Udayan Banerjee

Do we need programming languages? You may think that the answer is no. But, if you go by the recent trend you may need to change your mind. Consider for example the following questions: Why is Google working two (GO, DART) new programming languages? Why has IBM (X10), Cray (Chapel) and Red Hat (Ceylon) working on creating a new programming language of its own? Why did the attendees of a recent conference in London select 5 (HTML5, DART, Scala, Clojure, Node.js) new languages as the most important software development trends for 2012? What does Neil McAllister mean when he says that these 10 (DART, Ceylon, GO, F#, OPA, Fantom, Zimbu, X10, Haxe, Chapel) programming languages that could shake up IT? Why did Anders Hejlsberg of Microsoft, the creator of Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C# launch TypeScript? Are new programming languages getting created just to satisfy the creativ... (more)

Gartner Releases Two Top 10 Predictions for 2013

Gartner has released two sets of predictions for 2013 – back to back: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013: Technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2013 Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2013 and Beyond: Economic risks, opportunities and innovations that will impel CIOs to move to the next generation of business-driven solutions In short the first set of predictions are about technology and the second set of predictions are about business implication of technology. As you can expect, there are overlapping area. What are the... (more)

Who Coined the Term Big Data?

I like putting faces to names. Steve Lohr did the research and wrote an article about the origin of the term Big Data in The New York Times. I couldn't resist the temptation to put faces to the names. Right or wrong, all the facts are from his article. His first step in the research was to contact Fred R. Shapiro Fred R. Shapiro is a world-recognized authority on quotations and on reference in general. He edited the award-winning Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations. But Mr. Shapiro couldn’t find anything … crisp and definitive. The term Big Data is so generic that the... (more)

Should Robots Resemble Us Humans?

I don’t know about how you feel about the current state of robotics but I was hugely surprised when I started exploring the state of art. AI is a field which has never lived up to its promise – real or perceived. For example if you look at Arthur Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (novel & movie) written in 1968 you will realize that it is way … way off the mark. But, just maybe, things might change in next 10 years – and you may actually own your personal robot! Let me present some of the interesting stuff that is available today! Let us start with… Asimo – The Humanoid Robot fr... (more)

Write Once Run Anywhere or Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools

To build and maintain applications required to reach out to you customer through Mobile & Smart phone is expensive. Why? Because of platform proliferation. Because of quick technology obsolescence.  (See this) Management perception compounds the problem. Anybody, not intimately familiar with this technical challenge, perceives that the effort of developing a mobile application should be proportional to the size of the screen. In other words, since mobile screen is much smaller than a PC or a Laptop screen, the effort required for developing application should also be proportiona... (more)