Swift Turns 1.0: The Evolution of a Language

Apple has announced that Swift 1.0 has reached GM status on iOS and developers can now start submitting apps that use Swift. The language will continue to evolve, say Apple, as it has done since its announcement at WWDC 2014 last June. This is a short summary of its evolution.

TypeSafe's Kevin Webber: Actor-based Concurrency for Reactive Systems

In a recent article on Medium, TypeSafe’s Kevin Webber argues that reactive programming “isn’t just another trend but rather the paradigm for modern software developers to learn” since it helps them to build systems that are responsive, resilient, and scalable. He also suggests that actor-based concurrency is the most convenient foundations for a reactive system.

Testdroid Mobile Device Farm Is Now Integrated with JIRA

Testdroid’s maker Bitbar has recently announced the integration of Testdroid mobile app testing products with Atlassian JIRA defect tracking system. InfoQ has interviewed Testdroid technical product manager Ville-Veikko Helppi to better understand how developers and organizations could benefit from it.

Parse Gets a Refresh for iOS 8

Parse has announced its new SDK for iOS 8, an update to its Parse push service which now supports iOS 8 “silent” pushes and notification categories, and a new Parse Config API to store configuration parameters in the cloud to update apps on the fly.

PureScript: A Haskell-like Language that Compiles to JavaScript

PureScript is a strongly, statically typed language which compiles to JavaScript. It is written in and inspired by Haskell and aims at “allowing to write very expressive code which is still clear and readable” when translated into JavaScript. Furthermore, says PureScript creator Phil Freeman, PureScript provides interoperability with other languages which target JavaScript.