The Four Layers of Programming Skills

When learning how to code for the first time, there's a common misconception that learning how to code is primarily about learning the syntax of a programming language. That is, learning how the special symbols, keywords, and characters must be written in the right order for the language to run without errors. However, focusing only on knowledge of syntax is a bit like practicing to write a novel by only studying grammar and spelling. Grammar and spelling are needed to write a novel, but there are many other layers of skills that are needed in order to write an original, creative novel. [...] This is the layer that is most often focused on in the early learning phase. Syntax skills essentially means how to read and write a programming language using the rules for how different characters must be used for the code to actually work.

Beignet OpenCL Now Supports LLVM 5.0

For those making use of Beignet for Intel graphics OpenCL acceleration on Linux, it finally has added support for LLVM 5.0. Beignet doesn't tend to support new LLVM versions early but rather a bit notorious for their tardiness in supporting new LLVM releases. LLVM 5.0 has been out for two weeks, so Beignet Git has moved on to adding support for LLVM 5. There were Beignet changes to libocl and GBE for enabling the LLVM 5.0 support.

DRUD Tech Releases DDEV Community, the Premier Open Source Toolkit to Simplify End-to-End Web Development Processes

Why the Windows Subsystem for Linux Matters to You – Even if You Don’t Use it [Ed: Microsoft pulling an EEE on GNU/Linux matters. Sure it does... while suing GNU/Linux with software patents Microsoft says it "loves Linux".]

Canonical Teams Up with Microsoft to Enable New Azure Tailored Ubuntu Kernel

In a joint collaboration with Microsoft's Azure team, Canonical managed to enable a new Azure tailored Ubuntu kernel in the Ubuntu Cloud Images for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on Azure starting today, September 21, 2017. The Azure tailored Ubuntu kernel is now enabled by default for the Ubuntu Cloud images running the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, and Canonical vows to offer the same level of support as the rest of its Ubuntu kernels until the operating system reaches end of life.

Kubernetes Snaps: The Quick Version

When we built the Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes (CDK), one of our goals was to provide snap packages for the various Kubernetes clients and services: kubectl, kube-apiserver, kubelet, etc. While we mainly built the snaps for use in CDK, they are freely available to use for other purposes as well. Let’s have a quick look at how to install and configure the Kubernetes snaps directly.

Kubernetes is Transforming Operations in the Enterprise

At many organizations, managing containerized applications at scale is the order of the day (or soon will be). And few open source projects are having the impact in this arena that Kubernetes is. Above all, Kubernetes is ushering in “operations transformation” and helping organizations make the transition to cloud-native computing, says Craig McLuckie co-founder and CEO of Heptio and a co-founder of Kubernetes at Google, in a recent free webinar, ‘Getting to Know Kubernetes.’ Kubernetes was created at Google, which donated the open source project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

Kubernetes gains momentum as big-name vendors flock to Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Like a train gaining speed as it leaves the station, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation is quickly gathering momentum, attracting some of the biggest names in tech. In the last month and a half alone AWS, Oracle, Microsoft, VMware and Pivotal have all joined. It’s not every day you see this group of companies agree on anything, but as Kubernetes has developed into an essential industry tool, each of these companies sees it as a necessity to join the CNCF and support its mission. This is partly driven by customer demand and partly by the desire to simply have a say in how Kubernetes and other related cloud-native technologies are developed.

The Cloud-Native Architecture: One Stack, Many Options

As the chief technology officer of a company specialized in cloud native storage, I have a first hand view of the massive transformation happening right now in enterprise IT. In short, two things are happening in parallel right now that make it radically simpler to build, deploy and run sophisticated applications. The first is the move to the cloud. This topic has been discussed so much that I won’t try to add anything new. We all know it’s happening, and we all know that its impact is huge.

Sysadmin 101: Leveling Up

I hope this description of levels in systems administration has been helpful as you plan your own career. When it comes to gaining experience, nothing quite beats making your own mistakes and having to recover from them yourself. At the same time, it sure is a lot easier to invite battle-hardened senior sysadmins to beers and learn from their war stories. I hope this series in Sysadmin 101 fundamentals has been helpful for those of you new to the sysadmin trenches, and also I hope it helps save you from having to learn from your own mistakes as you move forward in your career.

PostgreSQL 10 RC1 Released

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the first release candidate of version 10 is available for download. As a release candidate, 10 RC 1 should be identical to the final release of the new version. It contains fixes for all known issues found during testing, so users should test and report any issues that they find.

PostgreSQL 10 Release Candidate 1 Arrives

PostgreSQL 10 has been queuing up improvements to declarative partitioning, logical replication support, an improved parallel query system, SCRAM authentication, performance speed-ups, hash indexes are now WAL, extended statistics, new integrity checking tools, smart connection handling, and many other promising improvements. Our earlier performance tests of Postgre 10 during its beta phase showed some speed-ups over PostgreSQL 9.

Pivotal Greenplum Analytic Database Adds Multicloud Support

Pivotal’s latest release of its Greenplum analytic database includes multicloud support and, for the first time, is based entirely on open source code. In 2015, the company open sourced the core of Pivotal Greenplum as the Greenplum Database project. “This is the first commercially available release that we are shipping with the open source project truly at its core,” said Elisabeth Hendrickson, VP of data research and development at Pivotal.