Who would have thought that three hours could yield remarkable discoveries? A mere blink of an eye, barely enough time to prepare a three-course meal or finish binge-watching a web series. Yet, in the vast expanse of the cosmos, it proved ample for astronomers to uncover a treasure trove of not one, not two, but 49 new gas-rich galaxies!<br /><br />Led by <keyword id="21103256" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Dr-Marcin-Glowacki" source="Orion">Dr. Marcin Glowacki</keyword> from the <keyword id="199748" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Curtin-University" source="Orion">Curtin University</keyword> node of the <keyword id="1405436" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="International-Center-for-Radio-Astronomy-Research" source="Orion">International Center for Radio Astronomy Research</keyword> (ICRAR) in Western Australia, this research initially focused on studying the star-forming gas in a single radio galaxy. However, the team's efforts took an unexpected turn when they stumbled upon a wealth of other galaxies while analysing the data.<br /><br />Surpassing all expectations, the observations — made using the <keyword id="21103257" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="MeerKAT-radio-telescope" source="Orion">MeerKAT radio telescope</keyword> in South Africa — lasted less than three hours, yet led to the detection of gas in 49 previously unknown galaxies. <br /><br />Speaking of this discovery, Dr. Glowacki said: “I did not expect to find almost 50 new galaxies in such a short time. By implementing different techniques for finding galaxies, which are used for other <keyword id="21103261" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="MeerKAT-surveys" source="Orion">MeerKAT surveys</keyword>, we were able to detect all of these galaxies and reveal their gas content.”<br /><br />Dubbed the ‘49ers’ in homage to the <keyword id="21103258" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="California-gold-rush-miners" source="Orion">California gold rush miners</keyword> of 1849, these newfound galaxies have been likened to precious nuggets scattered across our night sky. Many of them have clustered together to form galaxy groups, with some intricately interconnected by their gas content.<br /><br />Among these galaxies, three stand out for their intriguing dynamics. The central galaxy, ablaze with star formation, appears to be siphoning gas from its companion galaxies and potentially rendering them inactive. This symbiotic relationship underscores the intricate dance of cosmic forces shaping our universe.<br /><br />The discovery underscores the MeerKAT telescope's prowess as a formidable imaging instrument that excels at hunting for star-forming gas in galaxies. And now, the methods used to study the ‘49ers’ are poised to enrich future MeerKAT surveys and observational endeavours, promising further revelations in the vast expanse of space.<br /><br />The research was published in <em>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society</em> and can be accessed <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/529/4/3469/7634244">here</a>.<br />

Galactic gold rush: Astronomers discover 49 new galaxies in less than 3 hours!

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d7bd3c72e22af0ec2376209-1299/skowron3hr.jpg" border="0" alt="warsaw telescope milky way" data-mce-source="K. Ulaczyk / J. Skowron / OGLE / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw" data-mce-caption="Warsaw Telescope and Milky Way Cepheids discovered by the OGLE survey." data-link="https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aau3181" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aau3181">K. Ulaczyk / J. Skowron / OGLE / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw</a></span></p><p class="caption">Warsaw Telescope and Milky Way Cepheids discovered by the OGLE survey.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Two giant bubbles of radiation - each up to 1,400 light-years across - are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.co.za/meerkat-telescope-ska-square-kilometre-array-telescope-gaint-bubbles-radiation-2019-9">expanding outward from the center of the Milky Way</a>.</li><li>A new study describes these never-before-seen bubbles, spotted for the first time by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.co.za/on-friday-sa-unveils-the-r44-billion-meerkat-telescope-heres-what-its-for-2018-7">South Africa's new MeerKAT telescope</a>.</li><li>Astronomers suspect the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=5&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjfxdDyrc7kAhVlzlkKHVZeDkwQxfQBMAR6BAgFEAc&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.in%2Fmilky-ways-quiet-wimpy-black-hole-is-getting-hungrier-and-brighter%2Farticleshow%2F71098006.cms&amp;usg=AOvVaw1jpdkd5yLYbuEVutMJ8sz6">supermassive black hole</a> at the center of our galaxy entered into a "feeding frenzy" a few million years ago, swallowing massive lumps of gas and matter, and the bubbles are the black hole's consequent belch of radiation. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p><span style="color: #222222;">The region at the center of our galaxy is still full of mysteries, but astronomers have just found a clue to its past: Huge, radio-emitting bubbles, extending 700 light-years either side of the galactic plane.</span></p><p>They could be, the researchers believe, the result of a huge eruption from our galaxy's supermassive <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/black-holes" target="_blank" title="black hole" rel="noopener">black hole</a>, Sagittarius A*. Millions of years ago that eruption would have punched into the interstellar medium in opposite directions from the supermassive black hole.</p><p>If "galactic bubbles" sound a bit familiar, it's important to clarify that these are <em>not</em> the <a href="https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/constellations/pages/bubbles.html">huge gamma-ray bubbles</a> discovered by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2010, nicknamed "Fermi bubbles," spanning above and below the galactic plane for a total distance of 50,000 light-years.</p><p>These latest bubbles, described <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1532-5">in a new study</a> in the journal Nature, are something new, and astronomers haven't seen them before. But they are amongst the biggest structures at the center of our galaxy, and they reveal new information about the dynamics of our galactic nucleus.</p><p>"The center of our galaxy is relatively calm when compared to other galaxies with very active central <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/black-holes" target="_blank" title="black holes" rel="noopener">black holes</a>," <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-09-11-towering-balloon-features-discovered-near-centre-milky-way">astrophysicist Ian Heywood of the University of Oxford said</a>.</p><p>"Even so, the Milky Way's central black hole can become uncharacteristically active, flaring up as it periodically devours massive clumps of dust and gas. It's possible that one such feeding frenzy triggered powerful outbursts that inflated this previously unseen feature," Heywood added.</p><h2>An accidental discovery by a South African telescope</h2><p>Hints of the structures <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984Natur.310..557Y/abstract">first emerged in the 1980s</a>, when astronomer and physicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University and colleagues discovered something strange in the galactic center: long, thin, highly organised and highly magnetized filaments of gas, tens of light-years long and just one light-year wide, emitting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation">synchrotron</a> radio waves.</p><p>These strange structures hadn't been observed anywhere else, and their origin <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-35">remained a mystery</a> for decades.</p><p>But something changed. The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory's <a href="http://www.ska.ac.za/science-engineering/meerkat/">MeerKAT telescope</a> was built, consisting of 64 interconnected radio antennae that offer "unprecedented" sensitivity in radio wavelengths, perfectly positioned in the Southern Hemisphere to take deep images of the galactic center.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d7bda3a2e22af22507f19e2-1024/meerkatradiotelescope.jpg" border="0" alt="MeerKAT_Radio_Telescope" data-mce-source="Morganoshell/Wikimedia Commons" data-mce-caption="A photograph of the MeerKAT Radio Telescope, taken March 2016." data-link="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MeerKAT_Radio_Telescope.jpg" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MeerKAT_Radio_Telescope.jpg">Morganoshell/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p><p class="caption">A photograph of the MeerKAT Radio Telescope, taken March 2016.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The international team turned the telescope on the heart of the Milky Way. And, for the first time, they were able to see the structures of these radio bubbles, faint but detectable, amidst the incredibly radio-bright glare in the region.</p><p>The event that caused it could be responsible for accelerating the electrons that resulted in the synchrotron emission observed in the filaments in the galactic center.</p><p>"The radio bubbles discovered with MeerKAT now shed light on the origin of the filaments," <a href="http://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2019/09/milky-way/">Yusef-Zadeh said</a>. "Almost all of the more than 100 filaments are confined by the radio bubbles."</p><h2>'A staggeringly powerful event ... near our galaxy's central black hole'</h2><p>The entire hourglass-shaped structure extends 1,400 light-years, and is unusually symmetrical. This symmetry provides some clues as to what created them; the size, constrained by the speed of light, puts an upper limit of a few million years on their age.</p><p>"The shape and symmetry of what we have observed strongly suggests that a staggeringly powerful event happened a few million years ago very near our galaxy's central black hole," astronomer William Cotton from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory said.</p><p>This eruption was possibly triggered by vast amounts of interstellar gas falling in on the black hole, or a massive burst of star formation which sent shockwaves careening through the galactic center.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d7bd4102e22af191944d530-2400/pia16695-blackhole-corona-20130227.jpg" border="0" alt="black hole" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL/Caltech" data-mce-caption="Artist's impression of a black hole." data-link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#mediaviewer/File:PIA16695-BlackHole-Corona-20130227.jpg" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#mediaviewer/File:PIA16695-BlackHole-Corona-20130227.jpg">NASA/JPL/Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">Artist's impression of a black hole.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"In effect, this inflated energetic bubbles in the hot, ionized gas near the galactic center, energizing it and generating radio waves which we could eventually detect here on Earth," Cotton added.</p><p>Although the radio bubbles are smaller and less energetic than the Fermi bubbles - it's possible that similar events created both sets of bubbles, the researchers said.</p><p>It's even possible that both sets of bubbles were created by a linked series of events. Perhaps future observations across a range of wavelengths can tell us more.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/event-horizon-telescope-black-hole-snaps-first-image-messier-87-2019-4">Here's how astronomers took the first image of a black hole that's located 55 million light years away</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/i9zFStR1-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

The black hole at the center of our galaxy just belched two giant bubbles of radiation

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53a97589ecad041e68f86495-2000/141867654051087234a1do.jpg" border="0" alt="Teens" data-mce-source="Flickr / RansomTech" data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ransomtech/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ransomtech/">Flickr / RansomTech</a></span></p><p class="caption">The social interaction is missing from most social media.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Teens are abandoning Facebook in dramatic numbers.</strong></li><li><strong>Where are they going? Millions of people under the age of 24 are gathering on Houseparty, a group video-chat app.</strong></li><li><strong>Teens are embracing Houseparty because they say it's the next best thing to hanging out with friends in person.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p> </p><p><span>For the first time in its history, Facebook didn't add any <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-growth-problems-will-get-worse-2018-7">daily active users</a> in North America in the past quarter. </span></p><p><span>It's not totally surprising. </span></p><p><span>Facebook has been hampered by scandal after scandal, at the same time teens are abandoning the social network in dramatic numbers, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/generation-z-facebook-2018-1">studies</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/01/facebook-teens-leaving-instagram-snapchat-study-user-numbers">show</a>. Finally, Facebook looks like it's stalling out.</span></p><p><span>But if <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teens-gen-z-generation-z-what-teens-are-like-2018-6">Generation Z</a> kills Facebook, where will the young people go?</span></p><p><span>Twenty million people are gathering on <a href="https://houseparty.com/">Houseparty</a>, a group video-chat app most easily described as FaceTime but with more people.</span></p><p><span>It's a social media platform that feels a lot like the past. When you open the app, it asks you to signal that you'd like to chat, then notifies your friends that you're "in the house." If your friends are already online, you can start a video chat or join an existing room with a single tap. Users can hang with up to eight friends at once.</span></p><p><span><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-the-houseparty-app-2016-12">Here's how to use Houseparty, the live video app that teens are going crazy for</a></em></span></p><p>More than half of Houseparty users are under the age of 24, which puts it squarely in favor with America's youngest generation.</p><p>And they are obsessed. <span>Houseparty users spend an average of 51 minutes a day on the app, which puts their engagement ahead of Facebook's 50 minutes (Messenger and Instagram included) and Snaphat's 30 minutes. This metric would make any app developer jealous, and it happened for the people behind Houseparty simply because they made the social network that they always wanted.</span><span></span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b6dbe5164dce839008b4e79-1662/houseparty-video-chat-app-12.jpg" border="0" alt="houseparty video chat app 12" data-mce-source="Houseparty" /><p class="source"><span>Houseparty</span></p><p class="caption">Houseparty lets users chat with up to eight friends at once.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><h2><span>The gool ol' days of AIM</span></h2><p><span>Sima Sistani remembers the days of returning from class and signing onto AOL Instant Messenger in her college dorm. She and her friends recapped their first (and many bad) dates while "studying" on the app. It looked something </span><span>~*LiKe ThIs*~.</span></p><p><span> Though the personal computer gave her a screen to hide behind, Sistani - who is cofounder of Life On Air, the company that built Houseparty - still more or less talked to her friends on AOL Instant Messenger. There was emotion pouring through her fingertips.</span></p><p><span>Plenty of social media apps today ask teens to interact with their friends by thumbing through an endless feed of photos, text, and video, and tapping to like or comment. They have more connections on social media than ever, yet many of those friendships are thin, leaving people wanting more meaningful connections in life.</span></p><p><span>"Social media started as this promise to connect people," said Sistani, who studied sociology. She added, "I don't think the social media that's out there today is delivering on that promise."</span><span></span></p><h2><span>Meerkat's second act</span></h2><p><span>Houseparty isn't the company's first crack at creating a better social media platform. </span><span>In 2015, Life On Air launched a live-streaming app called Meerkat that let people broadcast from their mobile phones to friends and interested strangers. It spawned everywhere overnight.</span></p><p><span>But Meerkat failed spectacularly, raising $12 million in new funding before fizzling out amid competition from Facebook and Twitter.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b6dbd28dcee3029008b517d-2400/houseparty-video-chat-app-4.jpg" border="0" alt="houseparty video chat app 4" data-mce-source="Houseparty" /><p class="source"><span>Houseparty</span></p><p class="caption">Sima Sistani and Ben Rubin are cofounders of Houseparty.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>According to Sistani, the Meerkat team set out to connect people in the most human way possible when physically apart. But their method for doing so came to alienate their target users: people like them.</span></p><p><span>"We have these devices that are in our pockets, they allow us to bring people into our point-of-view, and that's going to connect everybody," Sistani said. "But it didn't. What it did was create a stage. A stage is inherently a performance, and the people who are best at performing are influencers and media creators; not me, not you. That's when we took a step back and thought, 'OK, it's not meant to be a stage. It's not meant to be a performance. It's supposed to feel like a house party.'"</span></p><p><span>Sistani and her team took inventory of what they loved about Meerkat and tried again, hacking together the Houseparty prototype in 10 months.</span></p><h2><span>What's its secret?</span></h2><p>All conversations on Houseparty, which launched in 2016, happen in real time. They're between friends and sometimes friends of friends, when a user invites their buddy to join a group video-chat.</p><p>The app is scrubbed clean of "like" buttons, comments, news feeds, and follower counts. You won't find filters or animations to spice up what users see. Everything about the product communicates that "this is a place for the people you care about most," Sistani said.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b6dbdd3959f341c008b4e6d-1777/houseparty-video-chat-app-9.jpg" border="0" alt="houseparty video chat app 9" data-mce-source="Houseparty" /><p class="source"><span>Houseparty</span></p><p class="caption">In a survey of 1,000 social media users, Houseparty had the highest percentage of people saying they felt happy after spending time on the app.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>In fact, people on Houseparty have a median number of 23 friends. By comparison, a survey of 1,000 social media users found that people on Facebook report having 269 friends, while Instagram 'grammers have a median 348 followers, according to Houseparty and trend forecasting and consumer research firm Trendera.</p><p>About 70% of survey participants said their friends on Houseparty are "real friends," compared to just 35% on Instagram. As such, they have a better time hanging out on Houseparty.</p><p>The survey asked participants if they felt happy after scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, watching their friend's stories on Snapchat, and video chatting on Houseparty. Houseparty had the highest percentage of people saying they felt happy after spending time on the app, though it was topped by the 84% of participants who said they felt happy after hanging out with friends in person.</p><p>"I think on a lot of these platforms, what ends up happening is we quote-unquote friended all these people, and it turned into a popularity contest," Sistani said. "That has consequences for what you end up putting out there, how it represents you."</p><p>She added, "For Houseparty, my hope is that we can bring people back to face-to-face, back to real-time connection and communication. And part of that is making sure that the next generation - my kids in particular - know the right reaction to excitement, not just the right emoji for it. What we're really trying to do here is bring the humanity, the soul, back to social media."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teens-favorite-brands-instagram-snapchat-sony-adidas-microsoft-2016-12">Teens told us the brands they love and can't live without</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/KV6vf1BD-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

Generation Z is obsessed with this video-chat app - they say it's the next best thing to hanging out in person

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/538dde096bb3f7e101859ef5-890-668/apple-swift-programming-language-1.png?maxX=600" border="0" alt="apple swift programming language" width="600"><p class="source"><span>Apple.com</span></p><p class="caption">Apple reveals Swift at WWDC 2014</p></img></div><p></p></div>At its Worldwide Developer Conference next week, Apple is going to share a success story that a lot of people don't know about. </p><p>Almost exactly one year ago, Apple released Swift, a new programming language promised to make it easier to build iPhone and Mac apps than ever before. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/swift-apple-programming-language-2014-6">Developers cheered</a> from the stands.</p><p>The vision behind Swift is right in the name. Apple promises Swift is faster to write, and results in faster applications. </p><p>That vision resonated: <a href="http://www.topcoder.com">Topcoder</a>, a site where developers go online to complete challenges for cash, says it has 3,700 registered developers interested in Swift, and hopes to build a 20,000-strong community by the end of the year, a spokesperson says.</p><p>And Swift frequently tops developer surveys as the language developers are the most interested in by <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech-super">online coder hangouts like Stack Exchange</a>. Last November, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/man-made-money-teaching-online-apple-course-2014-11">a man made $66,000 in a month just by teaching other developers how to use Swift</a>, so strong is the interest.</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But Apple isn't the first big tech company to release its own programming language - not by a long shot.</span></p><p><span data-wr_replaced="true">Back in 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic as a way to streamline the development of Basic, one of the earliest popular programming languages with a graphical user interface (GUI).</span></p><p><span data-wr_replaced="true">More recently, circa 2009, Google released <a href="http://www.golang.org">Go</a>, its own programming language.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Programming languages are a matter of religion for so many developers. For Apple, Google, and even Microsoft way back when to release a new programming language means an uphill battle against the habits and routines of developers, who are set in their ways. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So there must be a carefully considered business case for this, right? Apple and Google must make money from this, right?</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Except that they don't. Not really.</span></p><h2><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The tower of babel</span></h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5447c29c6bb3f7b6338b4598-1200-800/lpp_016.jpg" border="0" alt="google data centers" width="600"><p class="source"><span>Google</span></p><p class="caption">One of Google's massive data centers.</p></img></div><p></p></div></p><p><span>The two languages have a lot in common. Both Google's Go and Apple's Swift were designed to fix the problems that developers were having with older programming languages. </span></p><p><span data-wr_replaced="true">Swift is enough like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C">Objective-C</a>, the programming language that dominates iOS coding, that developers picked it up quickly - in fact, it's similar enough that Objective-C and Swift code can be used side-by-side in the same app.</span></p><p>But Objective-C is over 30 years old at this point, and Swift is an effort to modernize it to make apps easier to write and run faster.</p><p>Similarly, Go was designed to make it easier to build complex systems. The old workhorses of the networked software programming industry, C++ and Python, just couldn't keep up with the demands that Google was placing on it.</p><p>"Go was born out of frustration with existing languages and environments for systems programming," says the official Go FAQ.</p><p>Hence, Go was born. It's made to be easier for coders to pick up, but still fixing a lot of the speed and performance problems of its forebears in the era of the gigantic data centers that we call "the cloud." As an open source project, developers all over the world are contributing to Go and making it better.</p><p><span>One fringe benefit for Google and Apple is that making your own programming language makes recruitment easier - for instance, since it builds a lot of its own server applications in Go, Google is more likely to hire a developer who's already proficient in the language since she would need less training. </span></p><p><span>Plus, any cool problems that developers in the wild solve with languages like Swift or Go, Apple and Google can adopt for their own businesses.</span></p><p><span>But for the most part, these languages are released into the world for the sole purpose of helping developers build better software. </span></p><h2><span data-wr_replaced="true">Swift grows swiftly</span></h2><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/4deff39649e2ae9d76150000-400-300/WWDC_terradata_4x3.jpg" border="0" alt="Apple data center" width="600"><p class="source"><span>Apple</span></p><p class="caption">One of Apple's huge data centers.</p></img></div><p></p></div></span></p><p>"The promise of [Swift] is, of course, apps will become more stable," says Jonathan Karon, Senior Software Engineering Manager at <a href="http://www.newrelic.com">New Relic</a>, which makes tools to help devlelopers monitor and debug their software.</p><p>More stable software means a better app experience, which makes Apple developers look good, and the iPhone look good by comparison. </p><p><span>Swift has had some early success, but it still needs some work, given that it is only a year old - its horsepower requirements mean that it's hard to write Swift code on a lower-end Macbook, it's still missing a lot of features, and there are ongoing debates in the developer community on whether or not Swift is actually faster than Objective-C.</span></p><p><span>But developers are bullish on Swift's future.</span></p><p><span>On the <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> side, Kuron says that he's finding that an increasing number of New Relic customers are keeping their existing back-end software in place, but that they're using Swift to build the apps that people actually use on their smartphones. </span></p><p>For consumer apps, language-learning app Duolingo is an early adopter of Swift, <a href="http://making.duolingo.com/real-world-swift">using it to build its Test Center app</a>. So is Lyft, which builds pieces of its ride-hailing car app on Swift. Streaming service Meerkat is a big fan of Swift, too.</p><p>"<span data-wr_replaced="true">We love Swift," Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wwdc-what-developers-want-to-see-2015-6">told Business Insider recently</a>. "And we realize that since it's still a young technology there are gaps left to be filled, so we are looking forward to seeing improvements on the development experience."</span></p><p>Some Internet commenters have wondered aloud if Swift exists because Apple is just trying to build a programming language for iPhones and iPads that makes it harder to bring apps to Android, which might well be so.</p><p>But that's probably only part of the reason. Despite its carefully manicured public image, Apple engineers are just as nerdy and excited about solving problems as the next Silicon Valley engineer, and the company's developers likely jumped at the chance to release what it sees as a better solution unto the world.</p><p>If you're comfortable using Objective-C, Apple isn't stopping you. It just offers up Swift as an option.</p><p>"They treat Objective-C and Swift as equal languages in the documentation," says Sergio Prado, CEO of <a href="bodbot.com">BodBot</a>, a fitness app for iPhone and Apple Watch. "They're never forward about using Swift." </p><p>That said, Prado says that none of BodBot is built on Swift currently since it's just not something he's experienced with. But he says he's watching the language's development with interest. </p><p><span>Apple is expected to announce some of those hoped-for updates to Swift at Monday's WWDC keynote. </span></p><h2><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Go to go</span></h2><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5571f8f969bedd1e61186f29-600-600/go_gopher_mascot_bw.png" border="0" alt="go gopher mascot" width="600"><p class="source"><span>Wikimedia Commons</span></p><p class="caption">The Google Go gopher mascot.</p></img></div><p></p></div><span>Go hasn't seen the explosive growth of Swift - not least because it targets more complex, so-called "system level" programming. </span></span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span>The Go project has </span><a href="https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article">described itself </a><span>as "designed by Google to help solve Google's problems, and Google has big problems." You can use Go for a mobile app if you </span><em>really </em><span>want, but it's not what the language is best at.</span></span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Red-hot container startup <a href="http://www.docker.com">Docker</a> uses Go for some of its internal projects, as does growing cloud hosting service <a href="http://www.digitalocean.com">DigitalOcean</a>. If Swift is for making iPhone apps, Go is for the servers that hold that app's data. </span></p><p><span>"From our point of view, the language is easy to pick up and performant in production, so we will continue to explore the possibilities," says DigitalOcean software engineer Brian Liles. </span></p><p><span data-wr_replaced="true"><span>But in general, it hasn't taken off yet. </span></span></p><p><span data-wr_replaced="true"><span>"<span>We're not seeing a lot of Go usage from our enterprise customers yet, outside of some early experimentation in their labs," says <span>Dan Turkenkopf, the <span>Senior Director of Strategic Research of Apprenda, a platform that helps businesses build applications in the cloud. </span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span data-wr_replaced="true"><span><span><span><span>A major reason for that, says New Relic's <span>Karon, is that Google has a lot of programming intiatives in play. Google has Google Dart, another, far less popular programming language. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Google also has experimental new software compilers for Android apps in the works, code-named "Jack and Jill," that may or may not change the way developers have to build their apps.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> In other words, Google has a lot of balls in the air, and developers find their attentions drawn in different ways.</span></p><p>"I don't think they have a singular vision for the future," Kuron says.</p><h2>You can't fix stupid</h2><p>The final word here is that Google and Apple are both pushing programming languages because new advances in technology are being underserved by existing languages and techniques. It's a way to advance their own agendas, even if it's to get more people interested in what Google and Apple are doing. </p><p>But as New Relic's Kuron points out, faster, less buggy code doesn't automatically make your app worth using. Languages like Swift and Go aren't silver bullets that make an app useful or fun to use. You need good design and good features, too.</p><p>"Code is not really the part that gates performance on mobile," Kuron says.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/police-officer-singing-shake-it-off-2015-1">Watch That Dash Cam Video Tribute Of A Police Officer Singing Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="hxdWV1cjp5WR4jP1eSYyjX63zj21K-_J" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'hxdWV1cjp5WR4jP1eSYyjX63zj21K-_J',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

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