RemObjects has released Oxygene for Java, a new version of its Object Pascal compiler. Object Pascal is pretty much the Delphi language though with some additional features of its own. Previous versions target the .NET runtime, and a version of this is marketed by Embarcadero as Prism. The IDE for Oxygene is Microsoft’s Visual Studio. This new version targets both the Java Runtime and the Android Dalvik VM. The obvious target market is Delphi developers who now want to create apps for Android, or cross-platform Java applications.

I downloaded the trial and ran the supplied Hello World in the Android emulator … it works.



A...

The free Google Analytics has added a real-time view which is great fun to watch

The Sencha blog has a great series of posts on HTML5 support on various devices. This is of direct interest to Sencha because its products are JavaScript and CSS application frameworks, Sencha Touch for mobile and ExtJS for any browser. The latest post is on the Amazon Kindle Fire – and it is weak:

The Amazon Kindle Fire doesn’t seem designed to run HTML5 apps as a primary goal. It does a good job of displaying ordinary web pages and its resolution and rendering capabilities meet that need well. But there are too many sharp edges, performance issues, and missing HTML5 features for us to recommend that any developer create web apps primarily for the Kindle Fire. The iPad 2 running iOS 5 continues to be the tablet to beat, with the PlayBook a respectable runner-up in HTML5 capabilities.

Part of the problem is that the Fire runs Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) which has a weaker browser than later versions. That is not the only source of disappointment though. According to Sencha’s Michael Mullany,...

Microsoft has posted an article on Evolving ECMAScript on its IE Blog. ECMAScript is the official standard for what we call JavaScript. The company is proposing some minor additions “to address gaps in Math, String and Number functionality as well as Globalization.” It has also taken the opportunity to take a shot at Google, which is proposing a new web language called Dart:

Some examples, like Dart, portend that JavaScript has fundamental flaws and to support these scenarios requires a “clean break” from JavaScript in both syntax and runtime. We disagree with this point of view. We believe that with committee participant focus, the standards runtime can be expanded and the syntactic features necessary to support JavaScript at scale can be built upon the existing JavaScript standard.

Dart will compile to JavaScript so there is a measure of compatibility, but if the language catches on then browsers without a native implementation will be disadvantaged.

Related posts:Google offers...

Someone asked me what is the best programming language for a child to learn after starting (and having success) with Scratch.

Scratch is a visual programming language which actually runs on Smalltalk, though its users do not need to know this. Scratch 2.0 seems to be written in Adobe Flash so you can create and program projects in a web browser. As far as I can tell though, there is no obvious and natural progression from Scratch to a code-centric programming language.

I guess the first answer is not to move away from Scratch until you need to. You can do a lot with Scratch, as the many shared projects demonstrate.

Still, I agree that it makes sense to learn text-based programming before too long. What is the best one for a child to learn, not necessarily with computer science or a professional career in mind, but just to take the next step and create some cool games and applications?

I find myself leaning towards Microsoft’s C#. The reason is that there is a capable free...

Adobe has issued further information about its intention to donate the Flex SDK, which builds Flash applications from XML and ActionScript, to the Apache Software Foundation. Specifically, the donation will include:

BlazeDS, the free version of LiveCycle Data Services Falcon, the new Flex compiler due to be completed in 2012 Falcon JS, a previously unannounced project Of these, Falcon JS is the most eye-catching. This is an “experimental cross-compiler from MXML and ActionScript to HTML and JavaScript.” In other words, Falcon JS has the potential to give developers a migration path from Flash to HTML clients. Note that it is described as a cross-compiler rather than a porting tool, so it may well be that the output is not easily edited. The Google Web Toolkit works like this, converting Java to JavaScript but not in a form that anyone is expected to edit. Adobe also adds:

We have undertaken some experimental work in this area, but remain unsure as to the viability of fully translating Flex-based...

Supercomputing and low-power computing are not normally associated; but at the SC11 Supercomputing conference the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has announced a new supercomputer, called the called the Mont-Blanc Project, which will combine the ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra SoC with separate CUDA GPUs. CUDA is NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture, enabling general purpose computing on the GPU.

The project’s publicity says this enables power saving of 15 to 30 times, versus today’s supercomputers:

The analysis of the performance of HPC systems since 1993 shows exponential improvements at the rate of one order of magnitude every 3 years: One petaflops was achieved in 2008, one exaflops is expected in 2020. Based on a 20 MW power budget, this requires an efficiency of 50 GFLOPS/Watt. However, the current leader in energy efficiency achieves only 1.7n GFLOPS/Watt. Thus, a 30x improvement is required.

NVIDIA is also creating a new hardware and software development kit for Tegra + CUDA, to...

A new standard for accelerating C/C++ programming with compiler directives has been announced at the SC11 Supercomputing conference in Seattle. The new standard is called OpenACC  and has been created by NVIDIA, Cray, PGI (Portland Group) and CAPS enterprise.

OpenACC compiler directives are code annotations that enable the compiler to parallelise code while ensuring thread-safety. The big difference between OpenACC and the existing OpenMP standard is that OpenACC primarily targets the GPU rather than CPU, whereas OpenMP is generally CPU only. That said, OpenACC can also target the CPU so it is flexible; the idea is that it will adapt to the target system.



OpenACC...

One thing that is easy to overlook in all the talk about Windows Phone, Nokia, and Microsoft’s prospects against iPhone and Android, is that the Windows Phone developer platform has substantially improved with the 7.1 SDK – the phone is 7.5 but the SDK is 7.1, just to confuse you.

Here are a few highlights from the list of what’s new:

Multitasking. Apps still do not continue to run when they do not have the focus. However, Microsoft has implemented several features to make it look as if they do. This includes background agents, background audio (another kind of agent), scheduled tasks, background file transfers, and fast application switching. Although apps do not execute in the background, they do stay in memory if free space allows, so that resume is near-instant.

Silverlight 4. The version of Silverlight implemented in Windows Phone is now Silverlight 4, though there are some differences between Silverlight on the desktop and Silverlight on the phone, including the fact that there...

I’ve been listening to some of the sessions from Adobe’s Financial Analyst meeting in New York City yesterday. Since this event was focused on financials, Adobe talked in detail about how it intends not only to win its customers over to a cloud model, but also to make more revenue from them. I found it fascinating.

First, a little background. Adobe announced its Creative Cloud at the MAX event in Los Angeles last month. I was there, and while it was obvious that the announcement was significant, I did not appreciate until yesterday how profoundly the company is changing its business model.

Adobe has its own take on what cloud computing means. There are no plans for Creative Suite – which bundles products including Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash and Premier Pro – to become software as a service in the manner of Google Apps or Salesforce.com. Rather, the Creative Cloud is primarily two things:

1. A new purchase model for Creative Suite and associated tablet apps, based on subscription rather...