For Angularjs or Angular 1.x posts, it will be stated 1.x explicitly, else it’s always the latest version of Angular. Use Case Let’ say you have a that will display blogger details and her posts. Blogger component will gets the list of posts from API. blogger component Instead of writing the logic of displaying the posts in the blogger component, you want to reuse the that is created by your teammate, what you need to do is pass it the posts . posts component data The posts component will then by category and display accordingly, like this: group the posts blogger component Isn’t That Easy? It might look easy at the first glance. Most of the time we will initiate all the process during our component initialization time — during life cycle hook (refer for more details on component life cycle hook). ngOnInit here In our case, you might think that we should run the post grouping logic during of the posts component. ngOnInit However, because the data is coming from server, when the blogger component passes the data to posts component, the posts component before the data get updated. Your post grouping logic will not be fired. posts posts ngOnInit is already fired How can we solve this? Please read further in my Scotch post. _Let's start with a common use case. You have some data you get from external source (e.g. by calling API). You want to…_scotch.io 3 Ways to Pass Async Data to Angular 2+ Child Components

3 Ways to Pass Async Data to Angular + Child Components

In , a is a reference to a contiguous segment of an array. Slice is basically a pointer, with additional properties about the array. Golang slice A slice is a structure of 3 fields. a pointer to the underlying array length of the slice capacity of the slice You can see this in slice.go, here https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/runtime/slice.go Both the slices point to the same memory, any changes to the actual data will impact all the slices pointing to the array. So, if you have an array and many slices pointing to the same array, there can be many places where the array can be changed. So, this is a disaster going to happen. The programmers should avoid exposing the array and always keep it anonymous. Golang provides make() to achieve this objective. make() allows us to create a slice when the underlying array is not defined. slice1 := make([]type, len) //case 1slice2 := make([]type, len, cap) // case 2 In the first case, the slice is pointing to an array of length ‘len’. Here, the following statement is true cap(slice1) = len(slice1) = len In the second case, slice2 doesn’t occupy the entire underlying array. The array has a length ‘cap’ and slice has length ‘len’. There is space for reslicing. Reslicing Changing the length of the slice is called reslicing. It is done by increasing the end index of the slice, until it occupies the entire array. Increase the slice length by 1 s = s[0:len(s)+1] Slice length can be reached upto the capacity. If the length crosses the capacity, it will panic at run time. The capacity is a limitation in reslicing. So, golang provides an built-in function append() to fix this issue. The built-in append() does the following append() appends zero or more values to a slice and returns the resulting slice. allocates a new, sufficiently large slice always succeeds, unless the computer runs out of memory append() may either modify its argument in-place return a copy of its argument with an additional entry, depending on the size and capacity of its input. append() function creates a new slice, if the length the slice is greater than the length of the array pointed by the slice. or In the first append(), the argument is modified and in the 2nd append(), a new slice is created. When you use append on a slice, you should avoid accessing the array anywhere else if you don’t want to be surprised. append() doesn’t fail unless you run out of memory. The garbage collector won’t release memory if the slice is kept around. It can cause the problem if it is huge, but only a few elements are required.

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We’ll be making this fun square! For a long time I’ve wanted to make stuff move in the browser. The problem I’ve had for the longest time is trying to get my head around synchronous code and asynchronous code. How can I make the player move when I press a key, but mix the event based nature of the browser with the synchronous style of coding I use when solving problems or puzzles. Today we’ll create a simple character that can move and jump around a space. We’ll achieve this with ~70 lines of JavaScript without the help of any libraries. Follow along using CodePen or your own editor. Particles can also be added! I’m assuming you have a basic understanding of JavaScript syntax, including some basic ES6 features. If not read ! my refresher on ES6 first . Click here for the finished code To create simple code that can be managed, we’ll be separating displaying the game with the game data. The game data will reside in an object that will be drawn through an function. update First let’s set up the html so we can see what we’re doing. We will be using svg elements because they’re easy to set up and fast enough for our needs. We’ll use a rectangle for our player and a line to set the floor boundary. To set up the svg screen with a line and rectangle add the following code to your html. This will draw an svg screen. Width and height needs to be specified, but we’ll do this with JavaScript. The line won’t be visible yet as it’s outside the dimensions of the svg screen. Let’s set up the data for the screen and player in JavaScript. The screen will now include the ground drawn at the bottom of the screen. Svg elements can be modified using css the same way other elements can be styled. However svg elements have different CSS properties that are specific to svg shapes. Before jumping into the logic, let’s take a look from afar at the process we’ll be using. We want a function to run ~30 times a second to change data in the game and also draw the screen. We want events like pressing a key and releasing a key to be monitored, and therefore influence the logic that runs. We’ll want to store data in some kind of data store (an object we’ll call ) and then base our game loop on that data. The end of our game loop will also have an function that creates the frame. worldData update So let’s set up the data and update function! Our game data requires x and y coordinates for the player. We’ll make this an object so we can easily add data later on. I want the player to start on the ground, centred on the screen, but feel free to write in your own numbers. The player rectangle hasn’t moved yet though. To move it we need to create an or function. Call it whatever makes most sense to you, however I’ll be using . This function uses the worldData to draw a frame. This shouldn’t be too complicated as all we’ll be doing is linking the to the rectangles property, and the same with the property. update render update worldData.player.x x y Now the rectangle will jump to the position you’ve specified in your object. worldData Let’s create a game loop that executes 30 times a second. This loop will have all our logic, and end with the function call that updates the svg to reflect the new data. update() It’s lonely out in space Your player now lifts off the ground! Let’s unpack why this is happening. takes a function and calls it over and over again with an interval in milliseconds. In this case we’re calling the function every 30 milliseconds. That’s about 33 frames per second. Every time this function runs, it changes the by subtracting . At the end of the function we are updating the frame by calling . Without we don’t see the liftoff! setInterval worldData.player.y 0.5 update update Let’s add interaction. We need a way to know which key is down. This is the hardest part, but once you understand it you can add as many keys as you want to your game and it’s easy. We need to keep track of which keys are down. We’ll add as a property to the object. will contain a list of all keys the person playing your game is holding down. With this information we’ll be able to see which keys are down in the game-loop (the function within the above) and move the player accordingly. keysDown worldData keysDown setInterval First let’s add as a property in the object. It should now look like so: keysDown worldData We use the document’s event listeners to keep track of keys being pressed. In your console you can see the events firing off as you press buttons on your keyboard. Let’s create a function that adds the arrow keys pressed to the list in your object. We’ll call this function and it’ll handle and events. worldData fireKeyAction keydown keyup We also want to update our key press and key up events. Let’s walk through it quickly. When you press a key, it finds the name of the key you pressed using . This is a string representation of the key, e.g. . This is passed into which takes two arguments. A key string, and a boolean, representing if it’s a or event. event.key ArrowLeft fireKeyAction keydown keyup Assuming we’re handling a event. In we pass the argument as . We then reach the statement. This is a shorthand method of checking if is to the various statements. In this example we are only going to do anything if the is equal to any of the arrow keys. keydown fireKeyAction isDown true switch key === case key If the user has pressed or released an arrow key we add or remove it from the array. If is , we add the arrow key, but only if it’s not already in the array. This is important because the keydown event fires continuously while a key is pressed down. We only want to add the key once. If is , we find the key with and use to cut it from the array. keysDown isDown true isDown false indexOf splice keysDown Go back to the mainloop (the function inside setInterval), and add a for the . console.log worldData.keysDown All that is left is adding logic to the game loop. Let’s make the character walk left and right. In your setInterval anonymous function, update it so it matches the following: Notice I’ve used a function in the statements. Let’s quickly add that function: isKeyDown if This is just a shortcut for checking if the key is in the array. It’s ALIVE! Add other features by adding a key, more logic in the setInterval game loop or by adding more svg elements. A colourful trail! I shoot! The way I’ve organised the code is heavily influenced by the book which is freely available on the web! How to Design Programs, Second Edition This lesson uses mutation of the object , especially when things get complicated. If you want to add complexity and grow your game, I’d recommend taking a look at . ! Redux gives you a safe way to change the state of your game and keep track of the changes. As motivation, with Redux you could trivially add time travelling to your game. worldData which is not good practice Redux Check out this introduction to Redux by making another game Got any questions, comments or found errors? Tweet me over ! :) on my twitters is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

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Manipulating the DOM with events by making a platformer!

“Reinforcement Learning is simply Science of Decision Making. That’s what makes it so General.” — David Silver Abstract You might have observed a level of saturation in Machine recently. Well that’s actually saturation in ‘Supervised Learning’ actually (poor Kaggle). Learning Most of us don’t know any other learning algorithm than Back-Propagation. There are a few recent ones like ‘ ’ and ‘ ’ but more-or-less fall under similar paradigm as Back-propagation. Equilibrium Propagation Synthetic Gradients While, Unsupervised learning and Reinforcement learning remain unscratched (comparatively, in mainstream at least). In this blog we’ll be diving into Reinforcement Learning or as I like to call it ‘ ’ or ‘ ’ learning. Those are actually pretty accurate names. Stupidity-followed-by-Regret What-If Intro Reinforcement learning is interaction based learning in an ‘cause-effect’ environment. Effect or consequence is based upon the actions and cause if the goal to be achieved. Much like talking to your crush. The goal is to impress her but every word you say will have a consequence. She’ll either: find you charming or randomly remember she has to be somewhere #BelieveMeIAmAGuy #IntrovertProblems RL is Goal oriented learning, where the learner (referred to as ‘ ’ in RL) is not dictated what action to take, rather it is encouraged to explore and discover the best action to yield best results. Vaguely speaking, is based upon approach. agent exploration trial-and-error In RL, your present action not only affect your immediate reward (getting that kiss) but also your rewards (her agreeing for a second date). So the agent might opt for higher future rewards instead of high current reward. future Remember the following statement, you’ll understand it better later: RL is not defined by characterising a learning method but by characterising the learning problem itself. Agent The learner in RL is referred to as agent. An ‘ ’ has the and is able to take actions in form of in order to maximise the . agent sense of it’s environment interactions with the environment reward received from the environment Who is a Supervisor? Q) In Supervised learning, the . Hence it acts like a supervisor. Ans) training set supervises the learning of the learner How and when is an RL Agent better than a Supervisor? Q) In an uncharted territory, a supervisor (your ever-single friend) does not have much idea about the correct actions (step to impress your crush). In this case much better learning can be done by own (agent) experiences. Ans) Exploration-Exploitation Trade-Off Obviously there is a trade-off, there is always a trade-off! Supervised learning has Bias-Variance trade-off and RL has Exploration-Exploitation trade-off. To obtain high reward, the agent can either prefer actions that were fruitful in past explore possibility of better actions Let’s break it down Exploitation : use the pre-learned knowledge to obtain GOOD reward Explore : try something new to obtain either GREAT or WORSE rewards In Stochastic tasks, an action has to be tried multiple times to gain a reliable estimate about it’s reward. Yet, this can’t ensure the which is the best possible action. Agent can’t explore and exploit at same step, hence the trade-off. Information gained during exploration can be exploited multiple times during future steps. Extra At times RL involves supervised learning. This is done to determine which capabilities are critical for achieving rewards. Example: Evolution, makes sure you know how to breath otherwise no matter how awesome you are, you won’t be able to achieve anything. Growing up, do you achieve noble prize of keep playing with fidget spinners is not the concern of the supervised part. These algorithms are categorised as Deep-Reinforcement-Learning. More on that later, for now just have a look how good they can perform! Fundamentals of RL RL has 4 fundamental concepts: Policy Reward Function Value Function Model (of Environment) [ideally] Policy It defines the behaviour of the agent at any given time. Roughly, policy is mapping of currently known states and actions to be taken when in those states. In terms of psychology, it corresponds to stimulus-response rules. Policy can be in form of a look-up table or an extensive search process. Reward & Value is the gain that indicates what is good action in . Reward immediate sense is cumulative gain to estimate of how good an action will be in . Value long run Example: Eating cake will make me happy right now. Though in long run, cake is bad for my health. The , combines reward and value under single concept and conveys: Reward System how rewarding an action is w.r.t rewards hence also how desirable a state is In biological sense it refers to pleasure and pain. In relationship sense it refers to her saying “you are looking cute” and “you should shave that beard off” (it still hurts). Mostly, the reward system is unaltered by the agent, though it may serve as bases for altering the policy. Example: Falling off the cycle hurts, so very low rewarding. I can’t alter the reward system to take pleasure in that pain. BUT. I can later the way I ride cycle so I don’t fall again. Our main concern is the Value and not Reward. Why? Q) Reward only makes sure that immediate gain is max, future gains could be way worse. Value makes sure that we have max overall gain. Ans) What’s the problem then? Q) Usually immediate gains have more surety than future gains. Ans) What are value functions? Q) As the name suggest, value functions are functions used to compute value of an action. The tricky part is how they do it. These usually use complex inference based algorithms. Ans) Example: You buy a stock. Current market status is good. So with much surety you can sell it tomorrow and get good reward. Now if you keep the shares for another year, the value might sky-rocket to multiple folds but one can never be very sure about that. Evolutionary Algorithms Although they sound very similar, RL and Evolutionary algorithms are not the same thing. Evolutionary algorithms don’t use Value function. They directly search into spaces of policies. Pros: Effective when agent doesn’t have much sense of the environment Cons: They don’t notice which states agent passes through it’s lifetime They do not exploit the fact that the policy they are searching for is a function from state to action. This was just the first chapter, a basic intro to RL. We still have a world to explore in upcoming chapters. Yeah, that’s a random GIF.

Reinforcement Learning (Introduction)

I’m a very meticulous public speaker. Even though one part of me wants to go extempore, talk off the cuff and sound all grandiose, another part of me knows the beauty of a perfect script. Of course there are times when you have to go off script. Like yesterday, when I spoke in front of a group of Rotary Club members in South Mumbai. I had gone all planned, a PowerPoint presentation of 20 short slides, a script that I had gone through a couple of times before taking the mic, and a feeling of confidence running through me when I reached. And then mid-way through the talk, the laptop got discharged… There went my flow of thoughts… The essence of my talk lay in those slides… Moreover, anything visual gives the audience something else to look at other than you. I almost always plan for technology giving way, and carry the complete notes I need for a talk. But what one doesn’t plan for is the disconnection in the flow of thoughts that you experience when interruptions like these take place. That’s when you realise the importance of improvisation in any situation. In public speaking particularly, you don’t know when you’ll get caught off guard, or when you’ll be thrown a question that you either don’t know how to answer, or don’t want to answer. At these times, you need to bank on your conversational skills, your ability to be tactful, dip into your reserves of knowledge, and structure a satisfactory response. Public speaking has many elements to it, like your diction, voice modulation, body language and a well-crafted script. But at the heart of it lies your ability to connect and engage your audience. This comes with a lot of practice. Before a speaking engagement one is always unsure of the outcome, but the important part is to get on that stage and give it your best. Even though I don’t always feel confident about public speaking, I never shirk from it…like any other skill, you only get better with practice. You also needn’t feel hesitant about your diction or fluency… If you have a good story to tell, your message will get across. Lastly, go prepared for the worst, try becoming independent of the aids you have, bank instead on your inherent knowledge and confidence. Most audiences are extremely receptive and they can tell when a speaker is unfazed or not, so don’t get too affected by disruptions. Calm your nerves, and get back into the rhythm of your talk once again. Make sure no pause is too long or else the audience will lose interest in you. The laptop took some time to restart, but I continued talking, I elaborated some more on the points, just to buy time till I got the slides back once again. The disruption indeed taught me an important lesson in public speaking: when in front of a crowd, learn to improvise! Thanks so much for taking time out to read my post. You add more energy to my pen… If you like my blog, you can do one of the three: PS: Press the heart button and recommend it Share it with your own following Follow me to read my latest posts

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When in Front of a Crowd, Improvise…

This past year was a tremendous success for our company, neighbors, and service providers. The end of the year marks our first full year operating our home services marketplace with hundreds of neighbors and dozens of pros benefiting from our desire to build the world’s most delightful home service experience. At Blueberry, we’re not only improving how we care for our homes, but also transforming the ways we live and work together. Each pin represents a neighbor in South Bay Blueberry One neighbor, then two, each inviting another. Neighbors started discussing Blueberry over and Nextdoor. Before we knew our neighbor crowdsourcing movement was spreading like wildfire across the South Bay Area. Facebook Local newspapers started covering our happenings ( , , and a ). By now thousands of neighbors are following their neighborhood calendar. Los Altos Town Crier Silicon Valley Business Journal few others The Blueberry community has amazed us with their enthusiasm — kids racing down the streets in their tuned-up bicycles, moms showcasing their homes with perfect parties, dads once again anointed “grill masters” smitten with their clean BBQs, grandmas have someone to call to fix a drape or a faucet, and the pets, well, the pets are ecstatic! One of our many delighted Blueberry pups. Pet grooming was our most popular service in 2016. Pets love the low-stress grooming environment and pet owners enjoy the convenience of not having to leave the house with a car full of animals. Today, we’re a small, focused team working everyday to bring new tools to service providers and neighbors, creating a fair and equitable marketplace for everyone. Grouping services together remove inefficiencies and help save time, money, and the planet. all stakeholders Legacy competitors have created unsustainable business models that layer costs, squeeze supply-side vendors, fail to support local and/or address larger environmental issues. We believe we are at the threshold of the next major phase in local — drawing on past attempts, the emergence of the smartphone, a shifting labor landscape, and the democratization of local paid ad channels having all culminated in the perfect time to build a service like ours. As a mission-driven steward of innovation, Blueberry represents the potential to transform local into a movement that changes the world. We believe local *is* the economy. By bringing the village back to the neighborhood, Blueberry is empowering neighbors and pros to rise above the doldrums of work and home maintenance. Tomorrow’s reality is that you can get anything delivered to your door with confidence-building transparency every step of the way. With the turn of the calendar year, we’re thrilled to announce that starting in January all payments will be completed through our platform. No longer will neighbors and pros have to chase down checks or dig through paper archives to find past receipts. By bringing payments online, we’re among the world’s most transparent end-to-end home service experiences. In 2017, you can expect us to deliver many more enhancements across the service experience. We’ll have native iOS/Android apps available by spring that’ll include the ability for neighbors and service providers to message each other directly. Throughout the year we’ll maintain a measured pace introducing new service categories. We’re human-centered in everything we do, and that means we’re focused on experience touchpoints. We’re thoughtful in standardizing care and onboard only the best, most-recommended local service providers. We started this journey two years ago, and while it hasn’t been without sleepless nights, we couldn’t be more excited about the . future We have all of you to thank for rooting us on as we champion a more delightful and sustainable . home - Damian Learn more at bluberryhome.com

Blueberry Home Catching Fire in the New Year

Java is a great programming language but has some known flaws, common pitfalls and not-so-great elements that have been inherited from its early days (1.0 got released in 1995). A well-respected Book on how to write good Java code, avoid common coding mistakes and deal with its weaknesses is Joshua Bloch’s “ .” It contains 78 sections, called “Items”, that give the reader valuable advice on different aspects of the language. Effective Java Creators of modern programming languages have a big advantage because they are able to analyze the weaknesses of established languages and make things better themselves. , a company that has created several very popular IDEs, decided in 2010 to create a programming language for their own development. The goal of it was to be more concise and expressive while eliminating some of the weaknesses of Java. All the previous code for their IDEs has been written in Java, so they needed a language that is highly interoperable with Java and compiles down to Java bytecode. They also wanted to make it very easy for Java developers to jump into Kotlin.With Kotlin, Jetbrains wanted to build a better Java. Jetbrains Kotlin While re-reading “Effective Java,” I found out that a lot of these Items are not necessary for Kotlin and so the idea of this blog post series about how the content of this book may have influenced Kotlin’s design was born. 1. No more builders needed with Kotlin’s default values When you have a lot of optional parameters for a constructor in Java, the code becomes verbose, hard to read and error prone. To help with that, Item 2 of Effective Java describes how to effectively use the . A lot of code is needed to construct such an object, like the nutrition facts object in the code samples below. It has two required parameters ( , ) and four optional parameters ( , , , ): Builder Pattern servingSize servings calories fat sodium carbohydrates Instantiating an object with Java looks like this: With Kotlin you don’t need to use a builder pattern at all because there is the feature of default parameters, which allow you to define default values for each optional constructor argument: Creating an object in Kotlin then looks like this: For better readability, you can also name the required parameters and : servingSize servings Like Java, the object created here is immutable. We reduced the lines of code needed from 47 in Java to 7 in Kotlin, resulting in a huge productivity boost. NOT BAD Tip: If you want to create the object in Java, you can do that of course, but you are forced to specify a value for each optional parameter. Fortunately, if you add the annotation, multiple constructors are generated. Note that if you want to use an annotation, we need the keyword too: KotlinNutrition JvmOverloads constructor 2. Easy creation of singletons Item 3 of “Effective Java” shows how to design a Java object so that it behaves as a singleton, which is an object where only a single instance can be instantiated. The code snippet below shows a “monoelvistic” universe, where only one Elvis can exist: Kotlin has the concept of that gives us the behavior of a singleton out of the box: object declarations No need to manually construct your singletons anymore! 3. equals() and hashCode() out of the box A good programming practice that has its origins in functional programming and simplifies the code is to mainly use immutable value objects. Item 15 contains the advice that “Classes should be immutable unless there’s a very good reason to make them mutable.” Immutable value objects are very tedious to create in Java, because for every object you have to override the and functions yourself. It took Joshua Bloch 18 pages to describe how to obey to the explicit general contract of these two methods in Item 8 and 9. For example, if you override you have to make sure that the of reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity, consistency and nun-nullity are all fulfilled. Sounds more like math rather than programming. equals() hashCode() equals() contracts In Kotlin, you can simply use instead, where the compiler automatically derives methods like , and many more. This is possible because the standard functionality can be mechanically derived from the properties of your object. Simply enter the keyword in front of your class and you are done. No 18 pages of description needed here. data classes equals() hashCode() data Tip: Lately, for Java became popular. This library generates immutable value classes for Java 1.6+. AutoValue 4. Properties instead of fields Item 14 recommends the use of accessor methods instead of public fields in public classes. If you do not stick to this advice you could get into trouble, because fields are then directly accessible and you lose all the benefits of encapsulation and flexibility. This means that in the future you will be unable to change the internal representation of your class without changing its public API. For instance, you cannot limit values for a field, such as the age of a person, later. That is one of the reasons why we always create those verbose default getters and setters in Java. This best practice is enforced by Kotin because it uses with auto-generated default getters and setters instead of fields. properties Syntactically you access those properties like public fields in Java with or . You can add custom getters and setters later without changing the API of the class: person.name person.age Long story short: with Kotlin’s properties, we get more concise classes with greater flexibility out of the box. 5. Override as mandatory keyword instead of optional annotation Annotations were added to Java in release 1.5. The most important one is , which marks that a method is overriding a method of a superclass. According to Item 36, this optional annotation should be constantly used to avoid nefarious bugs. The compiler then throws an error when you think you are overriding a method from a superclass but you actually do not. This works as long as you don’t forget to use the annotation. Override Override In Kotlin, is not an optional annotation but a mandatory keyword. So there is no more chance for these types of nasty bugs. The compiler will alert you about these beforehand. Kotlin sticks to . override making these kinds of things explicit That’s it This was part 1 of how “ ” may have influenced the design of Kotlin. You can to get new updates from me. Effective Java follow me on twitter See you next time! EDIT: is ! Part 2 here

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How “Effective Java” may have influenced the design of Kotlin — Part 1

Thinking functionally has opened my mind about programming. It has given me a greater depth of understanding of code. It has also led me on a quest in which I found myself questioning many of the core features of the language. I have recently been questioning the statement itself. if Having written an entire application completely void of a single statement, I have found to be optional. if if If you are unfamiliar with functional programming this probably sounds like the rantings of a mad man, but stick with me a bit and allow me to explain. Learning multiple ways to solve the same problem amplifies your mental toolkit by magnitudes. First, meet the statement replacement, the : if ternary operator condition ? expr1 : expr2 Functional programming has taught me to write small functions like this:(don’t yell at me for not currying, that’s for another article) const add = (x, y) => x + y The statement doesn’t fit into this type of function, but the ternary operator does! if const isGreaterThan5 = x => x > 5 ? 'Yep' : 'Nope' Soon I began to find almost every instance of an statement could be replaced with an equivalent ternary operation. if // typical code you might stumble uponfunction saveCustomer(customer) {if (isCustomerValid(customer)) {database.save(customer)} else {alert('customer is invalid')}} // ternary equivalentfunction saveCustomer(customer) {return isCustomerValid(customer)? database.save(customer): alert('customer is invalid')} // ES6 styleconst saveCustomer = customer =>isCustomerValid(customer)? database.save(customer): alert('customer is invalid') Then I started to think how the ternary operator could fit into an statement. I was able to do this with a nested ternary, but it was really messy and not easy to understand. else if Until I started to get creative with my formatting. // old school else-iffunction customerValidation(customer) {if (!customer.email) {return error('email is require')} else if (!customer.login) {return error('login is required')} else if (!customer.name) {return error('name is required')} else {return customer}} // ES6 style custom formatted ternary magicconst customerValidation = customer =>!customer.email   ? error('email is required'): !customer.login ? error('login is required'): !customer.name  ? error('name is required'): customer Now you can clearly see all the conditions defined on the left hand side and the values returned on the right side. Even though it is possible to replace every statement with a ternary operator, I am not saying you should do so. This is just another tool for you to use and consider. if This Rethinking JavaScript article is just one in a series. More to come in the near future! I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts on how you would rethink the statement. Do you have a scenario where you are unsure how this will work? Tell me, let me know! if Continue to Part 2 . Rethinking JavaScript: Death of the For Loop _JavaScript’s for loop has served us well, but it is now obsolete and should be retired in favor of newer functional…_hackernoon.com Rethinking JavaScript: Death of the For Loop I know it’s a small thing, but it makes my day when I get those follow notifications on Medium and Twitter ( ). Or if you think I’m full of shit, tell me in the comments below. @joelnet Cheers! Related Articles _Function composition has got to be my favorite part of functional programming. I hope to provide you with a good real…_hackernoon.com Functional JavaScript: Function Composition For Every Day Use. _In my last article, Death of the for Loop, I tried to convince you to abandon the for loop for a more functional…_medium.com Rethinking JavaScript: Break is the GOTO of loops _In my last 3 articles I convinced you to remove the if statement, kill the for loop, and never use break._medium.com Rethinking JavaScript: Eliminate the switch statement for better code _I love the new Promise library that ships with ES6, though one thing has been left out, a function to sequentially…_medium.com Functional JavaScript: Resolving Promises Sequentially

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Rethinking JavaScript: The if statement

In this series I will be exploring the different JavaScript APIs that are available for use in a browser environment. Some will be well known, others may be completely new to you. Hopefully each section will present you with some new information and useful real-world tips! So, let’s get started. Not Just For YouTube If you haven’t used it before, you may not even know the Video API exists, or you may be under the impression it can only be used for creating a custom video player. However, if you just need to embed a video into your site, and don’t want to create your own fancy video player, the Video API still has something for you! Remembering User Settings All options available to the video HTML tag, such as , , , and can be set with JavaScript instead of HTML. So, imagine that you have an automatically playing video, but you want to let your users opt out of that probably-annoying feature, you could do the following: autoplay controls loop src Now you’re only showing autoplay for those who are OK with that feature! Playing the correct size video based on connection This next option is a bit more specific, and a bit more complicated, but it has huge benefits when it comes to user experience. You’ll have to play around with it to find the right balance for you and your users, but this should provide you with a good starting point. The Video API comes with a set of events that happen over the course of a video’s lifecycle. , , , are all examples of good lifecycle events that can be used, but we’re not concerned about when things are going well, we want to know when the video isn’t loading properly. oncanplay oncanplaythrough onplay onpause So we are going to watch for , , so that we can make changes when these events happen. onstalled onwaiting onerror When we get the event, we will give the user an option to reload the video. When we have or we are going to check to see if this has happened before, how many times it has happened, and if it’s been too many times we’re going to change the to a smaller bitrate video. onerror onstalled onwaiting src Here is an example of reloading the video (or giving the option to do so) on an error: Here is an example of changing the when the video is loading too often: src Finally, a good resource for the Video API is . http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_av_dom.asp Stay tuned for more posts about JavaScript APIs! Hi, I’m Justin Fuller. I’m so glad you read my post! I need to let you know that everything I’ve written here is my own opinion and is not intended to represent my employer in way. All code samples are my own, and are completely unrelated to Bank Of America’s code. any I’d also love to hear from you, please feel free to connect with me on , , or . Thanks again for reading! LinkedIn Github Medium is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

Bank of America

YouTube

JavaScript APIs: Video Api

From Banking to Power Grids we have all heard the hype….what is the reality ? The telephone was a great invention and it took more than one user to make it useful. So it is with Blockchain technology. It is really only useful when multiple parties participate. A lot of discussion at conferences revolve around ‘use cases’ and ‘what if’ scenarios with technologists, consultants and business people. The argument still rages that is still very much a looking for a business problem to solve. In financial services executives are excited with the prospect but few are willing to commit significant resources, cash and time to making solutions a reality. Some firms have assigned limited resources to work on ‘ ’ projects so that they can be the first to market with solutions or at a minimum not miss an opportunity when the technology matures. In financial services most firms have participated in these ‘proof of concept’ projects but few have moved beyond that level of participation. Who is going to actually commit part of their business to a Blockchain solution first ? Everybody is waiting for that brave pioneer to jump in so that they can take advantage of lessons learned from the first movers in Blockchain. Blockchain technology proof of concept At this point in time there are few solutions that are using blockchain in the real world, other than bitcoin, that users can point at to illustrate the value associated with a distributed ledger. The reality within financial services is that the true value of blockchain is in the cryptographically secured records together with smart contracts but there are so many hurdles to overcome and barriers to entry that it is difficult to get a blockchain solution off the ground. Swaps and derivatives is a great use case for blockchain, being able to automate most of the post trade functionality within smart contracts and share directly with counter parties assets, prices and contracts together with payments is compelling for financial services firms. The dilemma arises when you consider that most tier 1 banks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars integrating their systems from front, middle and back office including risk and control systems. A simple replacement of the post trade swaps and derivatives functionality has to be more compelling than simply saving money on post trade processing. Assuming that banks decided to run a Blockchain solution between themselves and each bank becomes a de facto node on the Blockchain the further dilemma of regulation and governance emerges. Who runs the Blockchain/solution ? Is it a consortium ? Is it now considered market infrastructure ? How do you govern the standards and regulatory reporting ? The recent is a good indicator of how firms are evolving their thinking in that people are realizing that an ‘immutable’ blockchain may not work for financial services solutions because in most cases the ability to edit, cancel/correct is very important with transaction processing. has also focuses on the same issue, which has raised the question regarding the underlying value of blockchains immutability, and that if the blockchain can be ‘edited’ then is it truly blockchain technology or simply a distributed database with some very good crypto technology to ensure the records are secured. Regardless of the semantics a distributed cryptographically secure database has a lot of value for global trade once standards have been adopted for how the technology is managed, interoperated and regulated. R3 ‘corda’ release Accenture As Gartner’s hype cycle predicts we are at the the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ and are entering the ‘trough of disillusionment’ phase of the blockchain cycle and it will take a few real world successes to eventually move to broader adoption. I also believe that most of the financial services solutions that have been heralded as game changing are still in the planning and development stages and will eventually make it into real world usage but not as soon as pundits have predicted. As I pointed out from the outset the telephone was a wonderful invention but when more that one person started using it, it quickly became critical infrastructure and and from the beginning standards were adopted. I think 2017 will see new solutions for financial services being introduced, albeit slowly. This is an exciting changing landscape and warrants very close attention as the year progresses. heavily regulated Thanks for reading Best regards: Norman King If you enjoyed this article, please hit the like button; leave a comment or share with your network. Also, please check out my other Linkedin posts on Medium . Available for consulting, advisory and speaking engagements here , also here email: normanking@brook-port.com .

Where are we in the Hype Cycle with Blockchain ?

By the time companies make next forecasts and write their 20XX trends posts, people will probably forget that they have even had to visit hypermarkets and shops or pay cash. You still have to make small talks with delivery guy, aren’t you? — It is also a matter of time. In December, 2016, Amazon claimed its first . successful Prime Air drone delivery Online marketplace software: what to expect? Online shopping marketplace solutions are constantly enhanced and updated in terms of technologies, logistics, delivery, offering and other cool stuff. Need help while booking or shopping? — Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and others are actively integrating chatbots and so getting customers familiar with human-machine interaction. For instance, Facebook already has over available, while multi vendor clothing startup is among their early adopters. We shouldn’t forget about personal digital assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa, as other examples of human-computer interaction. 11,000 bots Spring Currently e-commerce is a superior force in retail business field. claims that in 2015 global retail sales footed up to $1.55 trillion and they are expected to increase to $3.4 trillion in 2019 and to $4.058 trillion in 2020. In the 2015–2016 timeframe the number of online buyers has grown by approximately . Statista 20 million , Business Insider’s premium research service, anticipates that 2.8 million robots will be shipped until 2021. There will be industrial robots to be employed in manufacturing, as well as in-store machines to take inventory or fill up the shelves. Such retail giants as Target, Best Buy, Amazon, Orchard Supply Hardware (Lowe’s subsidiary) in their stores. Even some restaurants in China have already practiced the idea and . BI Intelligence already test robots replaced waiters with robots Web based marketplace for shopping: where to start? E-commerce popularity is growing every year and there are no marks of slowing down. Online retail ecosystem is consistently evolving by virtue of advances in online payment technologies and willingness of traders to accept payments by credit cards. To build a two sided online marketplace for startup you should start with: Filling the void Focusing on a particular niche and offering products that can hit the spot of audience in that niche are the basic rules at an earlier stage of creating cloud based ecommerce marketplace software. If you appeal to everyone, at long last you may arrive at appealing to no one. Choosing a niche that you already have experience in is the best option. Doing so you will have a better understanding of your audience needs and potential problems, so you will be able to sell and deliver solutions buyers can’t reject and, as a result, your offering is never wasted. Our developers have worked on a custom marketplace solution for college students. The idea is based on “Free & For Sale” online communities that do away with the need for search and make buy-sell process prompt and safe. This peer-to-peer platform includes inboard payment gateway, reviews and ratings, product and request feeds, and other useful options. DA-14 real case example: Flypd — socially-driven marketplace platform developed by DA-14 team Nailing user experience The decision to develop a two sided marketplace platform shouldn’t be treated lightly. It is the very background for turning strategies and ideas into a successful business. If you still wonder on how to build a marketplace website and make it thriving, then you should definitely strive to make it handy, reliable and personalized for both traders and buyers. You can make your e-commerce site feel like a community and so engage your potential customers. Large number of web based retail platforms is still business-oriented, while Etsy is a perfect example of different approach for startups and potential customers. They’ve built whole community around a niche marketplace, in this fashion they offer members to join teams, attend events, watch workshops, etc. Etsy Getting high roller in Big vendors can handle large orders, possess necessary knowledge in handling transactions, and they’ve already gained customers’ confidence. Collaboration with such merchants can be especially helpful during the initial stages. Such approach can help cover a supply-demand gap, better known as chicken-and-egg problem. Another solution on how to start an online marketplace is to focus on a particular group that includes both potential vendors and consumers. One of the examples is Etsy: their research has shown that people, who do crafts, prefer to buy from other craftspeople, while both groups are typically involved in the same community. Photo by: Etsy When it comes to others tools of balancing demand and supply relation, there are several popular case studies. When Uber came into operation, it was limited to San Francisco and as soon, as it made major gains, it was introduced to other cities. Such strategy as “starting small” was also employed by Flipkart that began with books selling and in course of time started to cover other e-commerce areas. During its launch in Seattle, Uber started with paying drivers even for idling, which in turn brought high-value producers and attracted consumers. Dating agencies state that the number of male members tips the scales and that’s why they mainly invite women to join at no charge. To make a two sided marketplace website is a complex and ongoing task and to give your company a thriving start you should first pitch upon a method to overcome the potential problems. The last but not the least is to listen to end users and optimize the open source platform. Community is a part of your business, so it is of crucial importance to design and build retail sites with people in mind. To create a two sided marketplace & what’s next? These days, e-commerce business model is applied within such niches as consumer goods, fashion, education, transportation, tourism, real estate and so forth. But online marketplace platform development cost should include not only custom software development, but also marketing and advertising, further enhancements and support, SEO, promotion, and media content creation. Create and print out attractive postcards with link to soon-to-open website. You can also distribute cards for small discounts with light insights into future shop. Promote your pet project through social networks and email. Start with launch promotion. Udemy invested in its own courses. Reddit founders used to produce their own content. Airbnb founders visited listed apartments in New York area to take quality photos for the website and now they have a team of professional photographers to provide film service to hosts. Work on your own offering. Turn first time clients into loyal customers making them feel valuable and special. If you pack and deliver your products to a door, include hand-written thank you notes and nice free gifts. Send follow-up emails and ask for feedbacks. Be responsive and make returns easily. Invest in customer service. Build close relation with your customers through various online channels. Engage email marketing to welcome new site members, notify about new arrivals and discounts, remind about abandoned carts or ask for feedbacks and reviews. Add short hints like “Usual bought with” or “Add the final flourish”. Use online the whole nine yards. Mobile commerce is well on the way and to stay competitive it is essential to give pride of place to mobile site. Include real-time notifications, shipping status, product info, share/purchase buttons to increase user engagement and usability. Work out the kinks of mobile version. For more recommendations on building a thriving peer-to-peer marketplace don’t hesitate to today. contact our team

AirBnB

Apple

Best Buy

Community Is

Microsoft

Target

Uber

How to Create a Two-Sided Online Marketplace Platform?

Pro Tip: If you are at CES today and want to connect, I’ll be hanging out at Eureka Park from 11am this morning (Friday) when I’m on a panel about diversity until I leave the premises at 2:30. My dad and I left the yesterday at 8:30am to head over to the Las Vegas Convention Center. When I arrived back at the room at 10pm, I was done / baked / toasted / wiped. Venetian For a number of years (somewhere between 5 and 9, according to the little badge they gave me), my dad and I went to together every year. In 2013, when I got depressed, I decided not to travel for a year. I punted CES that year and for the next few years, so this is the first time in four years we’ve done the drill. CES We had a blast together yesterday. I think my dad was delirious by about 9pm when he left our party and went up to the room. And hour later when I checked in on him before going to sleep, he was flat on his back in bed pretending to be awake but was clearly out for the count. We started at the LVCC. I saw a tweet from Dan Primack saying the North Hall was basically indistinguishable from the Detroit Auto Show. He nailed it — it was basically a takeover by the worldwide auto industry with a few startups sprinkled here and there. It felt like six months ago every CEO of a major auto company sent an email to the CMO that said “We are going to be at CES. We need to show up three things: (1) Our EV prototype, (2) A completely new in-car electronics package that looks better than Tesla’s, and (3) something about autonomous driving. Your budget is $10 million. Don’t fuck it up.” If any of this shit comes together, we are going to have completely different cars by 2020. If you are a VC and you haven’t placed your bets on this sector yet, good luck. And if you have, make sure you are spending lots of time with big auto corp dev / M&A people. If you’ve been following any news about CES, you know that it’s been a huge Alexa takeover. Amazon’s move in the home is brilliant. I love Alexa and I’m amazed at how far ahead Amazon suddenly is. When I think of all the money, time, and energy Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Sony, Samsung, and LG have spent in the home, I have one word for them. “Wasted.” As far as I can tell, I’ll be talking to Alexa in the future a lot more than I’ll be saying “Ok Google”, especially when I’m talking to a Samsung TV. Several times an hour I bump into someone that I like. That’s one of the fun parts of CES — you are surrounded by 180,000 of your fellow nerds and you bump into Dick Costolo on the way to dinner. I ended up in a fifteen minute conversation with . I could list another 20 serendipitous connections in random places but you get the idea. Josh Ellman After wandering through the Sphero secret rooms in their booth, I told my dad I thought it was the best booth experience I’ve ever had. Way more awesome than yet another random shag carpet open space with marketing displays. Interviewing James Park at Eureka Park about the Fitbit story was fun. My experience with James, his partner Eric, and Fitbit continues to be one of the most rewarding and enjoyable — at all levels — professional experience I’ve ever had. And then dad and I wandered around the Sands. It completely blew away the LVCC and was so much more interesting to me that I’m just going to spend the day at the Sands, wandering around startups, smaller companies, 3D printers, robots, and all kinds of stuff I like. There are zillions of CE startups in Sands. While 90% of them will fail, it’s pretty awesome to see what entrepreneurs are working on. The only thing more baffling to me than the auto stuff were home robots. I think the 2017 crop of home robots at CES will be like the 2013 crop of 3D TVs. Kind of cool, but not commercially viable. We’ll get there, but it’s not this. And — well — lots of chocolate ice cream. That’s one of the best things about Las Vegas. Chocolate ice cream is less than 0.25 miles away, no matter where you are. Originally published at Feld Thoughts . is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

Nintendo

Samsung

Sony

Tesla

A Full Day At CES

… in world of warcraft or business. I’ve often found World of Warcraft to be a useful vehicle for explaining basic concepts of strategy. In this example, I want you to imagine two teams — the horde and the alliance — preparing to fight for the first time in a battleground called Warsong Gulch. Both teams have a short time to prepare before the game of capture the flag commences. Neither team has been to Warsong Gulch before or has experience of fighting in battlegrounds. Just for reference, when your character is killed in the battleground it resurrects a few moments later in your team’s graveyard. One team (the Alliance) outlines its strategy for how it’s going to win the battle. It consists of what they describe as five “ ” principles that they’ve all agreed upon. These are :- universal We’re going to capture the flag and win the game! We’re not going to just fight the opponents. We’re going to do this with great people! We’re going to be the best fighters (known as tanks, good for taking damage), mages (damage dealers) and healers. We won’t just let anyone be in the team. We’re going to be prepared to take risks and fail fast! We’re not going to just play it safe. We believe in a supportive culture! We’re going to help each other when asked. We’re open to challenge and asking the hard questions. The team is enthusiastic and ready to go. Facing off against them is the team of Horde players. They’ve also spent their time preparing but the result is somewhat different. This team understands the importance of maps and uses them for strategic play. They have a map of Warsong Gulch and have developed a “strategy” of :- : capture the flag and win the game Focus : Doctrine to be applied (i.e. universal principles) Develop mastery (perform your role the best you can) — tanks take the hits, mages dish it out, healers heal. Act as a cell (a single unit) e.g. use concentrated fire, work and move together. : Strategy (context specific play) To begin with team will act as one cell in an initial all out attack. The group will quickly move through central tunnel towards enemy base, taking out opposing players that interfere. Always take out opposing healers first, then damage dealers and then tanks. Once their flag is captured by our tank, the group will work to take out opposing players and setup camp in their graveyard (see map) killing off opposing players as they are resurrected and before they create any form of group. Taunting opposing players is encouraged. Once their graveyard is contained, the cell will split into two cells. A small offensive group consisting of a couple of mages will take out opposing stragglers and the larger cell (including our flag carrying tank) will continue to camp out in the opposing team graveyard killing all players that resurrect. Once opposing players are contained in graveyard the cell will reform and a solo mage will keep running the flag. If the plan fails then the group will reform around our flag carrier. Now, the Horde team has focus, principles and some form of strategy. It might not work but then the Horde players can use their maps to refine their gameplay with time. I can almost guarantee that when the battle kicks off, the first question from the Alliance players will be “Should we attack or defend?” and “Where do we need to go?” Arguments within the Alliance team will then happen and before they know it the Horde will be upon them. The next cries you’ll hear from the Alliance members will be “Help!” and “Why is no-one helping me, I need help here!” and “Where are you?” followed by endless bickering that this or that player isn’t good enough to be part of the team and lots of shouts for “What is going on?” or “Where is everyone?” or “Should I grab their flag?”. In all likelihood, the Alliance team will be quickly broken into a panicked rabble. The point I want to emphasise is that principles are fine and yes strategy has to adapt to the game but don’t confuse the two. A set of principles does not make a strategy. Though it’s certainly better to have a set of principles than to have no principles and no strategy. This is equally applicable in business. There is however one final thing I want you to consider. Imagine that there are teams of Horde and Alliance players. Imagine that the Alliance players not only have no map, they’re not even aware of the concept of a map. All they can do is try some principles and share them from one team to another as “Secrets of success”. Imagine the Horde players understand the concept of maps, use them and share between them. Pretty soon, every Horde team will be winning using a wide variety of strategic plays. The Alliance doesn’t stand a chance until every player has built some mental model of the world. Every World of Warcraft player will tell you this. Maps are really important. Now ask yourself, what do we do in business? Are we using for context specific gameplay and learning or is our strategy more akin to copying “secrets of success” and principles from other companies i.e. we should be like Amazon, Netflix or AirBnB? Are we playing the game like the Alliance or the Horde? maps If you’re going — “Well, how do you map a business?” — it’s fairly easy. To help you on your way, , all creative commons on just how to do that with a technique that I’ve been using for over a decade. I’m writing a book Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Originally published at blog.gardeviance.org on January 6, 2017.

Netflix

A set of principles does not make a strategy

I would like to talk about a very famous person, Steve Jobs. This person started his own company in his mums garage. on this companies product, losing sleep & damaging his health however what he created with co-founder Steve Wozniak changed the world forever. He worked tirelessly Steve was one of the most influential people of our time. Having created one of the most revolutionary products in history, the iPhone, Steve has certainly left behind an impressive legacy. This man will never be forgotten. Why Steve’s products will live on for a very long time, I believe he has left behind something else. Something else far more important than physical products. Through Steve’s unimaginable work ethic, he has taught us , the likes of which I will go through. so many important life and business lessons In recent times, I have found an unsatisfiable thirst for getting things done and making progress, largely as a cause of what Steve Jobs has taught me. I will go through some of the most important topics of his teachings that have most resounded with me. It is my hope that these lessons will propel you towards a fruitful future. Don’t Be Limited In Life Sometimes it can be difficult to reach your . We are often obstructed in every day life in a number of ways. People tell us we can do this then we can do that. Society tries to limit us. The law sometimes does not do its job, and corruption is left to run free. full potential Often, these kinds of things are out of our control. We cannot control what other people think. We cannot always control or predict how and if the law will be on our side if we have done nothing wrong. is the way in which we think, And the way in which we react to how the world revolves around us. But what we can control, Do good for yourself and for others by making positive changes all around you. No matter what anyone ever tells you, you do not have to listen. It does not matter what they think or what they do, what matters is what you do. You were only ever limited by your own beliefs. It is your actions that dictate how you live your life. Forget what everyone tells you and just go with the flow of your own instinct. Be Passionate In Everything You Do One thing in this world that will always remain constant, is the fact that no matter what you’re doing, if you’re not passionate about that which you are doing, you might as well not do it. You must always of passion in everything you do. The more passion you have for a task, the more fruitful will be the results. We have seen time and time again that those that have the most passion for their work are the ones that become the most successful. Barack Obama. Michael Jackson. Arnold Schwarzenegger. And of course, Steve Jobs. We must also remember that if you are passionate in what you were doing, the task becomes inherently easier to complete. Money Is Not Everything While money is one of the most important commodities on this planet, it is definitely not the most important, not even close. Family, friendship, health, happiness. We should all strive to live comfortable & happy lives. For some of us this means having several kids. Owning a brand-new BMW. Having toned abs. While some of our goals and aspirations do require access to money, we must not forget that the money is simply a means to an end and it is not really the money that is making us happy. If we were to take away the money, or have access to minimal amounts of money, I bet you that the strongest of us will still find a way to be happy anyway. You see, where all different and we all want to achieve different things. There is always a way to get to where we want to be on our own backs and through our own efforts. Lots of money can be helpful in getting somewhere quickly, but the real task and the real award is going there on your own. Don’t Play Any Gimmicks There are so many amazing and successful products and services in today’s market. However, there are also many terrible products and services. Nonetheless, many of these poor offerings are doing well and today is market. Even though these products may not be very useful or very good at what they do, is the way in which they are sold that is the defining their success. Some of these products are being sold by some of the best salespeople in the world. However it must be noted that their success will be short lived. Eventually the fact of a new product or service that is not actually very good will die down. Word will get out that it is not very good, new users will be deterred from signing up an existing users will leave. Don’t ever fall into this loop of of short-term success. Build An Amazing Product Your product is your baby. When you welcome new born into your family you take care of it as best as you can, as best as possible. Your product should be no different. Steve advocated this. Steve was an absolute menace when it came to the finer details of his products. No matter how small or unimportant some aspect of a , Steve could most certainly have an entirely different opinion. product may seem to many of us And we love him for that. Steve’s attention to detail was 2nd to none. It was his attention to the finer details that allowed him to create so many beautiful, . amazing and wonderful products Some of the most elegantly designed material master pieces on this planet have been in visioned and constructed as a result of the ideas that he had in his own mind. When you’re working approach of your own be sure to make sure that before you have shipped it to customers. that you have done your very best. We all talk about minimal viable product’s and that’s great. But we must never forget that to do something half assed is a complete waste of our time. Build A Great Team It is the average of your three best friends. Does that sound familiar to you. Of course it does. I am of course talking about your personality. While many of us are freethinkers and strong independent people, it is impossible to ignore the fact that our friends, our closest friends, do you have a measurable impact on our life. The family that you grow up with often determines the type of person you will become. In the same way, the people you spend dictate the type of person you are and will become in the future. the most time with will also Be strong. Be vigilant. Be useful and un-corruptible. Doors are some important rules to live by. But at the end of the day, you must also make sure that you are only ever spending your most precious resource, your time, with the people you truly love and respect. Be Forever Focused Sometimes it can be difficult to understand or to find out what is actually the most important task that we should be doing. However there are many ways that we can find out what is the most important task activity. We should always have a most important tasks or goals. Short-term, medium term, long-term. list of at least our three We should constantly be revising this list. Adding to this list. Removing from this list. Never content that but we had decided weeks or month ago is still the most important for us. As life goes on, our goals and aspirations, commitments and hobbies change. We must forever be adapting to what we know we need to do. did you find the most important? I’m sure that for each and everyone of us, different points will mean entirely different things to us. So what point Share the love & share this blog post to all your friends! Originally published at JoeyT.net.

Garage

Steve Job’s Top 7 Rules For Success

Jest — A JS testing framework used by Facebook My experience unit testing Premiere , a Javascript library I've published to facilitate consuming RESTful APIs and one of my goals to make this library reliable was to achieve 100% test coverage or at least close to that. I recently posted about Premiere To do so, my first choice was to choose the how to do it; so I started reading about the popular Mocha/Chai/Sinon + Istanbul for test coverage. Although I got to setup the basic testing environment and script, my experience was very painful; using made testing even more difficult than it should be. Typescript If you are used to Karma, Jasmine, Mocha/Chai/Sinon and happy with them, that’s good too. This post is about the experience I've had so far with these technologies. After a lot of hustle, time spent, and packages imported, the test and were still not working for me. To do simple tests I had to import stuff in my code from many libraries, some from , some other from , others from and it all looked very difficult and confusing; plus, I was working with Typescript and needed all the typings. By the end I was very frustrated it all turned out to deviate me from the main focus, which was to write tests, not to do configurations. watcher coverage chai sinon sinon-chai Doing some research I found out about Jest, a testing framework created and used by . At first I thought it was designed to be used with React projects only, but going through the I started to notice how powerful and easy to setup it was. Even better, there is a for handling Typescript without a sweat. Facebook Jest Homepage nice package Setting up Jest was easy like a breeze, it has a nice watcher and the test coverage works out of the box. The whole flow felt very smooth, having everything in on place made it a lot easier, the api was very helpful too. well documented Once everything was in place, it was just a matter of going through each functionality and making sure everything was covered to get the . The basic functions, , and were enough in most of the cases and the support to took care of the rest. To help isolating each test, creating mocks with also was of great help. so desired 100% coverage ❤ describe it expect Promise jest.fn() Let's see some code, so this doesn't sound so much as free marketing for Facebook. The following code is written in and refers to 's . Typescript Premiere Cache class To get started, let's import the main class. I followed the pattern of placing the in the same folder as the "original" file. .spec.ts Cache './Cache'; import from Now let's set our block and prepare some variables for our tests, so we make our lives easier. Notice that we're using variables with type , so we don't need to import more stuff other than Cache, with the goal of trying to make our more isolated. describe any spec describe('Cache', () => { cache: Cache; model: ; list: []; promise: = 'promise instance'; let let any let any let any Now, before each test we'll initialize our variables. beforeEach(() => {cache = Cache( );model = {key: jest.fn().mockReturnValue('id')};list = [model];}); new null To get a hold of how it works, let's look at a couple tests. it('should set api on construct', () => {cache = Cache('api' as );expect(cache.api).toBe('api');}); new any it('should resolve key from object', () => {expect(Cache. (model)).toBe('id');}); resolveKey it('should set list', () => {cache.setList('list', list);expect(cache.lists['list']).toBe(list);}); If you wish to see the entire file, please refer to https://github.com/pedsmoreira/premiere/blob/master/lib/premiere/Cache.spec.ts The configuration The Jest configuration is dead simple. Just added these parts to . package.json Scripts: “test”: “jest — coverage — no-cache ${1}”,“test-watch”: “jest ${1} — watch”, Dev Dependencies: "@types/jest": "^16.0.2","jest": "^18.0.0","ts-jest": "^18.0.0", And finally the "jest" block. This part is only necessary because the project uses Typescript. Don't get scared, this is mostly boilerplate that are nicely documented by . ts-jest "jest": {"moduleFileExtensions": ["ts","js"],"transform": {"\\.(ts)$": "<rootDir>/node_modules/ts-jest/preprocessor.js"},"testRegex": "lib/.*\\.spec.(ts|js)$","testResultsProcessor": "<rootDir>/node_modules/ts-jest/coverageprocessor.js","globals": {"__TS_CONFIG__": {"target": "es6","module": "commonjs","moduleResolution": "node"}}} The full package.json is available at https://github.com/pedsmoreira/premiere/blob/master/package.json So if you have a chance, with or without, give a try, you may surprise yourself. It’s very nice to feel that things “just work” \o/ Jest I hope you enjoy :)

From 0 to 100% Coverage Real Quick

If you’re like me, you’re fascinated with AI. Maybe you’d love to dig deeper and get an image recognition program running in or ? Perhaps you’re a kick-ass developer or systems architect and you know computers incredibly well but there’s just one little problem: TensorFlow Theano You suck at math. That’s all right! I share your dirty little secret and I have some books and websites that will really help you get rolling fast. Like many folks, my love of intelligent machines didn’t come from calculus class. It sprang from science fiction. I remember reading one beautiful summer evening and imagining ways to trip up Asimov’s . As I watched masterpieces like and , it seemed that any day a and declare itself sentient. When I grew up and started publishing I imagined AI as a pervasive, ambient force that’s always there, like electricity, touching every aspect of life. “I, Robot” Three Rules of Robotics 2001: A Space Odyssey Ghost in the Shell gestalt consciousness might surge up from the glittering sea of information my own sci-fi Turns out, we have a few things to figure out before General AI can pop from the primordial digital goo. Mostly nothing ever came of the early AI promises in the 80’s and 90’s. Hype never lived up to reality and . AI winter followed AI winter All that changed in the last few years with the sudden success of . Deep Learning Maybe you saw the story in the New York Times that showed how transformed its translation services delivering accuracy that rivaled professional translators? In a mere nine months they outpaced what the platform managed in the seven previous years . Google almost overnight combined Perhaps you read about with open source tools? You might have also seen this amazing slide below that shows how DL ripped through the in just a few years, dropping the error rate from 25% to something that performs better than humans in 2017. the kid who built a self-driving car in his freaking garage Imagenet image recognition competition No matter how you cut it, AI solves big, intractable problems that have eluded us for decades. We know how to drive a car yet we can’t tell machines how to do it. But we can let machines figure it out for themselves. For once a technology coming out of Silicon Valley is not just hype. It’s real. AI is hot for good reasons. Top AI researchers are and you want to get in on the gold rush. Then again, you probably saw and as a traditional software engineer or sys-admin you want to make sure you have the skills to compete in an AI-centric world. No problem. There are tons of tutorials out there. You just have to get started, right? earning more than NFL starting quarterbacks the big scary stories that AI will eat all the jobs Then you get to a passage like the one below in and you have no idea what he is talking about at all. Ian Goodfellow’s seminal Deep Learning book Uh-oh. The problem is you have to understand a nested layer of logic, terms, symbols and ideas that are all interrelated but you have no foundation for any of it. So it basically sounds like an alien language. You probably understand all the text leading up to it but the rest is just gibberish. It can turn really disheartening fast. But have no fear! All is not lost. I’m here to help you wade through the swamp with some books that will get you crunching numbers like a savant. All right, well maybe you won’t be , but you can put aside those painful memories of times-table memorization and get cranking. You CAN learn math as an adult. Daniel Tammet I’ve tried to read a number of AI texts and tutorials. I understand the concepts intuitively. They make perfect sense to me. It’s just that when I see a string of symbols my brain glazes over and I have no idea what I’m reading. As a systems architect for much of my life I didn’t need much math. There are IP subnet cheat sheets and as long as I knew how far electricity could reasonably travel along the length of cables I could cut them and crimp them appropriately. For most of my life, I needed to understand how systems get setup, how they work together and how they stay running. Systems administration is very boolean. It either works or it doesn’t. But AI and math works on a different side of the brain. What I needed were some primers written for adults that treat you like one. I also want books that answer questions about math works. In school, your reason for learning was probably “shut up and do it or else.” But as an adult you need more. You want to know how things work too. why The very first book you need is Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction by Timothy Gowers. This book breaks down the “why” of math beautifully. It relates the subject to the real world, gets into the philosophy and then quickly leaves the philosophy behind because you don’t really need to understand whether fractions actually exist in nature or at the Platonic level. Instead, Timothy helped me understand that math is an abstraction layer. It breaks problems down into simpler, cleaner steps. The complexity of working out a model that precisely simulates particle interaction in a box would need to take into account an insane amount of real world physics properties like magnetic interference, gravity, the force of the collision, the particles initial direction and speed as well as much, much more. It turns out life is a complex series of algorithms. But here’s the trick. In practice you don’t need a perfect model. Instead, math looks to break the problem down into its components. What are the critical factors? Math gives you a general abstraction of the problem that can work with other problem sets as well. In essence, the numbers themselves don’t matter all that much. They are just variables. Math boils down to variables and rules. You can learn those variables and rules! essential While you’re reading the book you will want to have . You can also pick up . If you’re like me, you’ll have to see these symbols hundreds of times before they stick. You may find yourself forgetting various symbols the second you turn the page! Not to worry. This cheat sheet is perfect. Take a deep breath, slow down and go through the symbols one by one until you start to understand that string of crazy looking glyphs. Even if you have to look up every symbol a thousand times do it! There are no shortcuts to learning in life. You just have to do the work. this website’s handy dandy guide to the major math symbols this super concise guide for engineers called Mathematical Notation by Edward R. Scheinerman Now there are two other strong contenders for getting your math foundation built. Each appeals to a different mindset. I prefer the very short intro because it gets down to brass tacks quickly and still manages to stay very relate-able. The “Math for Nonmathematicians” book is much longer and goes into more detail about the history of math and how it works in the world. Some people will really enjoy that approach. The “No Bullshit Guide” is quick and gets right into the equations fast with no answer as to why anything works the way it does. It’s basically a primer on the rules. That will appeal to folks who have less of a philosophical bent. The first is Mathematics for the Nonmathemetician by Morris Kline. The second is the No Bullshit Guide to Math and Physics by Ivan Savov. Now there are a few typos in the book but I don’t find them all that distracting. I appreciate the book’s approach to gentle learning that quickly accelerates. Some people get worked into a lather over typos but you’ve got bigger challenges to worry about. You’re trying to learn math when your brain isn’t quite as plastic as it once was in your youth! So let the typos go and see the big picture here. This book will really help you get moving in the right direction. The next book you will want is Algebra Unplugged by Jim Loats and Kenn Amdahl. It also has some typos, but there is a with updates that fixes most of them. This book is incredibly gentle and intuitive. It seems to anticipate your objections and fears the second you have them! The author is uncanny in how he spots your resistance as it happens. The book walks through only the math you need for neural networks specifically. It then works through Python, assuming you know nothing about programming. Finally it gets you coding your own neural network from scratch. Now while there are certainly tools out there that will work better for professional programs, it helps to try your hand at your own first, so you understand the basics. After you’ve got the math down you’ll want to dig into Make Your Own Neural Network by Tariq Rashid. great Github repo After that book, you’ll want to start browsing the web. There are awesome new tutorials coming out every single day. Maybe check out Tensorflow for Poets or Recurrent Neural Networks for Artists . Medium itself is awesome for learning about AI. Then again, maybe you’re not the class taking type and prefer to work through things yourself? No problem. For example, check out this article on a roundup of various classes you can take to get deeper than you could on your own. Instead, check out this eight part series from AI researcher Arthur Juliani . There is also this one called Machine Learning is Fun , another great series right here on your favorite site. Lastly, you may want to move on to a more advanced book, confident in your ability to understand more challenging concepts. That book is the one I already mentioned earlier, Ian Goodfellow’s Deep Learning book , which you can read online or grab yourself a hard copy on Amazon . That’s all for now. Feel free to add your own books in the comments. Everyone learns a little differently and there are bound to be other books worth sharing. ############################################ Be sure to check out the rest of this ongoing series. Feel free to follow me because you want to be the first the read the latest articles as soon as they hit the press. — This article guides you through the essential books to read if you were never a math fan but you’re learning it as an adult. Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 1 — This article guides you through getting started with your first projects. Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 2 — Practical Projects — This article guides you through getting a powerful deep learning machine setup and installed with all the latest and greatest frameworks. Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 3 — Building an AI Dream Machine — This one answers the ancient mystery: What the hell is a tensor? Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 4 — Tensors Illustrated (with Cats!) — Here we create our first Python program and explore the inner workings of neural networks! Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 5 — Deep Learning and Convolutional Neural Nets in Plain English — Still struggling to understand those funny little symbols? Let’s change that now! Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 6 — Math Notation Made Easy — Understand how Google and Siri understand what you’re mumbling. Learning AI if You Suck at Math — Part 7 — The Magic of Natural Language Processing ############################################ If you enjoyed this tutorial, I’d love it if you could clap it up to recommend it to others. After that please feel free email the article off to a friend! Thanks much. ############################################ If you love my work Help me disconnect from the Matrix and and world. please do me the honor of visiting my Patreon page because that’s how we change the future together. I’ll repay your generosity a hundred fold by focusing all my time and energy on writing, research and delivering amazing content for you ########################################### A bit about me: I’m an author, engineer and serial entrepreneur. During the last two decades, I’ve covered a broad range of tech from Linux to virtualization and containers. You might like a copy of my first novel, The Scorpion Game, because it’s free. Readers have called it “the first serious competition to Neuromancer” and “ like a double shot of fine whiskey after drinking watered down beer for weeks. ” You can also join my private Facebook group, the Nanopunk Posthuman Assassins , where we discuss all things tech, sci-fi, fantasy and more. ############################################ I occasionally make coin from the links in my articles but I only recommend things that I OWN, USE and LOVE. Check my . full policy here ############################################ Thanks for reading

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Learning AI if You Suck at Math

I’ve recently discovered an emerging area of inquiry called DesignOps. The definition of DesignOps is still very much being worked out, which is not surprising given its newness. There seems to be some agreement, though, that DesignOps takes inspiration from DevOps. This inspiration is very pleasing. It’s important, though, for designers to understand what DevOps is, and more importantly, what it isn’t. Unfortunately, I’m seeing some misunderstanding in this area, which I believe warrants clarification. First of all, DevOps doesn’t stand for “developer operations”, or for that matter, for anything else aside from itself. Its name reflects the view of development and operations as intimately linked, collaborating, and mutually influencing parts of a larger whole. That larger whole is, quite simply, “DevOps”. DevOps applies systems thinking to IT by treating the relationship between development and operations as being just as important as, if not more so than, the individual roles and activities. DevOps also is not an attempt to “remove QA and Sysadmin from the operations equation”. The point is to get Dev and QA and Sysadmin working together and influencing each other. Different organizations of different sizes may have different mixes of people with particular roles and or titles. Especially in startups, it may be the case that people with one title do all three jobs. It is often the case that automation reduces the number of people of a given role you need to do a given amount of work. But getting rid of people or roles is not the point. DevOps’s core insight is that reducing the distance between people, teams, and activities, combined with reducing the batch size of your work, allows you to deliver more value, more continuously, with greater quality. Furthermore, you do so, not just to go faster, but to make the feedback loop between the customer and the company more intimate. Or, to express it in the language of the Three Ways of DevOps, Flow + Feedback enable Continuous Learning. Enabling adaption is thus DevOps’ end goal. It is my hope that DevOps will provide DesignOps with inspiration on this level. What I really hope is that a conversation will happen between them about how to apply systems thinking to the entire digital service delivery lifecycle. As Kate Ivey-Williams said in , “a service is an ever-evolving, iterative thing”. For that model to work, we need to unify our understanding and practices from design all the way through to operations (and back again). In fact, when I first saw the word “DesignOps”, I thought it referred to getting designers and IT operations folks understanding and working with each other. her wonderful post about service design Those of you who follow my work will recognize a broken record in my use of the phrase “unifying design and operations”. Nonetheless, I see it as a critical next step in our efforts to create adaptive, continuously learning organizations. I want to encourage everyone, whether designers, product managers, or DevOps practitioners, to help create a conversation that both pursues and expresses this vision. If my call to action strikes a chord, I’d love to hear from you at or on Twitter at @jeffsussna. https://ingineering.it

DevOps for Designers

Note: 4 Weeks to Launch is an ongoing series about building passive income across multiple startups — a new startup every 4 weeks. Read the first post on 4 Weeks to Launch to get started, or subscribe for weekly updates . I am building a new mini startup every 4 weeks. The goal of each startup is to provide a useful product/service and to generate 💰. By blogging about my journey I aim to teach others about how to build a business rapidly through Silicon Valley know-how. Why am I doing this? Passive income is awesome! Invest once, then reap the rewards forever! At least this is how it goes in theory…. Technology or a lot of cash are the best ways to build passive income and since I don’t have millions to invest, I’ll focus my efforts on technology in the form of startups. I moved to Silicon Valley 3 years ago and started Lenda with my co-founder Jason. Before that I dropped out of school and built a modest web dev/design shop in Philly. I’ve learned a lot about building businesses, however Silicon Valley still doesn’t have all the answers. The focus there is the classic method of spending time for money. The dream in San Francisco is the same broken dream as everywhere — work hard, get rich. In SF the dream just has more zeroes. I believe time is wealth. Specifically freedom of choice with our time. We are wealthy when we no longer have to trade our time for money and are free to use our time however we choose; a day, month, year, lifetime, while never having to worry about shelter, comfort, food, security. This kind of freedom is what I have always wanted to achieve and this is the focus of . 4 Weeks to Launch 4 Weeks to Launch format Every month I will pick a new idea. I will test the hypothesis by using any legal (and moral) means. So we’re talking to people on the street, blowing up my personal Facebook, cold emails/phone calls. Anything. The goal of is to get at least 1 paying customer by the end of week. If we can do that we prove that someone is willing to pay for the product. week 1 is all about growth — can I get more users? Can my system handle more users, or do I need to make it more robust? How can I get an MVP as quickly as possible? There will be a lot of Google Sheets and Forms, as well as emails, texting and other unscalable tools. Week 2 In I’ll take my customers, feedback and MVP and start building a Ruby on Rails website. What does this idea look like in a self-sustaining platform? What do I have to delegate, automate, eliminate? What is for a stand-alone solution? week 3 absolutely necessary is the week for cleanup and blowup. How do I turn on the faucet with users? What is the least I can do for maximum value? Week 4 Why not just 1 startup? One thing that I picked up in Silicon Valley is diversification is key to any investment strategy. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors aim for 1 in 20 companies to actually do well. That’s only a 5% success ratio! The problem with this model is that if you’re the entrepreneur, you either succeed or fail. You don’t have a portfolio of startups that you’re invested in. Your pool consists of 1. Your company. I believe I can flip the model. Rather than build 1 $100,000,000 company, I’d rather build 10 $10,000,000 companies. I also think building smaller companies is more achievable. You can have 5 fail and still do well. Hell, you can have 9 fail and if only one does well you’re still set for life! With the Silicon Valley startup model you have one shot and if you miss, you have to restart way back at the beginning. One might argue that I won’t be able to build a quality company in just 4 weeks. That’s true, but I believe I’ll be able to build quality MVP that is semiautonomous. After each startup incubates I’ll be able to find the , and focus my efforts there. 20% of the companies that make 80% of the revenue Lastly states that a project will expand to take exactly the time allocated for it — might as well fail or succeed fast! Parkinson’s law Free data and code! All of my data, revenue, earnings for each of these startups will be publicly available. Some of my businesses’ source code will be open source. I want to help myself and make money, but it is almost equally rewarding to help others. 4 Weeks to Launch goals & OKRs: Public accountability is one of the most effective tools I know of to make sure you do follow through. The more public, the more your fear of embarrassment at failing, and the internet is as public as you can get. These are the goals for 4 Weeks to Launch: $10,000 / month with < 2hrs/week in necessary maintenance Fully automated/delegated businesses to minimize my interaction Build 1 new business every 30 days that generates revenue passively How can you help? Is the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of? Impossible? Exciting? Want to do it with me? Let me know by leaving a comment or ❤️, upvoting on or emailing me at elijahmurray@gmail.com. Hacker News P.S. I wish I could say that I was inspired by the founder of NomadList, ’s . Sadly I came up with my before learning of his adventures. If you haven’t heard his story check it out! levels.io 12 Startups in 12 Months 4 Weeks to Launch is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

4 Weeks to Launch

or, Thoughts on Building a Digital Community I’ll start at the end with a quick example of how awesome the results can be if you focus on and then follow up with some overarching thoughts mixed in with some of the practical things we did to get there. community Our photography game was last week and someone asked an interesting question that got me thinking a little deeper about a subject I already love talking about. Namely, community. featured on Product Hunt The question: […]How do you engage someone who’s score may be lower but you still want them to use the app and not feel discouraged? Tough problems to figure out, but I look forward to trying it out and seeing your solution! At its core, what the question referenced is basically a messaging problem, and not unlike one nearly every company faces at some point. For us, we had to find a way to say, “Hey, this is just a fun way to turn creativity into a game and look at the world a little differently each day. Don’t stress out.” But obviously we can’t say that enough times or in enough places for it to be relevant at the right moment for the right person without putting annoying pop-ups all over our own product. The only long-lasting solution to a messaging problem that is so closely tied to the core of your product has to start at the community level. In this case, if the message of fun and creativity over “performance anxiety” is baked into the core of our early constituency then SOMEONE will always be around at the right time to say what needs to be said. Fortunately, we’ve done a good job of growing an unbelievably friendly and supportive community that accomplishes just that. Here are a couple screenshots from last week to illustrate. Fair warning: reading back through these comments they almost sound comically staged but I assure you these are real screenshots of real interactions that about 30 strangers had when one user got frustrated that they hadn’t won and said they were going to stop using Mission:Pic . So how did we get here? How did we get to a place where an entire community is so friendly and supportive that you can’t leave even if you wanted to? I’m sure luck has played a part but here are some things we’ve done and advice we’ve received along the way. Guide Chaos Model good behavior from Day 0. Even if you’re your only user. I like to think of this as the Chaos Theory of Community Building. As Dr. Ian Malcolm so graciously illustrated, a community can grow in a billion different unpredictable directions thanks to tiny variations, and once the culture of your community goes off course the Butterfly Effect takes over. Before you know it, you’re sitting in a car alone talking about Chaos Theory and wondering what went wrong. BUT, the longer you can be there giving the community its early direction the fewer options for growing off course you give the culture. Be there to tell the community when they’re doing a good job. Positive reinforcement (and positivity in general) are worth their weight in gold. Especially since they don’t technically weigh anything. Under promise, over deliver. This is a long one, and probably worth its own post, but it’s an important lesson I learned over and over again during my time at . Most everything in life comes down to expectations and outcomes. If you expect something to be mediocre, and instead it’s great, you can’t help but be impressed. Conversely, if you expect something to be flawless and it’s only freaking amazing, you’re going to wish you had that two hours of your life back. (I’m talking to you, Guardians of the Galaxy.) Disney Some may disagree, but the genius of Disney, particularly their theme parks, is that they play a dangerous game and play it well. They set your expectations high, telling you that you’re going to have a magical once-in-a-lifetime experience and then they STILL over deliver. photo credit: chris.alcoran When you plan a trip to Disney, you’re focused on the rides, the atmosphere, you can’t wait to have your kiddos meet Mickey…and Disney knows it can deliver on that front. That part’s easy. What Disney also knows, and what you don’t consider in your planning, is that they can also deliver in a big way by ensuring that every cast member you meet will greet you with a smile. They know that, at some point you might drop your popcorn and then you’ll be shocked that, 1) the mess is cleaned up before you have time to feel embarrassed about it and 2) the cast member who saw it happen is already making sure you get a fresh bag. They know that you might lose your hat on a ride and, despite having warned you over and over again on the PA, the operator is either going to shut down the ride to recover your hat, or make sure you get a new one on Disney’s dime. You can’t even conceive of the thousands of ways something unexpected could happen to you that they practice on hundreds of guests every day. Your expectations don’t stand a chance. The trick they’re pulling is especially powerful because people rarely set expectations relating to customer service. Or better yet, they DO have expectations about customer service but they are ridiculously low thanks to all the mediocre retail experiences we all have. This is a view I’ve tried to bring to . Obviously we don’t have as many opportunities to make unexpected things happen in your life, but we can look at what everyone else is doing and go beyond. Mission:Pic For example, Mission:Pic is a place to challenge your creative by turning photography into a game, which also means there’s a winner every day. As you’d expect, the winner earns a pretty little badge that they can look at in the app and share on social media. That’s how you meet expectations. Barely. The winner also gets an 8x8 print of their winning photo, embossed with our first place seal, in a branded envelope along with a handwritten postcard from me. All shipped straight to their home. For free. That means we can WAY over deliver for one person each day for $4 and <20 minutes of my time and in the process build good will in our community. People too often talk about the flipside of this concept. They say that when outcome doesn’t meet expectation, the gap is disappointment. But the reason this is such and important concept in terms of community building is when outcomes exceed expectation then that gap between the two is nothing but joy. The more joy you feed into your community the happier a place it’s going to be for everyone. And happiness, like any emotion, has its own inertia. Love Your Family Possibly most important, and you’d think most obvious, you have to care about your people. Your community is an extension of your family in every conceivable way you could stretch that metaphor. Sure, there are some nutty aunts and uncles in there but they’re YOUR nutty aunts and uncles, and if you treat them with kindness, respect and authenticity then they will always have your back. Make every effort to keep your users up to date with emails or posts that are as transparent as possible. For us, something as simple as a “😍” from one of the creators of Mission:Pic on a great photo shows that we’re there and that we care. Negative One Tolerance As an incurable optimist who likes to think the best of people, in the past I’ve been pathetically bad at following my own advice here and it has only ever led to heartache. You know what good behavior looks like (on account of you’re part of your own community and modeling it every day, right?) so you know what it looks like when another user isn’t playing nice. To revisit the Chaos Theory of Community Building, think of that user’s behavior as an ingrown hair that’s about to shove Dr. Malcolm’s water drop so far off course it drips right onto your crotch. Not only is your community culture off track but now you’re stuck looking like you’ve peed yourself. Personal and professional embarrassment just because you couldn’t make the hard choice of digging out a painful hair. Not worth it. The End This is honestly one of my favorite topics and there are a lot of my own philosophies that I left out for your sake. I’d love to talk more about it below or you can always email me at brett at missionpic.com.

Disney

Plan A

How To Create the Friendliest Community on the Internet

No matter how tall the mountain, you can take one step at a time to become a great writer. I was never the type of person who enjoyed writing. Everything about it was dreadful to me. In my mind, . writing was equivalent to torture More recently, I have taken a keen liking to writing. The more I started writing blog posts and other content, the more I realized it was something I enjoyed doing. Though I became emersed in the beauty of writing, I was also fully aware how terrible I was at it. I am passionate about self-improvement, so I took it upon myself to work at becoming a better writer. When I first embarked on my self-improvement journey, I thought I could find a way to hack my writing. I figured there had to be an easy way to improve at writing overnight. Not only was I wrong, but it didn’t take long for me to realize, . If I wanted to get better, I would have to put the work in. there is no quick fix for writing and communication As I worked day in and day out, I gradually noticed my writing begin to improve. I found the best way to enhance my writing was just to write. I was delighted to see the strides I made over time. I am now to the point where I am happy with my writing, but have still made it a regular habit to improve at it everyday. In the end, writing is the best practice. If you want to improve your writing, you need to stop making up excuses and just do it! Although writing is the best practice, along my journey I found a few tools which helped me. I thought it would be beneficial to some for me to share them, so here they are! 750 Words This program helped my put my nose to the grindstone. It reinforces the mentality of making writing a daily habit. Previous to , every time I wrote there would be a feeling of anxiety because I presumed people could only write with a purpose. In my mind if people only wrote for a purpose it therefore to be published. It terrified me to write about things I would have to publish because I was self conscious about my writing. It was a vicious cycle. 750 words had Then I found . Their goal is to help you write 750 words a day, every day to eventually make it a habit. It sounds like a lot, ! 750 Words but it actually works I found it therapeutic to start using this tool to write for the sake of writing. It is my daily meditation period where I can go in and write about whatever I am feeling. It has transformed into my personal diary, which improves my writing skills and helps me clear my head. Here is how the Describe themselves: 750 Words “ 750 Words is the online, future-ified, fun-ified translation of this exercise.” Grammarly The Chrome extension extraordinaire, which saved me from countless ungodly grammar mistakes. I proudly present — ! Grammarly Not only is it a Chrome extension which will correct your grammar while using Chrome, but the paid version includes a desktop app as well. With the desktop app, you can upload documents to be checked or write straight from the app. Grammarly (I choose to write my posts directly on .) Medium Grammarly Here is their description from the : Chrome Web Store “Grammarly’s free writing app makes sure everything you type is easy to read, effective, and mistake-free. Adding Grammarly to Chrome means that your spelling and grammar will be vetted on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, and nearly everywhere else you write on the web. Once you register your new account, you will start to receive weekly emails with personalized insights and performance stats (one of our most popular new features). Working on a large project, an essay, or a blog post? No sweat. You can create and store all of your documents in your new online editor.” Hemmingway Do you ever wish you could write as eloquently as famous authors like the great Ernest Hemmingway? Well, now you can! In reality, this program may not help you write a classic like ‘A Farwell To Arms,’ but at least you can follow Hemmingway’s advice and attempt to try! Hemmingway has one of my favorite writing quotes of all time. He was once quoted as saying, “ ” Write drunk. Edit sober. In reality, this app will help you with not only grammatical errors but your writing style as well by highlighting mistakes in different colors. Each color highlight signifies a different writing error. It not only corrects you, but teaches you as well! Here is how to site describes the app: “Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.” Summary If you put the time into it (much like anything), you will be able to become a great writer. Just like climbing a mountain, you will need to take one step at a time. These tools will help, but they won’t fix the writing. That task will still fall on you. Think of these tools as a bandage, but you will need to work hard to improve. With hard work, dedication, and some help from these tools; In one way or another, you can begin to write like Ernest Hemmingway. It is my goal to make communication easier, through my . helps you to unify all other messaging apps you use to simplify messaging. Learn more at (We are in development, so sign up to be notified when we launch!) messaging app UNUM messenger http://www.unummessenger.com/

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive January 6th, 2017

@jecelynyeenJecelyn Yeen

@asitdhalAsit Dhal

@spyr1014Andrew Jakubowicz

@mukulmalikMukul Malik

@ritikabajajRitika Bajaj

@damianwolfgramDamian Wolfgram

@lukleDevLukas Lechner

@joelthomsJoel Thoms

@justindanielfullerJustin Fuller

@normankingNormanKing

@EugeniyaYevheniia Korotia

@bfeldBrad Feld

@swardleyswardley

@joey_tawadrousJoey Tawadrous

@pedsmoreiraPedro Silva Moreira

@daniel-jeffriesDaniel Jeffries

@daniel-jeffriesDaniel Jeffries

@jeffsussnaJeff Sussna

@elijahmurrayElijah Murray

@amtrekkerBrett Rounsaville

@peter.e.schroederPeter Schroeder 🚀

@jecelynyeen
Jecelyn Yeen

@asitdhal
Asit Dhal

@spyr1014
Andrew Jakubowicz

@mukulmalik
Mukul Malik

@ritikabajaj
Ritika Bajaj

@damianwolfgram
Damian Wolfgram

@lukleDev
Lukas Lechner

@joelthoms
Joel Thoms

@justindanielfuller
Justin Fuller

@normanking
NormanKing

@Eugeniya
Yevheniia Korotia

@bfeld
Brad Feld

@swardley
swardley

@joey_tawadrous
Joey Tawadrous

@pedsmoreira
Pedro Silva Moreira

@daniel-jeffries
Daniel Jeffries

@daniel-jeffries
Daniel Jeffries

@jeffsussna
Jeff Sussna

@elijahmurray
Elijah Murray

@amtrekker
Brett Rounsaville

@peter.e.schroeder
Peter Schroeder 🚀