Weekly Review: Open source software development, Eclipse Theia, how to combat AI bias & more

“The Open Source Way has proven itself as the leading way to develop software solutions”

The modern world of software development is characterized by open source. Today, around 80 percent of IT stacks in companies worldwide are composed of open source software (OSS). Last week, Jan Wildeboer, EMEA open source evangelist at Red Hat, explained in our interview how this has come to be, and why it would be wise to increase this figure. And not only did he go into the definition of OSS, he also clarified the differences between free and open source software. Lastly, he introduced the new “Culture-as-a-Service” concept that he is currently developing at Red Hat.

See what Jan Wildeboer had to say about open source here.

Apache Kafka 2.5.0 includes improvements for Kafka Streams

The Apache Kafka platform is frequently used for big data applications and processing data streams. The newest version was released on April 16, 2020. Version 2.5.0 includes new security features, new metrics, and various operational improvements.

See what’s new in Apache Kafka 2.5.0 here.

COVID-19: Documenting your code is now essential. There is a better way. (Part 4)

Last week, we published the final part of our series on working from home due to COVID-19. This time, the topic was the importance of documentation: Why don’t programmers document their code? In an all-remote world, documentation is one more essential tool to sustain team alignment. This is a great moment to revisit how we think of documentation and its value. The good news is that there is a better way.

See why documentation is essential here.

Eclipse Theia vs. VS Code: “Theia is one of the most diverse & active projects”

Eclipse Theia is an open source code editor that runs both as a desktop application and in the browser. The newly released version Theia 1.0 is referred to as an “open source alternative to VS Code”. We talked to Theia inventor Sven Efftinge about differences and similarities between Theia and VS Code.

Read the interview here.

Combatting AI bias: remembering the human at the heart of the data is key

When artificial algorithms are biased, this can create unethical results, which in turn can lead to PR disasters for businesses. In this article which we published last week, you will learn about three different types of AI bias – algorithmic, technical, and emergent – and what measures can be used to limit them.

Learn about reducing AI bias here.

But that’s not all

Last week was so full of interesting news and great content, here’s a few more highlights for you:

• Women in Tech: “If no one gives you the right possibility to grow, you must create it alone.”
• GitHub makes unlimited private repositories free for all
• Infrastructure as code vs. platform as code
• IntelliJ IDEA 2020.1 has been released with support for Java 14
• PyCharm 2020.1 adds visual interactive rebasing and smarter debugging

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