Google associate Filip Hracek has recently moved to the Dart Development Team. A move which provoked not only rather amicably intended comments (for example that by doing so he will hopefully not be riding a dead horse), but also clearly negative reactions. Yet he provides good reasons which in his opinion speak for the success of Google’s web language.

A reference in Hacker News to a code basis commit deemed as “mysterious” gave the starting signal, followed by an official confirmation on the Google website at the end of the year: for the next Android version, Java API implementation will be replaced by OpenJDK, the open source version of JDK.

After a preview version had been published at the end of November 2015, the final version of Apache Spark 1.6 is at long last ready for download. The update contains a total of over 1,000 changes; release highlights include a variety of performance improvements, the new Dataset API and expanded data science functions.

VMTurbo founders Yechiam Yemini and Yuri Rabover, as well as Principal Solutions Engineer Eric Wright have braved a look into the future and identified a few trends for the upcoming year.