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Coding

The Top Programming Languages in 2020 by IEEE Spectrum

In the list published by IEEE Spectrum on the top programming languages for 2020, it is interesting to see the change in trends. My observations: Python (as expected) retains the top slot for the last four years. JavaScript is slowly raising in popularity, it would’ve been in the top 2, had it not been for AI, ML & Python. C# suddenly has vanished from the top 10 this year, feels odd as the comments in the article page point out. Similarly, PHP going out from the top 10 for last two years, I am surprised with this – as WordPress…

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Lounge

How to make our data accessible by our future generations?

I meticulously label and organize into folders the digital pictures, videos and documents that I create or take with my camera. The files get synced to a cloud backup service, which gets copied to a removable media once in a few months. Add to this are: MP4 files of the movies that I had bought as Discs, Songs and plays from the tape cassettes I owned as MP3 files, Scanned pictures from the family photo albums, Saved copies of email attachments and downloaded files like Insurance receipts, Bank Statements, Tax Challans, Scanned copies of old invitations of family events, Scanned…

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Lounge

Human override is needed in Software controlled systems

Aircraft landing

//Boeing’s 737 Next Generation airliners have been struck by a peculiar software flaw that blanks the airliners’ cockpit screens if pilots dare attempt a westwards landing at specific airports.// The Register, 8 Jan 2020 Reading the above news made me ponder on the topic of building software for critical systems and the result was this brief post-Overconfidence in one’s ability (software) is dangerous. Writing software for operating aircraft is extremely complex, and, difficult to do. Those who do are brilliant engineers. At the same time, software engineers will do good to humanity if they remember that any software will (always)…

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Coding

A trip down memory lane to assembly and hex

Binary code

Glancing through the FREE book “Reverse Engineering for Beginners”, brought a lot of fun memories that I had with assembly language and doing Hex dump of executables. Sharing two examples below: 1. My first freeware (downloaded by thousands) around 1996-97 was EasyPass. It removed (!) the password from a #Microsoft #Access Jet 95 MDB database files. It helped those who had forgotten password, or, that’s what I naively believed then. Believe it or not – it was just a matter of flipping (XOR encryption) a few bytes of hex values, you needed to know which bytes, that’s all. A whole…

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