Communications of the ACM
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From Communications of the ACM
The Pathologies of Big Data
Scale up your datasets enough and your apps come undone. What are the typical problems and where do the bottlenecks surface?
From Communications of the ACM
Browser Security: Lessons from Google Chrome
To shield the browser from attacks, Google Chrome developers eyed three key problems.
From Communications of the ACM
Fighting Physics: A Tough Battle
The laws of physics and the Internet's routing infrastructure affect performance in a big way.
From Communications of the ACM
The Five-Minute Rule 20 Years Later
Revisiting Gray and Putzolu's famous rule in the age of Flash.
From Communications of the ACM
Whither Sockets?
The pervasive and long-lasting sockets API has remained largely unchanged since 1982. How have developers worked around its inherent limitations and what is the...
From Communications of the ACM
Network Front-End Processors, Yet Again
The history of NFE processors sheds light on the trade-offs involved in designing network stack software.
From Communications of the ACM
Hard-Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
New drive technologies and increased capacities create new categories of failure modes that will influence system designs.
From Communications of the ACM
Debugging AJAX in Production
Lacking proper browser support, what steps can we take to debug production AJAX code?
From Communications of the ACM
API Design Matters
It is very easy to create a bad API and rather difficult to create a good one. Recent APIs implemented in modern programming languages make the same mistakes as...
From Communications of the ACM
Security in the Browser
Users with no security training download Web browsers from the Internet without precaution, and demand that they be fast and easy to use. What can be done to make ...
From Communications of the ACM
ORM in Dynamic Languages
Dynamic languages offer a taste of object-relational mapping that eases application code.
From Communications of the ACM
Cybercrime 2.0: When the Cloud Turns Dark
Web-based malware attacks are more insidious than ever. What can be done to stem the tide?
From Communications of the ACM
Purpose-Built Languages
The ecosystem of purpose-built languages is a key part of systems development.
From Communications of the ACM
Erlang For Concurrent Programming
Designed for concurrency from the ground up, the Erlang language can be a valuable tool to help solve concurrent problems.
From Communications of the ACM
Better Scripts, Better Games
Smarter, more powerful scripting languages will improve game performance while making gameplay development more efficient.
From Communications of the ACM
Improving Performance on the Internet
Given the Internet's bottlenecks, how can we build fast, scalable, content-delivery systems?
From Communications of the ACM
Parallel Programming with Transactional Memory
While still primarily a research project, transactional memory shows promise for making parallel programming easier.
From Communications of the ACM
The Long Road to 64 Bits
The sometimes contentious development of 64-bit systems shows how technology decisions can have unexpected, enduring consequences.
From Communications of the ACM
Eventually Consistent
Building reliable distributed systems at a worldwide scale demands trade-offs between consistency and availability.
From Communications of the ACM