Programming: Rust, Top Languages and Studying Developers

• [Rust] Diagnosing A Weak Memory Ordering Bug

  For the first time in my life I tracked a real bug's root cause to incorrect usage of weak memory orderings. Until now weak memory bugs were something I knew about but had subconciously felt were only relevant to wizards coding on big iron, partly because until recently I've spent most of my career using desktop x86 machines. Under heavy load a Pernosco service would assert in Rust's std::thread::Thread::unpark() with the error "inconsistent state in unpark". Inspecting the code led to the disturbing conclusion that the only way to trigger this assertion was memory corruption; the value of self.inner.state should always be between 0 and 2 inclusive, and if so then we shouldn't be able to reach the panic. The problem was nondeterministic but I was able to extract a test workload that reproduced the bug every few minutes. I tried recording it in rr chaos mode but was unable to reproduce it there (which is not surprising in hindsight since rr imposes sequential consistency).

• IEEE Survey Ranks Programming Languages

  It's been said that programming languages are akin to religion. Engineers and developers will go out of their way to defend the use of their favorite language. (Perhaps it's more the pain of learning a new language that keeps us using the old). Surely you've seen many surveys on programming language preferences. As with all surveys, the results depend on who was asked.

• Programming Languages May Finally Be Reaching a Status Quo

  The analyst firm RedMonk has tracked programmers' interest in various programming languages since 2011. During that time, Swift and Kotlin grew faster than any other language the firm tracked, including Google's Go and Mozilla's Rust. Earlier this year Swift, which Apple released in 2014, managed to tie with Apple's much more established Objective-C language for tenth place in RedMonk's rankings.

• Machine learning algorithms can identify anonymous programmers

  Rachel Greenstadt, associate professor of computer science at Drexel University, and Aylin Caliskan, an assistant professor at George Washington University, have found that code can be a form of stylistic expression, a bit like writing, reported Wired.

  As such, the researchers developed a machine learning algorithm to recognise the coding structure used by individual programmers based on samples of their work and spot their traits in compiled binaries or raw source code.

Microsoft and Apple Piggybacking the Competition

• Upcoming Google Chromebooks Will Come With Windows 10 Dual-boot

• Windows is coming to Chromebooks… with Google’s blessing [Ed: When Microsoft talks about "working with the Open Source community" what it means to say is bringing Microsoft/Windows to it, along with proprietary software that contains back doors]

• How to easily install open source software on macOS

  Before my shift to using macOS as my daily work operating system, I was using a myriad of GNU/Linux platforms. Linux (as well as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, upon which macOS is built) provided me with easy access to the various open source software via a package manager.

Android Leftovers

• Oppo R17 officially revealed: This is how to do a notch

• Best Android phones you can buy [August 2018]

• 25 Android smartphones from well-known brands come with severe vulnerabilities pre-installed

• Galaxy Note 9's screen receives record-setting rating from DisplayMate

• TECH BREAK: Google's latest Android OS is out

• Android Auto v3.5 fixes crashing on phones with Android 9 Pie [APK Download]

• Android 9 Pie seems to be messing with the Pixel XL's ability to fast charge

• Google 'won't fix' an Android P bug that kills Pixel XL fast charging

• Android 9 Pie adds support for Wi-Fi Direct printing

• Google's iOS and Android Apps Track and Store Location Data With Location History Disabled

• Google's 'My Activity' data: Avoiding privacy and compliance risk

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