Welcome to the iProgrammer newsletter. You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up at I Programmer.

For more information and help see the end of this email

Featured Articles

Pointer are often said to be the greatest thing about C and the absolute worst.  Find out why in this extract from my book, Deep C Dives .

John Von Neumann was perhaps the first computer age polymath. He seemed to be capable of getting involved in just about any subject. Not content with inventing game theory, cellular automata and putting down the foundations of quantum mechanics, he invented the computer architecture we use most often today.

Programming News and Views

OK, I’m exaggerating and making any comparison between Rust and Python is an unrealistic exercise, but my point is that there is a reason in common to explain Rust’s rise and Python’s apparent decline - and of course it (largely) comes down to AI.

Microsoft made several announcements at Build aimed specifically at developers, including Windows Developer Configurations and Intelligent Terminal.

dtSearch 2026.01 has been released, with improvements including a new internal viewer for displaying PDFs with highlighted hits, and an updated WebDemo sample showing how to use the new hit highlighting API to highlight hits in PDF files.

In the ongoing shift from basic AI assistance to autonomous engineering workflows, Qt has released specialized AI-powered tools, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent skills with the aim of increasing developer productivity while keeping the human in the loop as the primary architect and director of the software creation process.

Microsoft has released Coreutils for Windows, a set of Linux-like command line utilities that run natively on Windows. The announcement of the utilities was made at Microsoft Build last week.

OpenCV 5 has launched, representing a major modernization phase for the long-standing open-source computer vision library. The update focuses heavily on deep learning execution, streamlined core structures, and upgrading language standards.

CultRepo's latest feature-length technical documentary is titled "The Story of C++: The World's Most Consequential Programming Language". It provides a comprehensive overview of the creation, evolution, struggles, and future of C++, exploring its origins at Bell Labs, the performance fallacy of the early 2000s, and its current modernization efforts. Watch it here.

Xprize has launched a $2 million global hackathon. Backed by Google, and announced at Google I/O, the Build with Gemini XPRIZE global hackathon challenges developers worldwide to use artificial intelligence tools to build solutions.

Google has added a new approach for editing images that lets users change their mind over where they should have taken the photo from to get a better viewpoint.

Since April, GitHub has been working to "systematically optimize the token usage of many of the workflows" that the company relies on. Initial results show reduced token use by up to 62% through a combination of removing unused Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools; moving to use GitHub CLI rather than MCP calls; and auditing and optimizing agents.

The DuckDB team has released Quack, a remote protocol based on HTTP that lets you run DuckDB in a client-server setup with multiple concurrent writers. Until now DuckDB has been single use, mainly embedded in host processes.

Book Watch

This book teaches to build generative AI models optimized for specific fields. Perfect for cost- or hardware-constrained environments, Small Language Models (SLMs) train on domain specific data for high-quality results in specific tasks. Guglielmo Iozzia explains how to develop SLMs that can generate everything from Python code to protein structures and antibody sequences—all on commodity hardware.

This is a collection of six mini-books in a single hefty volume which takes the reader from complete beginner to confident developer, covering the essentials of writing Rust code through applying it to real-world projects. Each mini-book contained in this All-in-One reference focuses on a specific aspect of Rust development. Paul McFedries moves seamlessly from understanding basic syntax to building real-world applications that showcase Rust's versatility. The book shows how to harness Rust's features to build everything from command-line tools to web applications.

In this revised second edition, five experienced McKinsey leaders deliver an update to their guide to planning and implementing successful Tech & AI transformations. Eric Lamarre et al walk you through the six capabilities every company must develop to succeed with Tech & AI: transformation roadmapping that targets real value, a talent bench of highly skilled experts, an operating model that allows you to move at pace, a distributed technology environment that is flexible, data embedded throughout your organization, and adoption and scaling that enable solutions to realize meaningful gains.

Back Issues I Programmer Weekly