The project aims to bring the Python runtime to the browser via WebAssembly along with NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, parts of SciPy and NetworkX. 

According to Mozilla, Pyodide contains the CPython 3.8 interpreter compiled to WebAssembly, which allows Python to run in the browser and it can install any Python package with a pure Python wheel from the Python Package Index (PyPi).

RELATED CONTENT: Python named TIOBE’s programming language of 2020

The new version contains major maintenance improvements, a large redesign of the central APIs and careful elimination of error and memory leaks. 

The type translation module was significantly reworked so that the round trip translations of objects between Python and JavaScript produce identical objects.

Previously, issues with round trip translations were caused by implicit change of Python types to Javascript, which surprised users. 

Another new feature is a Python event loop that schedules coroutines to run on the browser event loop which makes it possible to use asyncio in Pyodide. It’s also now possible to await JavaScript Promises in Python and await Python awaitables in JavaScript.

Error handling was also improved so that errors could be thrown in Python and caught in JavaScript and vice-versa. The error translation code is generated by C macros which simplifies implementing and debugging new logic. 

The latest release also completes the migration to the latest version of Emscripten that uses the upstream LLVM backend, reducing significant reductions, package size and execution time. 

Pyodide was originally developed inside Mozilla to allow the use of Python in Iodide to build an interactive scientific computing environment for the web. 

Moving forward, the developers behind Pyodide are focusing on reducing download sizes and initialization times, improving the performance of Python code in Pyodide and simplifying the package loading system. 

The post Mozilla’s Pyodide becomes an independent and community-driven project appeared first on SD Times.

We will look at six crucial tips that will help mobile developers become better React Native developers.

Correct choice of Navigation Library is important from the start
React Native has a long history of pains and complaints associated with Navigation. Throughout the beginning of version 0.5, many navigational libraries were released and deprecated but only few among them succeeded in maintaining the impact and feel of a native app. However, there might be many situations where developers will find out that the navigational library that they are using in their app is not helpful in creating better user experienced. One possible example of such a use case is Airbnb, which found out that React Navigation — which is the recommended Navigational library for React Native — was not working with their brownfield app. That’s why developers at Airbnb came up with their own navigational library, which is now the second-most used navigational library after React Navigation.

Native debugging is the old-school way to debug React Native
Debugging in React Native is quite annoying at times when your project size grows. This is because React Native relies on the Chrome Debugger for debugging, which uses the Chrome JS engine, but JavaScript debugging can be only done on JavaScriptCore. This creates a subtle difference between the JavaScript execution environments and developers usually face quite unique problems due to it. The only way for developers to get out of this problem is by doing debugging through Android Studio on Android and Xcode on iOS.

Android Studio: Developers have access to the Android profiler which is hailed as the best tool for Android to analyze an app’s performance such as CPU power, memory, etc.

Xcode: On Xcode, developers can press the Debug View Hierarchy button, which will show all views in a 3D way. Using this, developers can inspect their full view tree in a very visual appealing way.

Upgrading might be a PAIN, so UPGRADE WISELY
At times, developers may want to upgrade their React Native version in order to take advantage of new features. No matter how easy it seems, there might be some situation when it becomes difficult when developers have installed native modules that are linked or bridged to native code. This mostly includes all packages such as React Native Navigation, Google Maps, etc. Moreover, it may so happen that everything that is linked comes crashing down and the app breaks without any warning. Fortunately, there is a way to upgrade React Native wisely, which involves unlinking native packages, upgrading and then relinking them without hassle.

Optimizing Images and other resources is the key to performance
You will most likely agree with the fact that an application is incomplete without Images. Images can be implemented in an application either with the help of a static resource accessed from a local directory or with the help of an external resource that needs to be fetched from a back-end server. Whatever the requirement of a developer might be, it is very important to optimize React Native Images with higher priority. Instead of processing them from the client end and crashing the performance, developers can optimize them at the server level. Moreover, there are many CDN options available to host Images so that developers can easily make API calls and upload images to the server.

Reduce app size on Android and iOS
Most React Native developers are in the habit of using native components and third-party libraries that increase the size of an application. This drastically impacts the performance and loading speed of the application. Developers can follow certain guidelines in order to reduce the size of an application. On Android, this can be done by enabling Proguard and reducing the size of graphics. On iOS, however, this might be a tedious task as iOS does not offer any straightforward solution to solve this problem. Yet, some workarounds can be done that would relatively improve the size of an iOS application.

Don’t fear learning Native code
React Native is a great tool to speed up your native development — especially in situations where your business is targeting multiple platforms — though there might be some use cases where developers need to implement any functionality that doesn’t exists in the core library. Fortunately, React Native has this problem covered with its pleasant API so developers can use native libraries to implement the required functionality. For this purpose, developers need to have a good understanding of core native languages such as Objective-C / Swift (iOS) and Java / Kotlin (Android). Moreover, it is very important to learn how React Native works under the hood.

The post Six crucial tips for becoming a better React Native developer appeared first on SD Times.

It was designed to provide utility for Angular developers of every skill level and adheres to the Angular CLI core concepts, Daniel Muller, lead designer and front-end architect on the project, explained in a blog post.

The core concepts of the solution include workspaces, “which can be thought of as being analogous to an individual git repository;” projects, “which represent a reusable library;” and architect commands, which “define the manner in which a project should be built, served, linted or tested,” Muller wrote. The console provides UI elements that help developers more quickly and plainly interact with these command line features.

The elements are:

• Visually selecting the workspace to provide context for invoking Angular CLI functions
• A visual list of projects in that workspace, all “associated with a list of quick actions that you can take on that project; either an action to generate code using a schematic or invoke a project’s architect command.”
• A generate screen where users can see all of the code generation schematics available in a workspace and import more from community Angular CLI extensions, then edit their flags
• A tasks screen that displays all of the projects in a workspace and their associated architect commands, which can be initiated with a click. This latest version of the console lets tasks run in parallel while the console is in use and visualizes the results of an operation at completion.

Muller wrote that Narwhal is in the process of migrating development of the Angular Console over to Google’s Angular Team, which will make its project an official tool.

“Angular Console is meant to be a community driven product,” Muller wrote. “Its purpose is merely to make you, Angular developers, more effective and efficient at creating beautiful applications and libraries. Any features we’ve introduced into Console at this point and any features we will introduce in the future have only this goal in mind. Ultimately we want the Angular community to define what console will become going forward.”

In addition, the Narwhal team is in talks with the Angular team to adapt Angular.io guides for the console.

The post Angular Console introduces simpler UI for Angular CLI appeared first on SD Times.

“Early adopters of v7 have reported that this update is faster than ever, and many apps take less than 10 minutes to update,” Stephen Fluin, developer advocate for Angular, wrote in a post.

One of the key updates in their release is the availability of CLI prompts. The CLI now has the ability to prompt users when using common commands and discover built-in features, according to Fluin.

The release also comes with a focus on performance. After reviewing common mistakes throughout the ecosystem, the team found developers were using reflect-metadata polyfill in production, when it should only be used in development. As a result, the update version of Angular will now remove this from polyfills.ts files and include it as a build step. Other performance updates includes Bundle BUdgets in the CLI that provide the ability to warn when an initial bundle is more than 2MB.

Minor visual updates have been added to Angular Material to reflect updates made to the Material Design specification. The CDK now includes virtual scrolling and drag and drop capabilities.

Additional features of the release include improved accessibility of selects, and support for content project in Angular Elements.

The team also announced a number of partner launches such as Angular Console, @angular/fire, NativeScript and StackBlitz 2.0

The post Angular 7.0.0 released appeared first on SD Times.

According to Rosenwasser, project references were one of the biggest improvements of the release, making it easier for developers to share dependencies between multiple TypeScript projects by allowing tsconfig.json files to reference each other.

“Specifying these dependencies makes it easier to split your code into smaller projects, since it gives TypeScript (and tools around it) a way to understand build ordering and output structure,” Rosenwasser wrote. “That means things like faster builds that work incrementally, and support for transparently navigating, editing, and refactoring across projects. Since 3.0 lays the foundation and exposes the APIs, any build tool should be able to provide this.”

With TypeScript 3.0’s –build flag, users can now build projects and dependencies without the need for external compilers or tools and control the structure of the output, and avoids duplicate dependencies during the build process when using project reference, Rosenwasser explained.

The update also brings along richer tuple types and the new “unknown” type, which behaves similarly to the preexisting “any” type, but will throw up warnings in the IDE when referenced incorrectly.

Finally, the editor has received improved UX elements for error reporting and warnings such as “related error spans,” which “can provide messages on other locations so that users can reason about cause-and-effect of an error,” Rosenwasser wrote. “In some sense, related error messages can give a user not just an explanation, but also breadcrumbs to see where things went wrong.”

More information about these changes and other improvements in TypeScript 3.0 can be found here.

The post Microsoft introduces project references in TypeScript 3.0 appeared first on SD Times.

When Eppstein’s team analyzed the fastest websites in India, they found that a reasonable goal for the data overhead incurred by a compressed CSS stylesheet on first pageview was around 10KB. With LinkedIn’s clocking in at 154KB, they considered the 10KB goal optimistic.

“After re-building a fully-functional version of the homepage with CSS Blocks, we were able to serve the same page with just 38KB of CSS,” Eppstein wrote in the release blog post. “To be clear: that’s the uncompressed size. After compression, that CSS file weighed in at less than 9KB! And, because CSS Blocks enables code-splitting, we were able to achieve a 94% reduction of our compressed CSS delivered for initial render.”

Through a process Eppstein calls “static analysis,” CSS Blocks can determine the precise conditions under which certain styles will be used in each element and cuts down on your code using stylesheet performance techniques like code-splitting, critical inlining and tree shaking.

But Eppstein writes that CSS Blocks is useful even if stylesheet optimization isn’t a priority.

“Setting performance aside, CSS Blocks is a fantastic developer experience that will make the engineers using it happier and more productive,” Eppstein wrote. “We think it’s worth adopting even without the performance features. It also just happens to help you write CSS that starts tiny and stays tiny as you scale your product and the size of your team.”

While the OptiCSS-driven CSS streamlining in CSS Blocks is already very effective, there’s still plenty of work to be done.

“We still need to produce some tools and remaining features that we think are needed to scale up from supporting a small team of engineers to supporting several hundred front-end engineers across various teams and applications, Eppstein wrote. “But from this point forward, we want to invite the community to be part of that maturation process so that we do not optimize for LinkedIn’s own needs and use cases at the expense of others.”

Top 5 projects trending on GitHub this week:

1. Architect awesome: A backend architect technical map
2. ReLaXed: A project that enables users to create PDF documents using HTML or Pug
3. DayJS: A minimalist JavaScript library for modern browsers
4. Tui.calendar: A JavaScript calendar
5. PureCSS Francine: Art created with CSS and HTML

The post SD Times GitHub Project of the Week: CSS Blocks from LinkedIn appeared first on SD Times.

This new dashboard will also enable development teams to put out releases faster and more often, according to the company. It has a crash rate indicator to show the percent of sessions that crashed, and enavles teams to track the health of releases across all platforms.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights will obtain data from the Chrome User Experience Report
Google has announced that PageSpeed Insights will now obtain data from the Chrome User Experience Report. PageSight Insights gives developers information on how well pages adhere to best practices. Getting information from the Chrome User Experience Report will allow it to make better recommendations to developers, according to Google.  

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi launches new venture capital fund
Automotive alliance, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has announced the launch of a new venture capital fund called Alliance Ventures. It will invest up to one billion dollars in open innovation over the course of five years. In its first year, it is expected to invest $200 million in “start-ups and open innovation partnerships with technology entrepreneurs focused on new mobility, including vehicle electrification, autonomous systems, connectivity and artificial intelligence.”

“Our open innovation approach will allow us to invest and collaborate with start-up companies and technology entrepreneurs, who will benefit from the global scale of the Alliance,” said Carlos Ghosn, chairman and chief executive of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi. “This new fund reflects the collaborative spirit and entrepreneurial mind-set at the heart of the Alliance.”

Adobe releases a security update to address vulnerability
Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Chrome OS. According to the company, “the update addresses an important out-of-bounds read vulnerability that could lead to information exposure.” The vulnerability was reported through Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative.

The post SD Times news digest: Bugsnag’s Releases Dashboard, Google’s PageSpeed Insight, and an Adobe security update appeared first on SD Times.

“All of this is subject to change based on what the new year brings and how the industry changes, but we’re excited to have so many possibilities for the coming year. 2018 is already shaping up to be a great year for the Xamarin platform,” the team wrote in a post.

Intel CEO addresses Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities at CES
Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich addressed the recently reported vulnerabilities, Meltdown and Spectre in his CES keynote this week. “As of now, we have not received any information that these exploits have been used to obtain customer data. And we are working tirelessly on these issues to ensure it stays that way. The best thing you can do to make sure your data remains safe is to apply any updates from your operating system vendor and system manufacturer as soon as they become available,” he said.

According to Krzanich, Intel will issue updates for more than 90 percent of its processors and products introduce in the past five years within a week, and by the end of January.

Wi-Fi Alliance introduces new security enhancements
Wi-Fi Alliance has added new configuration, authentication, and encryption features to its security portfolio, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED. The WPA2 protocol is used in billions of devices and the company will continue enhancing WPA2 in order to deliver strong security protections. It will also improve security configuration for users and service providers. A new 192-bit security suite will further protect networks with higher security requirements such as government, defense, and industrial.

“Security is a foundation of Wi-Fi Alliance certification programs, and we are excited to introduce new features to the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED family of security solutions,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance. “The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED designation means Wi-Fi devices meet the highest standards for interoperability and security protections.”

Facebook is shutting down the human-enhanced portion of its text-based virtual assistant
Facebook is shutting down parts of its text-based virtual assistant, M, according to the Verge. Some aspects will still remain, such as M suggestions, but the human-enhanced portion will be shut down. The human-enhanced portion of the service was only ever available to about 2,000 people. The service will end on January 19th and contractors who were working on it will move to other jobs within the company.

“We launched this project to learn what people needed and expected of an assistant, and we learned a lot,” Facebook said in a statement. “We’re taking these useful insights to power other AI projects at Facebook. We continue to be very pleased with the performance of M suggestions in Messenger, powered by our learnings from this experiment.”

The post SD Times news digest: ComponentOne Studio for Xamarin in 2018, Intel addresses Meltdown and Spectre, Wi-Fi Alliance’s security enhancements appeared first on SD Times.

“The JavaScript community is growing at a rate unprecedented in the history of programming languages, and the npm registry is growing right along with it,” said Laurie Voss, npm co-founder and COO, and the author of the report. “As the central hub where developers distribute and discover JavaScript code, we’re able to see trends in the applications developers write and the tools they use.”

The report looked at a number of trends between November 2016 and November 2017.

According to the report, usage for React has grown 500 percent relative to all npm registry downloads. Mobile, desktop application, and web development are all using React. Preact, a drop-in replacement for React focused on performance improvements, has also seen a growth of 145%.

“Introduced in March of 2013 by Facebook, React has been adopted very rapidly. Part of this is a reflection of its nature; unlike some of the other frameworks in this analysis, React isn’t a full end-to-end solution for building a web application. It’s a well-designed solution to a specific need that many applications have, and it incorporates easily with a number of alternative solutions for other parts of the application. Because of this modular nature, React has spawned a whole ecosystem of related packages that solve the problems of the other parts of an application,” the report states.

npm also found that Ember has been making a comeback. The framework is used by a number of larger companies such as Microsoft, Netflix, and Salesforce. After a decrease in popularity in 2016, downloads increased 45 percent last year.

While Angular is sustaining in popularity, it is not expected to grow. Downloads of Angular make up about 0.008 percent of all downloads from the npm registry, according to the company. “A package with this growth curve might not ordinarily seem a good choice for a new project, but Google’s enormous resources and continued backing mean it can be depended upon to stick around,” according to the report.

Though Vue is at the same level of popularity as Ember and Angular, the report predicts it will grow much faster in popularity than the other tool.

Finally, the report shows that Webpack is now the dominant way to build web applications. Webpack converts JavaScript into code that can be used by the browser and is used to prepare React code. Since it’s usage grew faster than React’s in 2017, the company believes developers are now using Webpack to build other applications too.

Other findings include: jQuery remains popular, and Backbone is declining steeply, but has a long shelf-life for existing projects.

The company plans to release more findings from the React ecosystem, and analysis on backend frameworks later this month.

The post npm finds React is leading the JavaScript web development framework pack appeared first on SD Times.

Versioning, created by Australian book and online course publisher SitePoint, began in 2014 as a daily newsletter for Web developers and designers reaching more than 10,000 subscribers in the past year, according to SitePoint. The company has now released a beta version of a website based on the newsletter’s concept for users to share Web development-related links organized by upvote-based popularity.

“Ever since the newsletter first started, we’ve had people emailing us with links and suggestions. At the same time, some people wanted more links, or wanted links at different times of the day. Email doesn’t work for everyone, after all,” the website states. “A few months ago a small group of us decided to build something that could take Versioning further. A place for this cool community — that’s sprung up in less than a year — to meet each other, and share the cool stuff

Versioning is a hybrid social network and forum, complete with a leaderboard of the users with the most popular links, for Web developers to share interesting content or projects they’ve either stumbled across or coded themselves. The upvote system, made popular on social networking and microblogging platforms such as Reddit and Hacker News, determines along with Versioning editors the links that make it into the daily newsletter.

SitePoint is encouraging developer participation and interaction with Versioning as its team refines the beta site. Check out Versioning here.

The post Versioning: A social network for Web developers appeared first on SD Times.