Let’s Encrypt Enters Public Beta
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Let’s Encrypt entered public beta in December 2015 with a goal that sounded simple but had major consequences: make HTTPS certificates free and automate their installation. Read more
Blog Posts
HTTPS Is Becoming Everyones Problem
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For years, HTTPS has been associated mainly with banks, shopping sites, and login pages. A simple personal website or blog often stayed on ordinary HTTP because encryption seemed unnecessary and certificates were inconvenient. Read more
Google Open-Sources TensorFlow
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Google open-sourced TensorFlow in November 2015 under the Apache 2.0 license. The project gave researchers and developers access to a production-oriented machine-learning framework that could run on CPUs and GPUs. Read more
Microsoft Introduces the Surface Book
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Microsoft introduced the original Surface Book in October 2015 as its first laptop. The unusual hinge and detachable display let the machine operate as a conventional notebook, a clipboard-like tablet, or a drawing surface. Read more
Apple Introduces the A9 and 3D Touch
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Apple introduced the A9 processor and 3D Touch with the iPhone 6s in September 2015. The A9 used Apple’s 64-bit ARM-compatible CPU design and delivered a large performance increase over the A8 while remaining within smartphone power limits. Read more
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
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Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was one of the people who helped turn programming from a practical craft into a serious intellectual discipline. He was born in Rotterdam in 1930. His parents were both highly educated, and Dijkstra initially studied theoretical physics at Leiden University. Read more
Google Becomes Part of Alphabet
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Google announced a corporate restructuring in August 2015 that created Alphabet as a new holding company. Google remained the largest subsidiary, while projects such as life sciences, investment arms, and experimental “moonshots” could operate more independently. Read more
Windows 10 Is Released
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Microsoft released Windows 10 on July 29, 2015 and offered it as a free upgrade to many Windows 7 and 8 users. The Start menu returned, combining a familiar application list with optional Live Tiles. Read more
Microsoft Releases Visual Studio Code
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Microsoft made Visual Studio Code broadly available in 2015 as a lightweight, cross-platform editor built with web technologies. Unlike the full Visual Studio IDE, VS Code was designed to start quickly and support many languages through extensions. Read more
Google Photos Launches
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Google launched Google Photos as a separate service in May 2015, offering cloud photo storage combined with automatic organization and search. The product used computer vision to recognize categories such as people, objects, and places even when users had never manually added tags. Read more
Apple Watch Reaches Consumers
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The first Apple Watch went on sale in April 2015. It used Apple’s S1 system-in-package, a small OLED display, heart-rate sensing, accelerometers, haptic feedback, and a Digital Crown for scrolling. Read more
USB Type-C Reaches New Consumer Devices
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USB Type-C began appearing on major consumer devices in 2015, including Apple’s 12-inch MacBook and Google’s Chromebook Pixel. The small reversible connector was designed to replace several older USB plug shapes. Read more
Docker And The Idea Of Portable Software
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One sentence has caused programmers pain for a very long time: “It works on my machine.” A program depends on more than its source code. It may need a certain library version, a service, a configuration file, or a particular operating system setting. Moving software from one computer to another can turn a working project into a collection of mysterious errors. This is why I find Docker interesting. Read more
Raspberry Pi 2 Is Released
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The Raspberry Pi 2 arrived in February 2015 with a much larger CPU upgrade than earlier revisions. It moved from a single-core ARM11 processor to a 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 while keeping the familiar board layout and low price. Read more
Microsoft Reveals More Details About Windows 10
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Microsoft used a January 2015 event to show how Windows 10 would move away from the most controversial parts of Windows 8. The Start menu returned as a desktop element, while Live Tiles remained available inside it. Read more
Docker Containers Move Deeper Into Production
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By the end of 2014, Docker had moved beyond developer experimentation and was increasingly being tested for production deployments. The attraction was consistency: the same container image could move from a developer’s laptop into testing and then into a server environment. Read more
Amazon Introduces the Echo
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Amazon introduced the first Echo smart speaker in late 2014 as an invitation-only product. Its defining feature was Alexa, a voice assistant designed to be available from across a room rather than only after pressing a button on a phone. Read more
HTML5 Becomes a W3C Recommendation
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HTML5 became an official W3C Recommendation in October 2014. Developers had already been using many of its features for years, so the milestone was less a launch than a sign that the modern web platform had stabilized. Read more
Apple Introduces the First Apple Watch
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Apple unveiled the first Apple Watch in September 2014, although the device did not go on sale until 2015. The watch combined a small touch display with the Digital Crown, a rotating control intended to avoid covering the screen with a finger. Read more
IBM Announces a Major Investment in Cloud Computing
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IBM spent heavily on cloud infrastructure in 2014, building on its acquisition of SoftLayer and expanding data centers around the world. The strategy was aimed particularly at enterprise customers that wanted cloud flexibility without abandoning existing corporate systems. Read more