The Evolution of Swift's Standard Library

One of the primary design goals of Swift is to allow efficient execution of code while allowing load-time abstraction of implementation, according to a work-in-progress document by Apple. Apple’s document provides information that is relevant to library designers, including Swift’s Standard Libraries, to ensure both backward and forward compatibility.

Rust 1.6 Brings Stable Support for OS and Embedded Development

In keeping with their release model, the Rust development team has announced the first Rust release of 2016, 1.6. The biggest new feature that Rust 1.6 brings is libcore stabilization, which aims to make it possible to use stable Rust for OS and embedded software development.

Git 2.7: a Major New Release with Many New Features and Improvements

Two months after the release of version 2.6, Git 2.7 has been announced, bringing many new features as well as performance improvements.

GitHub's Scientist Aims to Help Refactoring Critical Paths

GitHub has just made available Scientist 1.0, a Ruby library that will help developers refactor or rewrite their code with confidence, writes GitHub engineer Jesse Toth, and that was used at GitHub over the last few years for a number of projects. InfoQ has spoken with Toth.

Racket 6.4 Improves Security and Adds Incremental Garbage Collection

Racket, a multi-paradigm programming language belonging to the Lisp/Scheme family, has reached version 6.4, PLT announced. The new version adds several new features, including an incremental garbage collector (GC), and fixes a vulnerability in the web server.