Programming: Bugs, Mistakes, and Python

• Living on the command line: Why mistakes are a good thing

• Getting started with functional programming in Python using the toolz library

  In the second of a two-part series, we continue to explore how we can import ideas from functional programming methodology into Python to have the best of both worlds. In the previous post, we covered immutable data structures. Those allow us to write "pure" functions, or functions that have no side effects, merely accepting some arguments and returning a result while maintaining decent performance.

• The code's crashed again, but why? Tell us your war stories of bugs found – and bugs fixed

  Even the best software goes wrong from time to time. So, what exactly happens when it throws a wobbly, especially when it's a key component in a production environment? Whether it's a total crash, a transaction failure, or the mangling of important data, there's going to be some kind of business impact. And the more the problem persists, the greater the level of pain, loss, and disruption. Everyone wants faults identified, diagnosed, and fixed ASAP. Identification is not normally a challenge – user complaints, curses, screams, and threats usually provide a pretty good clue. But before anyone can prioritize and schedule a fix, someone needs to diagnose the problem.

Lakka – Transform Your Old PC into a Retrogaming Console

Lakka is a free, lightweight, and open-source Linux distro that turns a small PC into a full-blown game console. It features a beautiful and user-friendly UI with eye candy colours and a PS4-like User Experience. You can install it on your SD card and easily set it up or run it LIVE. Its wide range of joypad support allows you to use PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo game controllers. If you don’t have a PC to use Lakka on you can dedicated hardware at a cost as low as $30 thanks to its support for a variety of computers not excluding Raspberry Pi, Raspberry 2, HummingBoard, Banana Po, Odroid, CuBox-i, Cubietruck, and Cubieboard 2. Lakka is the official OS of RetroArch which takes care of its inputs and display, and it implements all game systems as a libretro core. This separation ensures that users are able to configure their setup once and have their changes effected across all game systems.

VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 1

• Announcement: VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 1 released

  Please do NOT use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines! A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes.

• Oracle Pushes VirtualBox 6.0 Into Public Beta

  Oracle's Munich developers responsible for maintaining the VirtualBox virtualization software this morning announced the first public test release of the upcoming VirtualBox 6.0. While VirtualBox 6.0 is referred to as "a new major release", as of the beta one stage there are just a few features to note. With VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 1 there is support for exporting a virtual machine to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The second listed feature at this stage for v6.0 are improvements to the graphical user-interface for this VM software.

Games: MMORPGs, Disappointment From One Hour One Life and Linux port of Total War: WARHAMMER II

• What MMORPGs can teach us about leveling up a heroic developer team

  For the better part of a decade, I have been leading guilds in massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs). Currently, I lead a guild in Guild Wars 2, and before that, I led progression raid teams in World of Warcraft, while also maintaining a career as a software engineer. As I made the transition into software development, it became clear that the skills I gained in building successful raid groups translated well to building successful tech teams.

• The unique multiplayer survival game One Hour One Life will only support Windows on Steam

  I'm a little sad to see this, the unique multiplayer survival game One Hour One Life [Official Site, Steam Link] where you're born into the world as a baby to a random parent is only going to support Windows on Steam despite having a Linux build.

• It Looks Like WARHAMMER II Could Be Out For Linux Next Month

  We've long been looking forward to WARHAMMER II on Linux and it looks like that could be realized next month. Feral Interactive has just taken to Reddit to share that they intend to launch their Linux port "as soon as possible after Curse of the Vampire Coast on Windows." That paid DLC is expected to launch on Windows on 8 November.

• Linux port of Total War: WARHAMMER II due 'as soon as possible' after Curse of the Vampire Coast