programming

GitHub Codespaces Lets You Code Visual Studio on an iPad
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GitHub Codespaces Lets You Code Visual Studio on an iPad

Andrew Orr ·

GitHub has a new tool it’s working on called Codespaces. It gives you a full Visual Studio coding experience in a browser. This means it can work on an iPad, Mac, and PC.

Codespaces sets up a cloud-hosted, containerized, and customizable VS Code environment. After set up, you can connect to a codespace through the browser or through VS Code.

I think this is exciting news. I don’t having programming experience but one argument in the “iPad computer replacement” debate is that developers can’t code on it.

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Programmers Create Every Possible Melody to Stop Lawsuits

Andrew Orr ·

Two programmers have created every possible melody in MIDI to help creators stifled by lawsuits.

Two programmer-musicians wrote every possible MIDI melody in existence to a hard drive, copyrighted the whole thing, and then released it all to the public in an attempt to stop musicians from getting sued.

Often in copyright cases for song melodies, if the artist being sued for infringement could have possibly had access to the music they’re accused of copying—even if it was something they listened to once—they can be accused of “subconsciously” infringing on the original content.

Sounds like a clever attempt to hack the system. I’m not sure if that will actually hold up in court but it’s creative.

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News+ Efficiency is Aesthetically Pleasing

Andrew Orr ·

In Wired’s latest magazine, Clive Thompson writes that for some programmers, efficiency isn’t just a way to make a job easier. It’s aesthetically pleasing.

Many of today’s programmers have their efficiency aha moment in their teenage years, when they discover that life is full of blindingly dull repetitive tasks and that computers are really good at doing them.

I’m not a programmer, but I’m a big fan of efficiency and optimizing my life. I don’t go as far as the “optimized self” movement, but I like to automate whenever possible. The less time you spend doing repetitive tasks, the more you can spend enjoying life.

This is part of Andrew’s News+ series, where he shares a magazine every Friday to help people discover good content in Apple News+.

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The Least Secure Programming Languages

John Martellaro ·

The design, structure and syntax of a programming language can lead the average programmer into a minefield of unsuspected programming errors. Those errors lead to vulnerabilities.

But which languages are the most and least secure in the end?

To answer this question, the report compiled information from WhiteSource’s database, which aggregates information on open source vulnerabilities from sources including the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), security advisories, GitHub issue trackers, and popular open source projects issue trackers.

This TechRepublic article presents the list.

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How to Use JavaScript When Creating Shortcuts

Andrew Orr ·

Redditor u/keveridge put together a nice guide on how to use JavaScript when creating Shortcuts. JavaScript lets you perform complex actions that would be hard to do with regular shortcut actions.

We make use of the Safari web browser, running within the shortcut, in order to execute the JavaScript. To do so, we:

  • make an HTML file that contains our code and provides an output;

  • pass the contents of the file to Safari as a Data URL;

  • use Get Contents of Web Page to render the page provide the output to the shortcut.