IBM Watsonx Code Assistant for Z is the Rosetta Stone for COBOL

Some programming languages never die! COBOL, which stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, was invented in 1959. 

Watsonx Code Assistant for Z is the Rosetta Stone for COBOL - IBM Research "The COBOL language underlies critical business systems, but WCA for Z is using the power of AI to help developers understand and modernize it."

The Untold Story of Python

Recommendable, but kind of superficial!

First Programming Language for biological Active Material at subcellular level

Amazing stuff!

"Now, powered by insights from computational theory, the team has developed the first "programming language" for active matter, enabling researchers to conduct precise operations in tiny volumes of fluid on the cellular level. The method has major applications in nanotechnology and for studying cell interactions. ...

Cellular skeletons, or cytoskeletons, are shapeshifting networks of tiny protein filaments that enable cells to propel themselves, carry cargo, and divide. The "bones" of the cytoskeleton are thin, tube-like filaments called microtubules that can form together into three-dimensional scaffolds.  ... Along with motor proteins that power movement, these incredibly small structures combine to propel the relatively large cell ...

"Active matter has been a potential new material or resource for bioengineering but has, until this point, been impossible to control," ... "Using theoretical and computational modeling, ... utilized principles of linear superposition—which only hold in specific size regimes—to develop the first programming language for active matter. ... theoretical insight enabled the development of the programming framework." ..."

From the abstract:

"Cells use ‘active’ energy-consuming motor and filament protein networks to control micrometre-scale transport and fluid flows.

Biological active materials could be used in dynamically programmable devices that achieve spatial and temporal resolution that exceeds current microfluidic technologies.

However, reconstituted motor–microtubule systems generate chaotic flows and cannot be directly harnessed for engineering applications.

Here we develop a light-controlled programming strategy for biological active matter to construct micrometre-scale fluid flow fields for transport, separation and mixing.

We circumvent nonlinear dynamic effects within the active fluids by limiting hydrodynamic interactions between contracting motor–filament networks patterned with light.

Using a predictive model, we design and apply flow fields to accomplish canonical microfluidic tasks such as transporting and separating cell clusters, probing the extensional rheology of polymers and giant lipid vesicles and generating mixing flows at low Reynolds numbers.

Our findings provide a framework for programming dynamic flows and demonstrate the potential of active matter systems as an engineering technology."

First Programming Language for Active Material - www.caltech.edu "In 2019, Caltech researchers demonstrated a new method to use light to control active matter—a kind of material made up of individual energy-consuming pieces that act as a whole to create mechanical motion. The process works similarly to how many individual birds form a swarm that seems to move as a whole. In the research, the team focused on active matter in the form of millimeter-sized protein filaments that normally make up a cell's skeleton, or "cytoskeleton.""

Dynamic flow control through active matter programming language (open access)

Fig. 1: Linear superposition quantitatively predicts fluid flow fields induced by optically controlled active matter.

Top programming languages of 2024

Good for me, I am familiar with three out of the top 5 plus SQL. Am I polyglott? 😊

There are some interesting differences between these two charts.

(Source: ZDNET)

(Source: IEEE)

Top Programming Languages 2024

At least, I have some experience with five of the top programming languages shown in the chart below! 😊

Will continue to improve my Python skills!

Is html (a markup language) a programming language? 

Top Programming Languages 2024 - IEEE Spectrum "Typescript and Rust are among the rising stars"

PyCharm Community Edition annoyances with respect to Python

I recently started to use PyCharm instead of Visual Studio Code for my Python programming.

This CE of PyCharm has its shortcomings!

My project consists of two main sub folders and each mein sub folder has sub folders as well.

Here are my annoyances (will be amended as needed):

1. I noticed that if I use the same file names (.py) across sub folders (even in different branches of folders), PyCharm would raise a module not found error. Only after I renamed the file it worked again.
2. Frequently, I have to restart PyCharm because it hangs/freezes and become unresponsive. Maybe that is why the main menu has an option "Repair IDE"?
3. Every time I execute code, I get the same error message "TERM environment variable not set." without any hint what to do about it. This particular error seems to be negligible as the code executes otherwise fine.

Comparing the PyCharm Community Edition to Visual Studio Code for Python programming

I have almost pulled out all my hairs using VSC for Python programming. So many things went wrong and often unexpectedly. My frustration got to the point to give up!

Situation: I program only for personal use on my laptop computer with Fedora Linux as the operating system and SQLite as my database application.

Then, it dawned on me perhaps this is not an not issues with the Python language, but with the IDE. Well, I just installed the PyCharm community edition. I have never before really used PyCharm.

The difference was like day and night! Indeed, VSC sucks when it comes to Python programming. The biggest issue I encountered was that if your packages were in different folder branches, VSC would fail to properly import local py files. I tried so many things to make the imports work, but to no avail. I probably wasted more than 24 hours total trying to fix these kind of issues.

Once I got busy in PyCharm basically all the issues I encountered with VSC went away with a few tiny corrections of my code (partially these lines of code were introduced trying to deal with the VSC failures). Within less than two hours my code was again running as it should be. 😊

The many charms of the PyCharm IDE compared to VSC:

1. You can mark a folder as source code folder
2. Many of the hints are much better and more helpful
3. The error messages in the console were more concise, on target and thus more helpful to quickly identify the issue
4. Integration with Github seems to be a lot easier and more convenient
5. I am sure I forgot some other benefits I encountered

Python for Google Gmail annoyances

Very recently, I tried to manage my emails using Python and Google Cloud APIs. My IDE is Visual Studio Code.

I readily admit that I am not an expert software developer, but I have programmed on a large number of different projects in at least half a dozen different languages over many years. None of these projects were very large and complex. 

However, for some odd reason Google made it extremely and unnecessarily complicated to do this. The Google provided examples, tutorials and error messages were not very helpful. I had to give up after several days and many hours of intense trial and error.

Compare that to the JavaScript GmailApp library provided for Google Apps Script. I have previously and successfully used this library to manage my emails in Gmail through Google Sheets. Unfortunately, there is nothing comparable to the GmailApp available for Python from Google! Very regrettable since Python has become such a popular programming language in recent years not least thanks to machine learning & AI!

What I do now is to dump certain email messages as a simple text file (MBox file) using Google Takeout. Next I use Python to parse the email messages etc.

P.S. About Google Takeout I could write another annoyances blog post (e.g. it dumps also all trashed emails associated with a custom label). Generally speaking, Google Takeout is very primitive! Why was a bulk email dumping feature not integrated into Gmail in the first place!!!! Grrr!

Python 3.12: A Game-Changer in Performance and Efficiency

Recommendable! A nice and short overview on the primary programming language on which machine learning & AI runs. 

Expect more improvements to this language and its very large ecosystem in the near future!

Python 3.12: A Game-Changer in Performance and Efficiency | by AI Tutor | Feb, 2023 | Python in Plain English

Credits: Pycoder's Weekly

Python Annoyances

I have started programming in Python only very recently! More annoyances will be added as I gain more experience with this language.

1. Lack of constants! 
2. del listname[index] to remove an item from a list at a certain position! This is very awkward and not intuitive!
3. The abundance of packages is overwhelming
4. The rstrip() function removes one to many characters on the left hand side of the argument of the rstrip function. Therefore, they came up with the removesuffix() function, introduced with Python version 3.9 (see e.g. PEP 616 -- String methods to remove prefixes and suffixes dated 3/19/2020). This is almost to clever by half instead of fixing the rstrip() function by e.g. adding an optional parameter! (added 6/15/2021)
5. Despite hundreds of standard libraries, there is no built in function to copy and paste from the clipboard. So I installed Pyperclip, but resulted in errors, when I tried to used it. I had to resort to an old Unix command and subprocess to copy/paste from the clipboard.

Facebook's TransCoder AI converts code from one programming language into another

Good news! We have been waiting for decades for this capability to automatically, correctly and efficiently translate one programming language into another one!

Facebook's TransCoder AI converts code from one programming language into another | VentureBeat