job Growth Soars for Software Systems Developers

Software developers are on track to see job growth that far outstrips the national average for all occupations going into 2020. Things are looking especially sweet if you’re a software systems developer, though app  developers aren’t too far behind.

Check out these stats that size up  opportunities for software developers in a couple of categories, verses that of the overall employment outlook.

Driving the increased demand for software systems developers is exploding growth in the healthcare industry, notes the report, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s easy to see why, as hospitals, medical groups and the like race to meet various deadlines for implementing the federal mandate for electronic medical records over the next couple of years.

And with consumers going gaga over mobile devices, or more so the bevvy of cool apps they can load onto them, it’s not surprising to see the nearly 30 percent growth in app developer jobs over the next eight years.

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