We are pleased to announce that the October 2019 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available. You can download the Python extension from the Marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. If you already have the Python extension installed, you can also get the latest update by restarting Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about  Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation.  

In this release we addressed 97 issues, including native editing of Jupyter Notebooks, a button to run a Python file in the terminal, and linting and import improvements with the Python Language Server. The full list of enhancements is listed in our changelog. 

The web development arena is moving at a fast pace and has reached an advanced stage today. Python and Javascript making some significant contributions for almost three decades. Now, being a developer or a business if you are planning to pick one of these, then it’s going to be tough just because both are too good to avoid. Hence, this brings up the topic ‘Python vs JavaScript: Which One Can Benefit You The Most?’

These two languages are supported by various trending web frameworks and libraries which are the real game-changers. The introduction of these frameworks and libraries to the web ecosystem has brought new paradigms, traditional notions, and standards of software development.

Quintet is a way to present atomic pieces of data indicating their role in the business area. Quintets can describe any item, while each of them contains complete information about itself and its relations to other quintets. Such description does not depend on the platform used. Its objective is to simplify the storage of data and to improve the visibility of their presentation.



We will discuss an approach to storing and processing information and share some thoughts on creating a development platform in this new paradigm. What for? To develop faster and in shorter iterations: sketch your project, make sure it is what you thought of, refine it, and then keep refining the result.

The quintet has properties: type, value, parent, and order among the peers. Thus, there are 5 components including the identifier. This is the simplest universal form to record information, a new standard that could potentially fit any programming demands. Quintets are stored in the file system of the unified structure, in a continuous homogeneous indexed bulk of data. The quintet data model — a data model that describes any data structure as a single interconnected list of basic types and terms based on them (metadata), as well as instances of objects stored according to this metadata (data).

We are pleased to announce that the September 2019 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available. You can download the Python extension from the Marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. If you already have the Python extension installed, you can also get the latest update by restarting Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about  Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation.

This was a short release where we closed 35 issues, including improvements to the Python Language Server and to Jupyter Notebook cell debugging, as well as detection of virtual environment creation. The full list of enhancements is listed in our changelog. 

To illustrate typical attack, and architecture issues, we will provide examples of SAP ERP solution, as it’s the most widespread one installed in 85% of Fortune 2000 companies.

Building on the momentum from the recently announced Developer PowerShell, we are excited to share the first preview of the new Visual Studio terminal. This new preview experience is part of Visual Studio version 16.3 Preview 3.


 
Rather than build everything from scratch, the Visual Studio terminal shares most of its core with the Windows Terminal. For you, that translates into a more robust terminal experience, and faster adoption of new functionality.

A/B test is not enough

There is a common opinion that A/B test is a universal, half-automatic tool that always helps to increase conversion, loyalty and UX. However misinterpretation of results or wrong sampling leads to the loss of loyal audience and decrease of margin. Why? A/B is based on the basic assumption that this sample is homogeneous and representative, scalability of results. In reality, the audience is heterogeneous — recall the “20/80” distribution for income. Heterogeneity means that sensitivity to A/B varies significantly within the sample.

ERPs and other enterprise business applications play a significant role in a company’s architecture and business processes. Unfortunately, these systems may easily fall victim to cyberattacks.

[Because my extension got a lot of attention from the foreign audience, I translated my original article into English].

Limit

Being a top-rated professional network, LinkedIn, unfortunately, for free accounts, has such a limitation as Commercial Use Limit (CUL). Most likely, you, same as me until recently, have never encountered and never heard about this thing.



The point of the CUL is that when you search people outside your connections/network too often, your search results will be limited with only 3 profiles showing instead of 1000 (100 pages with 10 profiles per page by default). How ‘often’ is measured nobody knows, there are no precise metrics; the algorithm decides it based on your actions – how frequently you’ve been searching and how many connections you’ve been adding. The free CUL resets at midnight PST on the 1st of each calendar month, and you get your 1000 search results again, for who knows how long. Of course, Premium accounts have no such limit in place.

However, not so long ago, I’ve started messing around with LinkedIn search for some pet-project, and suddenly got stuck with this CUL. Obviously, I didn’t like it that much; after all, I haven’t been using the search for any commercial purposes. So, my first thought was to explore this limit and try to bypass it.

[Important clarification — all source materials in this article are presented solely for informational and educational purposes. The author doesn't encourage their use for commercial purposes.]

Deep Learning applications have changed a lot of things. Some which give hope for a brighter future, and some which raise suspicions. However, for developers, the growth of deep learning applications has made them more perplexed about choosing the best among so many deep learning frameworks out there.

TensorFlow is one of the deep learning frameworks that comes in mind. It is arguably the most popular deep learning framework out there. Nothing justifies the statement better than the fact that Tensorflow is used by the likes of Uber, Nvidia, Gmail among other big corporations for developing state-of-the-art deep learning applications.

But right now, I am on a quest to find whether it indeed is the best deep learning framework. Or perhaps find what makes it the best out of all other frameworks it competes against.

There are hundreds of language learning apps and hundreds of reviews and comparisons. Actually most of the comparisons are about the same programs. Are the apps really helpful or this is only ad and marketing? Yes, and Yes.

I have been studying English using various methods and resources over five years. Language learning is not my greatest talent but I have achieved B2 level (from A2) using only my smartphone and PC. I found a set of features that really helps you study a foreign language. Some of them are crucial, others are just useful. Under the cut you will find a rating of the language learning apps that I composed by analyzing these features, As Objective As Possible.

Introduction

Trends in technology have turned around how things work in the world of business. In the past, the salespeople were in charge of driving the demand for their products. Today, sales are more customer-centered than before and most customers get informed about the products without the assistance of salespeople.

Hello reader. Quite a lot of time has passed since the release of .NET Core 2.1. And such cool innovations as Span and Memory are already widely known, you can read, see and hear a lot about them. However, unfortunately, library called System.IO.Pipeslines did not receive the same attention. Almost everything there is on this topic is the only post that have been translated and copied on many resources. There should be more information about that technology to look on it from different angles.

Video conferencing systems, so familiar to us today, have come a long way — more than a hundred years passed from fantastic ideas inspired by belief in unstoppable technical progress to the first mass implementation of video conferencing systems. A lot of dramatic events have come along the way. The way to success wasn’t easy at all.

Image credit: Unsplash

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are very good tools for online enhancement, censorship avoidance, anonymous file sharing, and more. But nowadays there are literally hundreds of such services, so it may be a bit tricky to pick the one that will suit you. Today we will share three practical tips that will help to solve this task.

Large companies and big teams always consist of various strategic departments and roles. Therefore, it's not a rare case when people face confusion in understanding some job positions.

Is it always clear to understand what the key responsibilities of different managers within one team are? For example, the roles of a product manager and a project manager have much in common. Supposedly, one of these PM’s have heard at least once in life the cheesy question «Is there any difference at all?" However, do not hurry to blame and shame the people who confuse their functionality. Product Manager and Project Manager are completely different roles. The goal of this post is to define clear differences between two strategic positions in software development companies to keep you out of all doubt.

A product manager is a key person who typically presents ready product solutions to the wide external world. To be considered a successful and professional product manager, you should have enough experience, enthusiasm and, of course, professional management skills, strong communication, and other essential abilities. Professional qualities help product management experts to competently manage, present, and bring the product to the market.

Magento

Magento is an open-source PHP based platform for building e-commerce solutions. Built by the Magento company (now part of Adobe), it is used by over 350,000 developers all over the world. It enables the creation of highly customizable digital storefronts for Business-to-Customer and Business-to-Business purposes. Magento 2, the transformed version of the Magento E-commerce Platform, comes with brand new architecture, coding structure, and database design.

a) General overview

Magento’s platform is built upon PHP and MySQL. During its lifetime of 10 years (the version 1.0 released in March 2008 and the version 2.0 in November 2015, it has undergone changes in terms of structure and development patterns and is now in its second major version, Magento 2.

Magento’s structure is comprised of two main parts, one being the back-end, with the database and MySQL, and Model, Data and Service interfaces, as can be seen in figure 3. These are directly connected and used in Magento’s Blocks, Layouts, and Templates, which would be defined as the front-end of the application.

This is an English-language summary of two absolutely outstanding articles written by Vitaliy Malkin from «Informzashita» whose team, True0xA3, became the winners of the prestigious black hat competition The Standoff during Positive Hack Days 9 in May of 2019.

Vitaliy has published three detailed articles on Habr, two of which were dedicated to the description of the strategies that True0xA3 team used before and during the competition to secure this team the title of the winners. I felt that the only thing that those two articles were lacking was a summary in English so that a wider audience of readers could enjoy them. So, below is the summary of two articles by Vitaliy Malkin, together with images Vitaliy published to clarify his points. Vitaliy has OKed me doing the translation and publishing it.

Generalized async return types — it is a new C#7 feature that allows using not only Task as a return type of async methods but also other types (classes or structures) that satisfy some specific requirements.

At the same time, async/await is a way to call a set of "continuation" functions inside some context which is an essence of another design pattern — Monad. So, can we use async/await to write a code which will behave in the same way like if we used monads? It turns out that — yes (with some reservations). For example, the code below is compilable and working:

async Task Main()
{
  foreach (var s in new[] { "1,2", "3,7,1", null, "1" })
  {
      var res = await Sum(s).GetMaybeResult();
      Console.WriteLine(res.IsNothing ? "Nothing" : res.GetValue().ToString());
  }
  // 3, 11, Nothing, Nothing
}

async Maybe<int> Sum(string input)
{
    var args = await Split(input);//No result checking
    var result = 0;
    foreach (var arg in args)
        result += await Parse(arg);//No result checking
    return result;
}

Maybe<string[]> Split(string str)
{
  var parts = str?.Split(',').Where(s=>!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s)).ToArray();
  return parts == null || parts.Length < 2 ? Maybe<string[]>.Nothing() : parts;
}

Maybe<int> Parse(string str)
    => int.TryParse(str, out var result) ? result : Maybe<int>.Nothing();

Further, I will explain how the code works...