DevToolsDigest: Issue #1
This Heavybit Developer Tools Digest includes news from DeepMind, Slack and CircleCI as well as updates from Citus, LaunchDarkly and Convox.
Subscribe to the DevToolsDigest
All you need is 3 minutes a week to stay ahead of the devtools space. Get the most relevant industry updates, insightful discussions, and top-notch resources delivered straight to your inbox.
- Francisco Fisher
This week, Heavybit takes a quick look at news and updates throughout the developer community. We’ve come across freshly released product features and seen how developer companies are using new tools, or familiar tools in new ways, to extend their reach.
Apiary Adds Swagger
API platform developer Apiary is expanding their markdown language base from the popular API Blueprint to also include Swagger, the implementation of which is currently in beta. You can read more about the rollout and mark your calendar for a live demo of Swagger features with Apiary, with a Q&A with Apiary founder Jakub Nesetril to follow, on February 2.
AI at Work and in Play
Big news in AI this week as Google’s DeepMind defeated Go champion Lee Sedol. With a 5-0 tournament win, DeepMind becomes the first computer to beat a professional human player at Go, the complex board game, thanks to its AlphaGo programming.
Slack makes a move to further its AI development by signing on former Foursquare exec Noah Weiss to head development of its Search, Learning and Intelligence group. “Weaving in an intelligent layer is a huge opportunity to enhance the product for people who use Slack and the platform for developers who build on top of it,” he writes.
The future of Slack may be in more intelligent bots, but in the meantime you can tweak the app yourself for custom automation. For example, the software analytics team at Takipi use slash commands to automate its lunch orders taking as described in the company’s newly designed blog. Because nothing stalls productivity like manual processes or an empty stomach.
CircleCI is Ready for Om Next
CircleCI delivers continuous testing using Om, a ClojureScript interface to Facebook’s React. The setup has been favorable for its developers, so although Om Next is in alpha, the CircleCI team has already made plans to migrate it once it’s released.
Check out some tips and insights into continuous delivery and testing from CircleCI’s Kevin Bell, as well as Rainforest CEO Fred Stevens-Smith, you can sign up to watch an on-demand video of their presentation given earlier in the week.
For more on CD from the Heavybit stage, check out the wrap-up from a Wheelhouse event devoted to continuous delivery. You can also listen to Heavybit’s series devoted to the topic, To Be Continuous.
Vim vs. IntelliJ at Librato
Alex Kahn, Integrations Engineer at cloud monitoring platform Librato, is a “die hard,” 10-year Vim user in the company of a team of developers who instead turn to IntelliJ IDEA for their Java IDE. Check out his comparison of the two coding tools in his recent blog post.
Convox Launches Rack 0.8
Convox releases Rack 0.8, an update to their PaaS that runs through AWS. New features include notifications for vital info such as capacity monitoring and deployment events, delivered through Slack. Logs can now be delivered to CloudWatch for further monitoring, and Rack also now supports private Docker registries.
Firefox Gets On Board with Push Notifications
With the launch of Firefox 44, Mozilla’s browser now offers tools for developers who want to implement push notifications, a feature already offered by Chrome and Safari based in the W3C’s Push API.
Citus Releases cstore_fdw 1.4
Citus continues to scale out PostgreSQL for databases with their update to cstore_fdw that offers database table truncation support among other new features. The cited benefits of cstore_fdw 1.4 include reducing storage costs through better compression and cutting down on query times by reducing disk I/O.
Custom Roles from LaunchDarkly
LaunchDarkly unveils new features for custom roles inspired by IAM, Amazon’s enterprise-grade access policy engine. This update aims to give users more control over features and allow for assigning unique permissions and goals.
For more developer-based news and content, check back with the Heavybit blog, or browse Heavybit’s Library for in-depth talks from industry leaders on how to grow your company or services. Is there some news, events or developer-related content you’d like to see on the next Heavybit Dev Tools Digest? Contact us, we’d love to hear from you.