Apple Car? Not Likely.

You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

~Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway

Some journalists speculate that Apple is building a car because they recently hired some automotive engineers away from Tesla.

HTML5 & CSS3: The Complete Manual

The biggest challenge for a software developer: Absorbing the latest knowledge while simultaneously keeping clients happy. Where does the time go?

Fortunately, when it comes to HTML5 and CSS3, a UK-based publisher has released a just-the-facts guide that may help. At 127 pages, the entire publication (they call it a bookazine) can be devoured in a single day. Imagine Publishing’s HTML5 & CSS3: The Complete Manual is well worth the time investment.

Note: A version of this article also appears in the Book Reviews section of ChicagoRuby.org.

JRuby 9000 on Mac OS X

Moore’s Law is about to run into a wall. Therefore, anything that software developers can learn about concurrency will be critical in coming years. Enter JRuby 9000.

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Quad Core

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has upped their entry in the single-board computer competition. Raspberry Pi 2 Model B boasts a quad core ARM CPU and 1GB of RAM. More important: Benchmarks show that the board is 6x faster than the previous model. And the performance bump has been achieved while the price remains low: Roughly $45.

Getting the board up and running is easier, too. You can buy a pre-built Linux image on micro SD. Or you can download the New Out Of the Box (NOOBS) image yourself. Depending on the speed of your internet connection, you can be up in running in less than an hour.

Keep the Fun in Computing

“I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing… What’s in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.”
  ~ Alan J. Perlis, from the Dedication page in SICP

Enrolling in the Chicago SICP study group, I expected to dive into Lisp. I expected to be challenged. What I didn’t expect: The fun, somewhat irreverent attitude of the SICP authors. And why not? Software development is one of our newest professions. Other professionals are made more effective through our work. Everybody benefits from the increase in productivity.