Seminar 2: “C: What’s next?”

The material for this seminar can be found in the Flipboard magazine Sb PS 2: C Whats next?

In spite of its age, C, the programming language, is very much still alive and kicking (80:ies content warning). However, the language I learned in the mid-80s is very similar to the ANSI/ISO C that is still being used. But in the last few years serious contenders have been popping up. Google is pushing go, which is being used for in production for network and systems programming. Beginning Android support in go has been announced, but the long term plans are not yet clear. Apple launched Swift for iOS earlier this year and Mozilla’s Rust just reached 1.0 alpha.

Why is this happening now? What are the motivations for launching new languages? What are the features highlighted in these attempts? Does the incumbent, C, need an extreme makeover to withstand the assault?

 

Seminar 3: “Docker vs PaaS – a cage match”

The material for this seminar can be found in the Flipboard magazine Sb PS 3: Paas vs Docker

Another duel being fought is between Docker, the new kid on the block, and PaaS, IaaS’ cousin from the country.  Docker has quickly become very popular and sports a container approach to deploying and distributing applications. PaaS provides a higher lever abstraction for developers and exposes an application and service layer to the developer rather than full access to underlying infrastructure.

What differs these two approaches? What are the criteria for choosing either of them ? Can they be aligned? How should an IT organization approach this? What about long term ownership of these systems and applications?

Can there be only one?