TopSpin writes: Rust 1.0 has arrived, and release parties in Paris, LA and San Francisco are taking place today. From the Rust Programming Language blog: "The current Rust language is the result of a lot of iteration and experimentation. The process has worked out well for us: Rust today is both simpler and more powerful than we originally thought would be possible. But all that experimentation also made it difficult to maintain projects written in Rust, since the language and standard library were constantly changing. The 1.0 release marks the end of that churn. This release is the official beginning of our commitment to stability, and as such it offers a firm foundation for building applications and libraries. From this point forward, breaking changes are largely out of scope (some minor caveats apply, such as compiler bugs)." You can read about specific changes in the changelog.

An anonymous reader sends an article taking a harsh look at Rust, the language created by Mozilla Research, and arguing that despite all the flaws of C and C++, the two older languages are likely to remain in heavy use for a long time to come. Here are a few of the arguments: "[W]hat actually makes Rust safe, by the way? To put it simple, this is a language with a built-in code analyzer and it's a pretty tough one: it can catch all the bugs typical of C++ and dealing not only with memory management, but multithreading as well. Pass a reference to an assignable object through a pipe to another thread and then try to use this reference yourself - the program just will refuse to compile. And that's really cool. But C++ too hasn't stood still during the last 30 years, and plenty of both static and dynamic analyzers supporting it have been released during this time."

Further, "Like many of new languages, Rust is walking the path of simplification. I can generally understand why it doesn't have a decent inheritance and exceptions, but the fact itself that someone is making decisions for me regarding things like that makes me feel somewhat displeased. C++ doesn't restrict programmers regarding what they can or cannot use." And finally, "I can't but remind you for one more time that the source of troubles is usually in humans, not technology . If your C++ code is not good enough or Java code is painfully slow, it's not because the technology is bad - it's because you haven't learned how to use it right. That way, you won't be satisfied with Rust either, but just for some other reasons."

Nerval's Lobster writes: Ask a group of developers to rattle off the world's most popular programming languages, and they'll likely name the usual suspects: JavaScript, Java, Python, Ruby, C++, PHP, and so on. Ask which programming languages pay the best, and they'll probably list the same ones, which makes sense. But what about the little-known languages and skill sets (Dice link) that don't leap immediately to mind but nonetheless support some vital IT infrastructure (and sometimes, as a result, pay absurdly well)? is it worth learning a relatively obscure language or skill set, on the hope that you can score one of a handful of well-paying jobs that require it? The answer is a qualified yes—so long as the language or skill set in question is clearly on the rise. Go, Swift, Rust, Julia and CoffeeScript have all enjoyed rising popularity, for example, which increases the odds that they'll remain relevant for at least the next few years. But a language without momentum behind it probably isn't worth your time, unless you want to learn it simply for the pleasure of learning something new.

Nerval's Lobster writes Perhaps developers are increasingly overjoyed at the prospect of building iOS apps with a language other than Objective-C, which Apple has positioned Swift to replace; whatever the reason, Swift topped Stack Overflow's recent survey of the "Most Loved" languages and technologies (cited by 77.6 percent of the 26,086 respondents), followed by C++11 (75.6 percent), Rust (73.8 percent), Go (72.5 percent), and Clojure (71 percent). The "Most Dreaded" languages and technologies included Salesforce (73.2 percent), Visual Basic (72 percent), WordPress (68.2 percent), MATLAB (65.6 percent), and SharePoint (62.8 percent). Those results were mirrored somewhat in recent list from RedMonk, a tech-industry analyst firm, which ranked Swift 22nd in popularity among programming languages (based on data drawn from GitHub and Stack Overflow) but climbing noticeably quickly.

A reader points out the results from 26,086 developers who answered Stack Overflow's annual survey. It includes demographic data, technology preferences, occupational information, and more. Some examples: The U.S. had the most respondents, followed by India and the UK, while small countries and several Nordic ones had the most developers per capita. The average age of developers in the U.S. and UK was over 30, while it was 25 in India and 26.6 in Russia. 92.1% of developers identified as male. Almost half of respondents did not receive a degree in computer science.

The most-used technologies included JavaScript, SQL, Java, C#, and PHP. The most loved technologies were Swift, C++11, and Rust, while the most dreaded were Salesforce, Visual Basic, and Wordpress. 20.5% of respondents run Linux more than other OSes, and 21.5% rely on Mac OS X. Vim is almost 4 times more popular than Emacs, and both are used significantly less than NotePad++ and Sublime Text.

45% of respondents prefer tabs, while 33.6% prefer spaces, though the relationship flips at higher experience levels. On average, developers who work remotely earn more than developers who don't. Product managers reported the lowest levels of job satisfaction and the highest levels of caffeinated beverages consumed per day.

An anonymous reader writes: Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety and speed and aims, among other things, to offer memory safety without garbage collection and threads without data races. Over on the Rust blog, the Rust Core Team has announced the release of Rust 1.0 beta. They write, 'The beta release marks a very significant "state transition" in the move towards 1.0. In particular, with the beta release, all libraries and language features that are planned to be stable for 1.0 have been marked as stable. As such, the beta release represents an accurate preview of what Rust 1.0 will include.' The final Rust 1.0 release is scheduled for May 15th, 2015. A warning from the developers: "Rust is a work-in-progress and may do anything it likes up to and including eating your laundry." The FAQ is worth reading.

sciencehabit writes: Deep brain stimulation, which now involves surgically inserting electrodes several inches into a person's brain and connecting them to a power source outside the skull, can be an extremely effective treatment for disorders such as Parkinson's disease, obsessive compulsive disorder, and depression. The expensive, invasive procedure doesn't always work, however, and can be risky. Now, a study in mice (abstract) points to a less invasive way to massage neuronal activity, by injecting metal nanoparticles into the brain and controlling them with magnetic fields. The technique could eventually provide a wireless, nonsurgical alternative to traditional deep brain stimulation surgery, researchers say.

Lee Drake owns a small IT service and sales company in Rochester, New York, called OS Cubed. He was a cubicle denizen many years ago, and didn't like it. So he started his own business, first with a partner and later as the sole owner. Rochester may be part of the infamous "rust belt," but Lee seems to be doing well, to the point where he's happy to pass on some tips about how to start and grow your own IT business. While Lee's company specializes in "Microsoft solutions," his advice applies to almost any IT business -- and almost any other kind of business, too.

An anonymous reader writes: Nim is a young, statically typed programming language that has been getting more attention recently. See these articles for an introduction: What is special about Nim?, What makes Nim practical? and How I Start: Nim. The language offers a syntax inspired by Python and Pascal, great performance and C interfacing, and powerful metaprogramming capabilities. The author of "Unix in Rust" just abandoned Rust in favor of Nim and some early-adopter companies are starting to use it as well.

Nerval's Lobster writes Developers assume that Swift, Apple's newish programming language for iOS and Mac OS X apps, will become extremely popular over the next few years. According to new data from RedMonk, a tech-industry analyst firm, Swift could reach that apex of popularity sooner rather than later. While the usual stalwarts—including JavaScript, Java, PHP, Python, C#, C++, and Ruby—top RedMonk's list of the most-used languages, Swift has, well, swiftly ascended 46 spots in the six months since the firm's last update, from 68th to 22nd. RedMonk pulls data from GitHub and Stack Overflow to create its rankings, due to those sites' respective sizes and the public nature of their data. While its top-ranked languages don't trade positions much between reports, there's a fair amount of churn at the lower end of the rankings. Among those "smaller" languages, R has enjoyed stable popularity over the past six months, Rust and Julia continue to climb, and Go has exploded upwards—although CoffeeScript, often cited as a language to watch, has seen its support crumble a bit.

c0d3g33k writes: Rust, a new a systems programming language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency, has released the 1.0 alpha version of the language. This means that the language and core libraries are feature-complete for the 1.0 release. In practical terms, this means that the rate of change experienced by early adopters will slow down dramatically and major breaking changes should be very rare (during the alpha cycle some major changes may still occur if considered necessary). The language will stabilize further when the beta stage is reached (planned for six weeks from now).

schnell writes: A NY Times article reports that Midwestern "Rust Belt" towns and their manufacturing economies in particular have rebounded greatly due to the U.S. resurgence in fossil fuel production. This resurgence is driven by production of shale gas and natural gas from "fracking" and other new technologies that recover previously unavailable fuel but are more invasive than traditional techniques. "Both Youngstown and Canton are places which experienced nothing but disinvestment for 40 years." "They're not ghost towns anymore," according to the article. But while many have decried the loss of traditional U.S. manufacturing jobs in a globalized world and the associated loss of high-wage, blue collar jobs, do the associated environmental risks of new "tight oil" extraction techniques outweigh the benefits to these depressed economic regions?

An article at Wired takes a look at two multiplayer survival games, DayZ and Rust, and at the behavior of players when their actions are freed from a civilized moral code. 'Violence wouldn't bother a psychopath, [Dr. Adam Perkins] says, but they might have another incentive to avoid violence: the consequences of getting caught. Most psychopaths are logical people, he says, and understand that actions bring consequences. The threat of repercussions — say, for example, prison — might keep them from acting out. Such disincentives do not exist in virtual worlds. Absent a sense of empathy, you're free to rob and kill at will. What we do with this reveals something about us.

Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, says imagining ourselves doing something horrible is a way to see ourselves in a new light. "One of the ways we keep ourselves moral is to imagine the terrible things we could do, but then don't do," Ronson says. "You stand on a train platform and think, 'I could push that person in front of the train.' That thought pops into your head, and it doesn't make you a lunatic. It makes you a good person, because what you're actually saying is, 'Oh my god, I’m capable of doing a terrible thing, but I would never actually do it.'" ... But we're still left with the big question: Are our actions in a virtual world tantamount to imagining those things we could do in real life but never would? Or are we merely behaving as we would in real life if there were no consequences for our actions?'

DavidGilbert99 writes "Marissa Mayer has been in charge at Yahoo for one year now. In that time she has seen the share price rise 70% and she's made some headline grabbing acquisitions — notably Tumblr for over $1 billion last month. However, look beneath the surface and things are not going so well. In this week's quarterly results, we saw ad sales fell by 12% year-on-year and as Alistair Charlton says in IBTimes UK: ' Yahoo earned $846m in cash by redeeming its shares in the group, representing a significant chunk of Yahoo's $1.07bn revenue for the quarter, down 1% on last year. ... The next few years will be a balancing act as the stabilizing wheels are removed and Yahoo, with dozens of acquired startups patching up the rust, will have to make progress under its own steam.'"

Wired reports on a disease infecting coffee plants across Central America that could lead to shortages around the world. "Regional production fell by 15 percent last year, putting nearly 400,000 people out of work, and that’s just a taste of what’s to come. The next harvest season begins in October, and according to the International Coffee Organization, crop losses could hit 50 percent." The disease is called coffee rust, and it has been damaging crops to some degree since the 1800s. It's not known yet exactly why coffee rust has become such a problem now, but one of the leading suspects is climate change. "Since the mid-20th century, though, weather patterns in Central America and northern South America have shifted. Average temperatures are warmer across the region, with extremes of both heat and cold becoming more pronounced; so are extreme rainfall events." The fungus that causes coffee rust thrives on warm, humid air, and higher temperatures have allowed it to climb to higher altitudes than ever before. But another likely cause is the way in which coffee is planted and harvested these days: the plants evolved as shade-dwellers, but are now often placed in direct sunlight. They're also clustered closer together, which facilitates the spread of disease. "The integrity of this once-complicated ecosystem has been slowly breaking down, which is what happens when you try to grow coffee like corn."

An anonymous reader writes with this bit from The Next Web: "Mozilla and Samsung on Wednesday announced a new partnership to build a 'next generation' web browser engine called Servo. The ultimate goal is to bring the technology to Android and ARM, though the two companies have not shared a timeframe for a possible launch. With the help of Samsung, Mozilla is bringing both the Rust programming language as well as Servo to Android and ARM. Samsung's contribution so far has been an ARM backend to Rust as well as the build infrastructure necessary to cross-compile to Android. In fact, the code is available now on GitHub, as is the source for Rust and Servo." For those unfamiliar, Rust is Mozilla's new safe systems programming language (kind of like BitC), and Servo is their general project to write a brand new engine using Rust. Rust has an interesting memory model that eliminates much difficulty in reasoning about threaded programs. If you know what you're doing, they claim you can cross compile the code for Android, but no functionality guarantees have been made.

astroengine writes "NASA's newest rover on Mars has recently used its Dust Removal Tool for the first time, clearing away a patch of rust-colored dust coating its latest target: a slab of rock called "Ekwir_1." The Dust Removal Tool, or DRT (yes, the rover's cleaning instrument is called "dirt") is a motorized brush with stainless steel wire bristles located on Curiosity's multipurpose Robotic Arm turret — a veritable Swiss Army knife of planetary exploration tools." Reader Sez Zero links to a story on the brushing action at the BBC, which adds that "Curiosity is building towards using its hammer-drill, the last major tool yet to be deployed on the mission." So at least we know there's dirt on Mars, even if they chose not to send a dedicated life sensor, too. The Aeon piece is well worth reading, if that decision sounds perverse.

Monday you had a chance to ask Linus Torvalds any question you wanted. We sent him a dozen of the highest rated and below you'll see what he has to say about computers, programming, books, and copyrights. He also talks about what he would have done differently with Linux if he had to do it all over again. Hint: it rhymes with nothing.

MrSeb writes "After more than five years in the pipeline, Mozilla Labs and the Rust community have released the first alpha of the Rust programming language compiler. The Rust language emphasizes concurrency and memory safety, and — if everything goes to plan — is ultimately being groomed to replace C++ as Mozilla's compiled language of choice, with Firefox (or parts of it) eventually being re-written in Rust."

olsmeister writes "In a follow-up to a report that was mentioned on Slashdot a week ago, the NOAA has determined that the orange 'goo' that washed up on the beaches at the remote Alaska village of Kivalina was not eggs of crustaceans, but rather spores from a fungus that creates rust on plants. It is not known whether the fungus is harmful to humans or not."