Accessibility programming doesn’t feel accessible

Accessibility is something that doesn't get nearly enough attention, especially considering because not only will we need accessibility features eventually as we grow older, but also because a lot of accessibility features are just helpful even if you don't technically need them. Given these facts, it's a shame that accessibi

https://www.osnews.com/story/142599/accessibility-programming-doesnt-feel-accessible/

Rust celebrates ten year anniversary with Rust 1.87.0 release

I generally don't pay attention to the releases of programming languages unless they're notable for some reason or another, and I think this one qualifies. Rust is celebrating its ten year anniversary with a brand new release, Rust 1.87.0. This release adds anonymous pipes to the standard library, inlin

https://www.osnews.com/story/142377/rust-celebrates-ten-year-anniversary-with-rust-1-87-0-release/

“AI” automated PR reviews mostly useless junk

The team that makes Cockpit, the popular server dashboard software, decided to see if they could improve their PR review processes by adding "AI" into the mix. They decided to test both sourcey.ai and GitHub Copilot PR reviews, and their conclusions are damning.

About half of the AI reviews were noise, a quarter bikeshedding. Th

https://www.osnews.com/story/142323/ai-automated-pr-reviews-mostly-useless-junk/

Reverse-engineering Fujitsu M7MU RELC hardware compression

This is a follow-up to the Samsung NX mini (M7MU) firmware reverse-engineering series. This part is about the proprietary LZSS compression used for the code sections in the firmware of Samsung NX mini, NX3000/NX3300 and Galaxy K Zoom. The post is documenting the step-by-step discovery process, in order to sho

https://www.osnews.com/story/142317/reverse-engineering-fujitsu-m7mu-relc-hardware-compression/

The subjective charms of Objective-C

To argue that Objective-C resembles a metaphysically divine language, or even a good language, is like saying Shakespeare is best appreciated in pig latin. Objective-C is, at best, polarizing. Ridiculed for its unrelenting verbosity and peculiar square brackets, it is used only for building Mac and iPhone apps and would have faded into obscurity in the

https://www.osnews.com/story/142105/the-subjective-charms-of-objective-c/

Elliptical Python programming

One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom.
↫ Susam Pal

I can't program and know nothing about Python, but this still made me laugh.

https://www.osnews.com/story/142099/elliptical-python-programming/

The insanity of being a software engineer

Software gets more complicated. All of this complexity is there for a reason. But what happened to specializing? When a house is being built, tons of people are involved: architects, civil engineers, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, interior designers, roofers, surveyors, pavers, you name it. You don’t expect a single person, or even a wh

https://www.osnews.com/story/142071/the-insanity-of-being-a-software-engineer/

Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax

There isn't a lot to this story beyond the fact that in around 1990 I helped debug someone's Lotus 1-2-3 set up via fax. But it's a good reminder of how important the Zeroth Law of Debugging is (see below).

Without some sort of online connection with these folks, and with transatlantic phone calls being very, very expensive (I was in the UK, they were in the US) fa

https://www.osnews.com/story/142044/debugging-lotus-1-2-3-by-fax/

A 10x Faster TypeScript

To meet those goals, we’ve begun work on a native port of the TypeScript compiler and tools. The native implementation will drastically improve editor startup, reduce most build times by 10x, and substantially reduce memory usage. By porting the current codebase, we expect to be able to preview a native implementation of tsc capable of command-line typechecking by mid-2025, wit

https://www.osnews.com/story/141896/a-10x-faster-typescript/

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from ‘serious attacks’

Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++, has issued a call for the C++ community to defend the programming language, which has been shunned by cybersecurity agencies and technical experts in recent years for its memory safety shortcomings.

C and C++ are built around ma

https://www.osnews.com/story/141836/c-creator-calls-for-help-to-defend-programming-language-from-serious-attacks/

zlib-rs is faster than C

I'm sure we can all have a calm, rational discussion about this, so here it goes: zlib-rs, the Rust re-implementation of the zlib library, is now faster than its C counterparts in both decompression and compression.

We've released version 0.4.2 of zlib-rs, featuring a number of substantial performance improvements. We are now (to our knowledge) the fastest api-compatible

https://www.osnews.com/story/141809/zlib-rs-is-faster-than-c/

Cassette: a POSIX application framework featuring a retro-futurist GUI toolkit

Cassette is a GUI application framework written in C11, with a UI inspired by the cassette-futurism aesthetic. Built for modern POSIX systems, it's made out of three libraries: CGUI, CCFG and COBJ. Cassette is free and open-source software, licensed under the LGPL-3.0.
↫

https://www.osnews.com/story/141697/cassette-a-posix-application-framework-featuring-a-retro-futurist-gui-toolkit/

Hands-on graphics without X11 using NetBSD’s wscons

Now, if you have been following the development of EndBASIC, this is not surprising. The defining characteristic of the EndBASIC console is that it’s hybrid as the video shows. What’s newsworthy, however, is that the EndBASIC console can now run directly on a framebuffer exposed by the kernel. No X11 nor Wayland in the pi

https://www.osnews.com/story/141565/hands-on-graphics-without-x11-using-netbsds-wscons/

An operating system in 1000 lines

Hey there! In this book, we're going to build a small operating system from scratch, step by step.

You might get intimidated when you hear OS or kernel development, the basic functions of an OS (especially the kernel) are surprisingly simple. Even Linux, which is often cited as a huge open-source software, was only 8,413 lines in version 0.01. Today's Lin

https://www.osnews.com/story/141502/an-operating-system-in-1000-lines/

A twenty-five year old curl bug

When we announced the security flaw CVE-2024-11053 on December 11, 2024 together with the release of curl 8.11.1 we fixed a security bug that was introduced in a curl release 9039 days ago. That is close to twenty-five years.

The previous record holder was CVE-2022-35252 at 8729 days.
↫ Daniel Stenberg

Ir's really quite fascinating to see details like this

https://www.osnews.com/story/141320/a-twenty-five-year-old-curl-bug/

If not React, then what?

Rejecting an engrained practice of bullshitting does not come easily. Frameworkism preaches that the way to improve user experiences is to adopt more (or different) tooling from the framework's ecosystem. This provides adherents with something to do that looks plausibly like engineering, except it isn't. It can even become a totalising commitment; solutions to user problems out

https://www.osnews.com/story/141252/if-not-react-then-what/

Introduction to Bismuth VM

This is the first post in what will hopefully become a series of posts about a virtual machine I’m developing as a hobby project called Bismuth. This post will touch on some of the design fundamentals and goals, with future posts going into more detail on each.

But to explain how I got here I first have to tell you about Bismuth, the kernel.
↫ Eniko Fox

It's not eve

https://www.osnews.com/story/141185/introduction-to-bismuth-vm/

FLTK 1.4.0 brings Wayland support

FLTK 1.4.0 has been released. This new version of the Fast Light Toolkit contains some major improvements, such as Wayland support on both Linux and FreeBSD. X11 and Wayland are both supported by default, and applications using FLTK will launch using Wayland if available, and otherwise fall back to starting with X11. This new release also brings HiDPI suppor

https://www.osnews.com/story/141163/fltk-1-4-0-brings-wayland-support/

Startup’s “AI” tool spams GitHub repositories with bogus commits, without consent

Most of the time, products with "AI" features just elicit sighs, especially when the product category in question really doesn't need to have anything to do with "AI" in any way, shape, or form. More often than not, though, such features are not only optional an

https://www.osnews.com/story/141134/startups-ai-tool-spams-github-repositories-with-bogus-commits-without-consent/

Moving a game project from C to the Odin language

Some months ago, I got really fed up with C.

Like, I don't hate C. Hating programming languages is silly. But it was way too much effort to do simple things like lists/hashmaps and other simple data structures and such.

I decided to try this language called Odin, which is one of these "Better C" languages. And I ended up

https://www.osnews.com/story/141066/moving-a-game-project-from-c-to-the-odin-language/