Few debates have raged longer and more contentiously in the computing industry than one: Is “open source” better than “closed” when it comes to software development? That debate has been revived as companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft have diverged on how to compete for supremacy in artificial intelligence systems. Some are choosing a…
Relative to the 496 billion Canadian dollars the federal government spent last year, the amounts are small. But this week’s revelations surrounding millions of dollars in potentially fraudulent billings by subcontractors, along with the continuing ArriveCAN app scandal, show what a big mess developing software can be for the government. Even after an extensive investigation,…
In 1999, an up-and-coming software engineer in Switzerland was preparing for a conference in France when he learned that the Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth, a pioneer in the field, was also attending and would be on the same flight. The engineer, Kent Beck, had never met Dr. Wirth. But, he recalled in an interview,…
