British Computer Scientist and Turing laureate, Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare, has died aged 92. His achievements over a long career encompass foundational contributions to  programming languages, operating systems, formal verification, and concurrent computing. But the one that most of us will best recognize is the Quicksort algorithm. Here's the story behind it.

A new parser for the Apache Parquet file format has been released. Hardwood is optimized for minimal dependencies and great performance.

Fulfilling a commitment announced last October, Meta has handed over governance of React, React Native and associated projects like JSX to the React Foundation. Meta has also promised $3 million over 5 years to the Foundation. 

It is difficult to believe how far we have come in so short a time. I have to admit that I miss the pleasures of working with such small machines as the ZX81 where 16K was an upgrade on the basic 1K model!

If you've not visited I Programmer before, this Weekly Digest gives you a taster. It has links to the latest feature articles and  our wide ranging news with its mix of analysis and comment. It also lists the week's addition to Book Watch Archive.

After running concurrently in 2025, Google I/O and Microsoft Build are taking place on well-spaced dates this year, although they are geographically close.

Google has announced the complete list of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) mentoring organizations. This year there are 185 open source communities on the list ready to mentor a new group of open source contributors. GSoC organizers say that now is the time for prospective contributors to start looking for a community to participate with.

TestSprite has launched TestSprite 2.1, an updated version of its agentic testing tool. The new release has an AI testing engine that's four to five times faster than the previous version. It also has improved test coverage, a new visual Test Modification Interface, and a GitHub integration that automatically enforces quality on every pull request.

Anthropic has recently updated its Claude Code command-line tool in an attempt to simplify its terminal output, sparking significant backlash from the software development community. However, Claude-Devtools provides a solution.

The Rust Foundation conducted its 10th annual survey between November 17th and December 17th, 2025. It collected 7,156 completed responses, a slight decrease from the previous year's 7,310 and the results are a close match to those in 2024. 

If there is one thing I hate about Python, it is the mess that is enviroment control. As far as possible, I try to ignore it until it cannot be ignored any longer and then I wish I could continue to ignore it instead of playing a game of where is pip. The good news it that Microsoft might have the solution.

JetBrains, creators and major supporters of Kotlin, has released an extension for Visual Studio Code that can be used to convert Java code to Kotlin. The extension uses LLMs to provide "idiomatic conversion" suggestions to help Java developers migrate to Kotlin.

SQL, yes that old horse, is still going. SQL has been the data access standard for decades. It levels the playing field, easily integrates with other systems and accelerates delivery. Here's a  beginner-friendly course on SQL for data engineering.

Apache has released Geode 2.0, which the developers describe as one of the most significant modernization efforts in the Apache Geode project’s history, delivering comprehensive upgrades across the Java platform, build system, enterprise APIs, and core framework integrations.

The first beta of Android 17 has been released with improvements to camera and media capabilities, new tools for optimizing connectivity, and expanded profiles for companion devices. This release is also the first in Google's move away from the traditional Developer Preview model to the "Android Canary program".

Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New York on February 29th, 1860. So today is the closest we come to the 166th anniversary of his birth. An engineer and inventor, he devised a highly efficient punch card tabulator and formed a company that is still in existence today as IBM.

If you are an Android programmer you may still be unaware of the threat to your continued livelihood, see our top news item this week. What Google is doing threatens to remove your ability to develop apps for Android without registration. If you don't register, you won't be able to distribute your apps - not even to a private group of users. Sign the open letter and share the story.

Supporters and long-term contributors to MySQL have written an open letter to Oracle setting out their concerns over the future of the open source database, and suggesting that the way forward is to establish a non-profit Foundation to support the MySQL community.