Facebook has recently released a collection of C++ software modules that it uses to run the popular website.  With Facebook releasing Folly (the name it designated for the collection), more of the internal programs could become open source since they need different parts of the collection.

Jordan DeLong, a Facebook software engineer, said one concerning holdup to releasing additional work is that any open source project had to cut away from the dependencies on non-released internal collection code.

I suspect that many of you are familiar with the term "hard coding a value" whereby the age of an individual or their location is written into the condition (or action) of a business rule (in this case) as shown below:

if customer.age > 21 and customer.city == 'denver'

then ...

Such coding practices are perfectly expectable provided that the conditional values, age and city, never change. They become entirely unacceptable if a need for different values could be anticipated. A classic example of where this practice occurred that caused considerable heartache in the IT industry was the Y2K issue where dates were updated using only the last 2 digits of a four digit number because the first 2 digits were hard-coded to 19 i.e. 1998, 1999. All was well provided that the date did not advance to a time beyond the 1900’s since no one could be certain of what would happen when the millennia arrived (2000). A considerably amount of work (albeit boring) and money, approximately $200 billion, went into revising systems by way of software rewrites and computer chip replacements in order to thwart any detrimental outcomes. It is obvious how a simple change or an assumption can have sweeping consequences.

You may wonder what Y2K has to do with Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS). Well, what if we considered rules themselves to be hard-coded. If we were to write 100s of rules in Java, .NET or whatever language that only worked for a given scenario or assumption, would that not constitute hard-coded logic? By hard-coded, we obviously mean compiled. For example, if a credit card company has a variety of bonus campaigns, each with their own unique list of rules that may change within a week’s time, what would be the most effective way of writing software to deal with these responsibilities?

The iconic software company that is based in King County Washington has been getting almost universally slammed from it's recent Los Angeles press announcement about its entry into the hardware business with the convertible laptop/tablet known as Surface.

Certainly I can see the point that it is now competing with its hardware vendors/partners. Intel has done a good job in the arena creating 'reference designs' without competing with its partners.

There is another viewpoint which seems to be ignored. The cold facts are Microsoft is a public company. This puts Microsoft in a legal position of doing the most it can to return value to its shareholders. Failure to do so means somebody is going to jail.

Microsoft has a vision, which at the end of the day is, a certain way to get enough people to see enough value to hand over their money, to fulfill their fiduciary duty.

JAVA SCRIPT TUTORIAL – THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS

If you are looking to increase your proficiency in programming, it can make a lot of sense to invest some time into learning how to use JavaScript, or taking a Java Script tutorial.  It is one of the most popular and powerful options available today for people to use in programming different parts of their websites.  It often finds use in headers, or in interactive features displayed on pages.  It allows you to execute many different functions, such as calculation, pulling data from forms, special graphical effects, customized selections, custom security protocol and password systems, and much more.  Here are some essential points to keep in mind:

·         Java vs. JavaScript – These two languages are not the same.  Java uses completely separate files for their headers and classes, and they need compilation prior to execution.  Java is used in the creation of applets for pages.  JavaScript is much easier and simpler to learn than regular Java, and Java Script tutorials are often significantly more accessible for the average user.

·         OOP – OOP, or object oriented programming, is a specific programming technique that simplifies complicated computer programming conceptual issues.  Essentially, it lets a programmer treat whole chunks of data (defined either by users, or by the system itself), and modify or access them in specific ways.  It does this by classifying different parts of the programming into Objects, Methods, and Properties, which will be discussed more in depth in the future, in other Java Script Tutorials.