If you’re in tech and in the Tampa Bay area, you’ll want to keep an eye on what Suncoast Developers Guild are up to. They’re more than just a coding school — they hold and host regular community events, they sponsor all kinds of goings-on, they maintain a public Slack for local techies (suncoast.io), and they’re part of what makes the Tampa Bay tech scene what it is!
Yesterday, I posted an article positing that WeWork’s CEO might just be indirectly and accidentally responsible for drastically changing the processor industry:
The article got a record number of pageviews, and I got a number of emails and direct messages asking all sorts of questions about Arm chips, from “What makes Arm processors so different?” to “Has anyone seen an Arm-based Mac in action yet?”
Here are some videos that should provide lots of background material to better help you understand Arm chips and Apple’s move to their own custom silicon.
Let’s start with this CNET supercut of the parts of the WWDC keynote where Tim Cook and company talk about Apple’s transition from Intel chips to their own Arm-based ones:
This is Max Tech’s best guess as to what the Arm-based Mac release timeline will look like:
Many people have a take on what Apple’s move to Arm means. Here are CNET’s top 5 guesses:
Here’s a video from a year ago that asks “Is Intel in trouble? Is ARM the future?”. It’s worth watching for its history lesson about Arm:
Here’s a really quick (under 6 minutes) look at Arm CPUs:
Here’s a more hardcore explanation of how CPUs (in general) work:
CPUs used to be stand-alone things, but we’ve been migrating to SOCs (systems on a chip) for some time. Here’s an explainer:
This Gary Explains video explains the differences between Arm’s and Intel’s architectures:
Here’s a reminder from Computerphile that Arm design chips — they don’t make them. There’s a difference:
Here’s a treat: an unboxing of Apple’s “developer transition kit”, which registered Apple developers can apply to try out to test their apps on Apple silicon. It’s a Mac Mini powered by an Apple A12z chip, which is the same processor that drives the iPad Pro.
Softbank is considering this move because it needs the money. It has an activist investor that wants to see some changes, because it’s made some embarrassing investments leasing to considerable losses of both money ($16.5 billion for the financial year ending March 2020) and face.
Simply put, Neumann’s hijinks cost Softbank a lot of money, and they now have an investor putting serious pressure on them to sell off assets to raise cash. Arm could be one of those assets.
At the same time, there are a number of interesting developments where Arm chips are concerned…
Any talk about what Arm chips will mean for Apple is all speculation right now, but if you want to hear some really good speculation, as well as a decent Arm vs. Intel discussion, check out episode 777 of This Week in Tech:
In that episode of This Week in Tech, host Leo Laporte and his panel agree that Windows PC OEMs will probably end up switching to Arm processors, and they’re not the only ones saying it.
There’s a pretty good chance that Arm will end up being the de facto chip design to rule them all in the 2020s — and their maker is up for sale. In fact, there’s an unnamed interested buyer. I have a guess, and I’m not the only person to have the same idea:
If only there were a tech company making a move to ARM silicon with a huge pile of cash laying around… https://t.co/lGqnDfG9SI
Hello, Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds! Welcome to the weekly list of online-only events for techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds based in an around the Tampa Bay area.
Keep an eye on this post; I update it when I hear about new events, it’s always changing. Stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!
Why this list has only online events
In the spirit of “Show, don’t tell,” I’ll explain with the three charts below.
Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?
If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!
Join the mailing list!
If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.
Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!
When: Monday and Wednesday evenings, 6:00 – 10:00 p.m., starting Monday, July 13 and ending Wednesday, August 12 (6 weeks, twice a week)
Where: Online.
How much: $900 — and Computer Coach has grants that can cover the cost if you’re unemployed and based in the Tampa Bay area (contact them to see if you qualify)
What you’ll need:
A computer that was made sometime in the last ten years. My main computer is a 2014-era MacBook Pro, but I’ll be doing demonstrations on a 2012-era Lenovo ThinkPad running Linux Mint, a 2009-era Compaq laptop running Peppermint Linux, and a $35 Raspberry Pi.
An internet connection. This is an online course, after all.
This is not a passive course! This isn’t the kind of course where the instructor lectures over slides while you take notes (or pretend to take notes while surfing the web or checking your social media feeds). In this course, you’ll be actively taking part in the learning process, entering code, experimenting, making mistakes, correcting those mistakes, and producing working applications. You will learn by doing. At the end of each session, you’ll have a collection of little Python programs that you wrote, and which you can use as the basis for your own work.
The course will start at the most basic level by walking you through the process of downloading and installing the necessary tools to start Python programming. From there, you’ll learn the building blocks of the Python programming language:
Control structures that determine what your programs do,
Data structures to store the information that your programs act on,
Functions and objects to organize your code, and
Using libraries as building blocks for your applications.
You’ll write all sorts of programs…
You’ll use Python in “immediate mode” to perform quick calculations (and you’ll sharpen your command-line skills in the process).
You’ll write scripts to simplify or automate tedious tasks.
You’ll build web applications.
And since it’s a networked, data-driven world where no application is an island, you’ll learn how to use Python to interact with web services and databases.
Better still, you’ll learn how to think like a programmer. You’ll learn how to look at a goal and learn how you could write a program to meet it, and how that program could be improved or enhanced. You’ll learn skills that will serve you well as you take up other programming languages, and even learn a little bit about the inner workings of computers, operating systems, and the internet.
St. Pete Pitch Night takes place online tonight from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m.! See pitches from five St. Petersburg entrepreneurs as they compete to win up to $5,000 by pitching their community-based businesses.
From the 34 business who applied, these were the ones selected:
This is an election year, and The Mad Botter’s contest is an election contest. Contestants are asked to develop an open source project that addresses ballot access or in some other way assists with voting. Perhaps something to help people find the closest polling station? Virtual “I voted” stickers? An aggregator for open information about candidates? A “Yelp” for polling places? (You can find more ideas here.)
Here are the contest details:
No purchase is required to enter.
Your solution must be posted to a publicly accessible Github repository with the appropriate license included.
You must be a US high-school or undergraduate college student.
If you are below the age of 18, you must provide written parental consent to have your submission considered; this can be done via email.
In the event that you win, The Mad Botter INC is granted the right to post a picture of you in the winning announcement and other applicable venues; if you are below the age of 18 your parent or guardian also provides permission for this by consenting to your entering the contest.
The winning entry will be the one that shows the most practical potential and creativity and will be selected by The Mad Botter team.
All submissions should be sent to sales@themadbotter.com and include a brief bio, explanation of the solution, and a link to the Github repository.
I was a recent guest on the show (Episode 25), and we talked about how the Toronto tech scene changed from dismal to dynamic, how I stumbled into developer evangelism, learning iOS programming via raywenderlich.com and then joining them, SwiftUI, Python and Burning Man, the hidden opportunities that come with having to stay inside during the pandemic, and more!
