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2019 Edit: I am very gratified that this writeup continues to help people over a year after publishing! I have updated my thoughts in a new essay called Learn in Public . In the last year (and a bit), I went from Hello World in Javascript, to deploying fullstack webapps, to getting freelance jobs, to interviewing at top tech firms including Google, and receiving multiple six-figure offers as a professional software engineer. Here’s how I did it. What I did in a nutshell : Frontend Development Certificate (HTML, CSS, basic JS). Decide that I am going to do this with No Zero Days. Nov 2016 FreeCodeCamp : started FreeCodeCamp Data Viz Development Certificate (SASS/D3/React) Dec 2016 : completed FreeCodeCamp Data Viz Development Certificate (mostly React/Redux) Jan 2017 : started FreeCodeCamp Backend Development Certificate (Node, Express, MeteorJS) Feb 2017 : completed FreeCodeCamp Backend Development Certificate (basically all MeteorJS) Mar 2017 I more or less burned out here and didn’t do much in Apr and May. : applied FreeCodeCamp knowledge to make small apps for work, including with Vue and Firebase Jun 2017 : applied to General Assembly, Hack Reactor, and Full Stack Academy (FSA). Interviewed . First major contribution to an . July 2017 Sacha Greif for Software Engineering Daily open source project : started Junior phase at FSA (Node, Express, SQL, raw Javascript). Started the Impostor Syndrome audio documentary to relate my classmates’ progress. (2019 edit: now dead) August 2017 : finished Junior phase at FSA (React, Redux). Led my own React workshop. Started Senior Phase (React Native, PassportJS authentication, git workflow, CI/CD). September 2017 : at FSA hackathon. Finished Senior Phase (technical interview prep, made ). Became a React contributor . October 2017 Won Developer award my own GraphQL gametorial during Hacktoberfest : Got first freelance clients. 5 hours a day of technical interview prep with (started by a FSA alum) and , conducting search from FSA Hiring Day and own contacts. Received first (>$120k!) offer. Turned it down. November 2017 AlgoExpert CTCI : Gave my to over 100 people. Messy series of job search events with companies from Spotify to MongoDB to Google. Receive multiple offers and finally accept a six-figure offer with a great company. December 2017 first live React talk That’s it! My year in five minutes. In preparation for this post I wrote out the month by month process in a ton of detail on and so if you need more info head there. My only goal here is to show you the big picture of what I did and give you some inspiration if you would like to do something similar. It can be done. my devblog on FreeCodeCamp Disclaimer: In the first draft of this post I did not mention the fact that I am not new to programming (I have coded in VBA, Python, and Haskell before but never as a professional software engineer). I am only new to web development and Javascript . I also shortened the timeline to 12 months given my 2 burnout months. This was a mistake and I have restored the timeline. Guiding Principles All these bullet points above might make the transition process seem easy but they paper over a lot of long nights and some weeks where I felt like I was repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall. Javascript is evolving at a tremendously fast pace (see !) and I wanted to share with you some overall principles that helped me navigate through it all. this viral article pointing out the tremendous confusion going on : I picked up this idea from and it made sense. In short, you simply decide to do -something- towards your goal every single day without fail. This sounds tough, but the upside is, that -something- can be the smallest, tiniest, most inconsequential thing. Want to work out more? Decide to put on your shoes and walk into the gym and do just one push up and you’re done. You can walk out. That day will not have been a zero. No. Zero Days. The beauty of this is of course you’re probably not going to only do one push up. You showed up. You’re going to do more. That’s the NonZeroDay idea. No Zero Days /r/nonZeroDay : Bootcamps are not magic machines. My outcome was above the 90th percentile of bootcamp graduates because of luck plus all the prep I had done going in, which basically meant that I was doing everything the second time around instead of the first. Things that were just opaque copy-and-paste-from-StackOverflow magic incantations to me became much clearer the second time around. Blogging about my journey and interviewing my fellow classmates for my documentary meant I was reliving the same bootcamp repeatedly and drawing insights from reflecting on the experience. Do Everything Twice : I gave my own workshops on and PassportJS to my fellow peers and this not only forced me to explain things but also answer questions that I hadn’t considered in my own narrow thinking. I about my experience becoming a React contributor even though I was just a recent newbie. No matter where you are in your journey you are qualified to help someone newer than you. In many ways, you are the person to do this. Teaching also has a nice side effect of training you to talk while you do live coding in order to show a technical point, which is a marvelous mental juggling act. As it happens, it’s to ace technical coding interviews! My favorite interview memory is teaching a very senior Googler about during my interview. It puts them in a different mental state and it shows you aren’t just a dead weight to the team. What he didn’t know was that I was just channeling from a recent Frontend Masters workshop! Teach To Learn React gave a talk best exactly what you need Javascript generators Kyle Simpson : Humans have a curious aversion towards paying for things that might help them. There is a rational basis for this: most things are disappointments and we don’t want to waste money especially when free options are available. Instead of going for paid programs like , , and , I biased towards free options like , , and FreeCodeCamp. Although I turned out fine in the end, I believe I could have reached the same result in less time if I had sprung for the paid options earlier. Conversely, if I had not gone to a $17,000 bootcamp, I believe I would have taken at least another year to get to where I am, if I didn’t give up by then. (Just as an aside — there are financing programs, scholarships, and tuition forward programs that make bootcamps much more affordable, but I paid out of my own savings.) The increased salary in my new job represents a 1yr return of at least a 2x multiple on that investment, even including opportunity cost and excluding the value of future years of income. Don’t skimp on $10, $40, even $200 course material if it can help you get to that top tier of engineers that are in demand. Time is More Important Than Money Team Treehouse Frontend Masters Egghead.io Pluralsight The Odin Project Codecademy Stanford CS50 : Humans are also inherently social creatures. Because I didn’t have friends or family that understood what I was going through, I turned to online support networks. I downloaded dozens of so that the people talking in my ears all day were programmers too. I found ’s amazingly supportive community. I joined and posted about what I was learning every single day. And of course, a strong community comes with a good bootcamp. These people have their own lives to live and may not ever help you in any way but they will celebrate your little wins. I cannot understate the psychological effects of having your own team of cheerleaders spamming emojis on your slack message, or having perfect strangers reply to say they are going through exactly what you’re going through. Find a Community podcasts Saron Yitbarek #CodeNewbies the CodingBlocks Slack group : I owe this to , founder of my bootcamp ( ). Don’t fixate on the outcome. Maybe you’ll take 24 months, or 6. Wanting to be a software engineer doesn’t tell you -how- to get there. Don’t take my story to mean “I must do FreeCodeCamp and take a bootcamp”. Plenty of people are still unemployed months after taking a bootcamp. Focus on how I, and others who have totally different paths from me, spent our day to day, and dealt with roadblocks. Have a system, and if that’s not working, figure out what else you can do and fix it. Obsessing on a specific goal and despairing if you don’t reach it doesn’t help. Systems, not Goals David Yang interview here Fight Impostor Syndrome I want to leave you with one concept and it has many names. Ira Glass (the uber podcaster at NPR) calls it The Gap: Social Scientists call it : the Dunning-Kruger Effect And for the rest of us, the term is Impostor Syndrome: It’s what I named my audio documentary (2019 edit: now dead), with the idea that if I could name the elephant in the room, I could fight it. What’s more “impostory” than going from paying thousands of dollars and months of time to learn something, to actually being paid many thousands of dollars to do it? Worse still, having the audacity to over it? negotiate It is always going to be a truth that the more you know, the more you also learn about that stuff that you didn’t know that you didn’t know. So if you are doing it at all you are going to feel like you are at what you are doing. This is . Just don’t stop there, keep working on your system. right terrible good Be at peace with the fact that there are multiple paths to what you want and the only way to figure out which one works for you is to try them. Often twice. Pay if you have to, because this is valuable stuff. Find supportive people. Do this every day, then teach what you learned. These are the principles you should take with you on your new journey. And remember: No Zero Days. If this essay helped you at all and you’d like to update me on your own 2018 journey, find me on Twitter @ Swyx ( https://twitter.com/swyx ). I’d love to be part of your cheerleading team! Thanks to Jeff K, the CodingBlocks gang (Firro, Joe, dance2die, and sowen) and the FreeCodeCamp community for reviewing the full length draft of this essay !

No Zero Days: My Path from Javascript Newbie to Full Stack Developer at Age 30

Last week, I wrote an article titled " ." This article received much positive feedback from friends who found it insightful. Many have urged me to continue sharing my journey of self-learning JavaScript. Over 40, With No Technical Background, This is How I Learned HTML and CSS in 3 Days Therefore, in this thread, I'll share a complete strategy for a complete beginner to learn the basics of JavaScript quickly and complete small projects (all resources mentioned in this post are absolutely free!). The following link leads to a simple Chrome extension repository I created after learning the necessary content: . My Repository As a web3 investor, I track and browse numerous early-stage projects daily. I use this little extension to monitor and save promising projects I've discovered for deeper future studies. I plan to integrate the GPT-4 API into this extension to help analyze the project leads I find. If I can quickly grasp the basics of JavaScript, why can't you do the same in a short time? During my learning process, I encountered a few misconceptions: What's the point of learning JavaScript Before I started learning JavaScript, I assumed it was just like Python - just another programming language. As a beginner, I thought learning any popular language, such as Python, would be sufficient. But as I delved deeper, I realized their application directions differed significantly. For studying AI, such as machine learning, Python is a must in the roadmap. However, if you're learning web app development, whether front-end or back-end, JavaScript forms its foundation. You might argue that Python can be paired with Flask or Django. I had the same thought initially, but I found that if you're using an unpopular tech stack, finding fresh tutorials on YouTube could be challenging, let alone the potential difficulties in a collaborative development with others in the future. When should you start learning JavaScript? In reality, my journey learning JavaScript was not a straight path. With no teacher guidance or industry experience, I didn't even realize the importance of JavaScript initially. Because I perceived the learning curve for Python to be smoother than JavaScript, I procrastinated entering the realm of JavaScript due to the fear of difficulty. As a result, I wasted quite some time before eventually setting foot on the correct roadmap of web app development. How long does it take to learn JavaScript? Compared to markup languages like HTML and CSS, JavaScript is undoubtedly more complex. From my own learning experience, I believe it's also more complicated than Python. However, I once encountered C language in Harvard's CS50 course ( ), and I feel JavaScript is much simpler in comparison. Having learned Python before, CS50 YouTube channel I initially hoped to fully master JavaScript within a week or two. However, I soon realized this expectation was unrealistic. JavaScript is vast, and within two weeks, we can, at most, grasp the basics and be prepared to move on to the next phase of learning. For instance, you might want to start learning AU's Solidity training camp ( ), or freecodecamp's React course ( ), and so on. AU's website YouTube link My learning strategy Overall Principle Time is quite limited, and our goal isn't to become a master of JavaScript but to grasp the basics so we can start practicing and move on to the subsequent tech stacks in the learning roadmap. Therefore, "simple basics but efficient" should be the principle we adhere to in our two-week study. This overall principle should be reflected in our choice of learning resources, the arrangement of the process, and the selection of practice projects. For instance, if we have a thick book like "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide,” we shouldn't read it from cover to cover but use it as a reference book (like a document), referring to the corresponding parts when we encounter problems. With the basic goals and guiding principles in mind, the rest is easy. I spent half a day browsing various tutorials and other learning resources online and collected those that align with my goals and principles for future use. When I first learned JavaScript, I greedily chose a lengthy video tutorial that spanned several hours, but in the end, I couldn't keep up and gave up. Therefore, this time, I deliberately avoided tutorials that could be challenging for a beginner to complete. However, I also realized that some tutorials online can be misleading, like those on YouTube titled "Learn XXX in 1 hour". These overly fragmented and short tutorials only serve as introductions and don't meet our learning goals and principles. This time, I divided my two-week study into two stages. The goal of the first stage is to understand the concepts and basic usage of JavaScript as completely (yet simply) as possible. The second stage involves following a quality video tutorial for practice and completing a few small projects to deepen my understanding of JavaScript. Therefore, in the first stage, I chose a quality JavaScript tutorial on GitHub as my primary resource ( ). Although this tutorial is free, its tens of thousands of stars on GitHub attest to its authority. The only thing to note is that based on our goals and learning principles, we don't need to and don't have time to complete the entire tutorial. We only need to focus on the goal of the first stage, that is, mastering the basics and understanding the concepts. The Modern JavaScript Tutorial My time and process arrangement Having previously studied Python and Harvard's CS50, I knew that a programming language certainly includes basic content such as variables, functions, data types, and logical operations. I also knew that in object-oriented programming languages, there are basic concepts like classes and objects. Therefore, I progressed very smoothly in the first few days. On the first day, I completed reading and exercises for the "An Introduction," "JavaScript Fundamentals," and "Objects: the basics" sections of the tutorial. I skipped the "Code Quality" part and some exercises that I couldn't understand yet, focusing solely on the basics. On the second day, I started with "Data types" and "Advanced working with functions". Honestly, these two parts also have a lot in common with Python, which I had studied before, so it wasn't particularly difficult for me to understand. The only thing that took me more time to understand was the concept of arrow functions, which Python does not have. But it isn't complicated either; it's just a kind of shorthand. The following few days were the same; I maintained a learning progress of 1-3 sections per day. If I encountered a particularly difficult part, I would only complete one section that day. If the parts were relatively simple, I would finish 2-3 sections that day. As long as I was focused and efficient during my study time, it wouldn't be too rushed. For particularly challenging parts, I would search for more detailed information online or look for the corresponding parts in "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide." For instance, the "Promises, async/await" section was like this, and I spent a whole day studying it. It took me about ten days of intensive work to complete most of the tutorial. But two things need to be noted. First, I skipped many parts that I found to be complicated and not so basic, such as "Code Quality," "Miscellaneous" under "The JavaScript Language," "Miscellaneous" under "Browser," and all the content under "Additional Articles," Secondly, the exercises in this tutorial are relatively difficult, and as a beginner, I couldn't complete many of the problems in a short time. In order to save time and achieve my goals as planned, I would Google the answers or ask ChatGPT for help when I couldn't solve a problem quickly. If I still couldn't answer it, I would decisively give up. Afterward, I spent an entire day reviewing what I had learned earlier, organizing my notes into a cheat sheet for future reference during project practice. Of course, there are also many JavaScript cheat sheets available online. However, I still strongly recommend you create your own cheat sheet when learning each technology stack, which can not only deepen your understanding during learning but also improve efficiency when using it afterward. In the remaining three days, I entered the second stage of my study, consisting of review and project practice. In this stage, I chose a high-quality video tutorial on YouTube, . This tutorial was created by Pierre Borgen, a content creator I greatly admire. He excels at imparting programming knowledge gradually through creating small projects. This 7-hour video tutorial is no exception. In it, we can complete three small projects, which is a great way to deepen and reinforce the basic knowledge we learned previously. freeCodeCamp's JavaScript Basics Tutorial The small projects in this video tutorial are very basic. The seven-plus hours of content divided into three days only require about 2-3 hours each day to complete. In fact, with the foundational knowledge from the first phase of my study, this stage felt quite relaxed. I even added some impromptu enhancements to the projects in the tutorial. For example, when making a Chrome extension for the final project, I didn't use the template provided by the tutorial. Instead, using the HTML and CSS knowledge I'd acquired previously, I designed a simple user interface for the extension myself. Final Suggestions: JavaScript is much more complex than the HTML and CSS you've learned previously. It may be the first real challenge you encounter in your learning journey. However, that's okay because we're beginners, and we only need to understand and master the basics first. When you encounter difficulties, don't be too hard on yourself. Learn to let go, as you'll ultimately have your moments of enlightenment during continuous practice. Whether you're learning JavaScript or any other tech stack, don't rely solely on existing resources online. Be sure to take your own notes and create your own cheat sheet. This will provide you with significant convenience in your future learning and practice. After we've finished learning the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, there are many more complex tech stacks waiting for us. The journey of learning to code is endless. I once thought it was the most challenging and even hopeless task. However, with continuous learning and self-improvement, I've gradually realized that the endpoint and results may not be the most important. Programming is a creative activity. We can fully enjoy the fun in it and find joy in the process.

Over 40, With No Technical Background, This Is How I Learned Javascript in 2 Weeks

My name is Edmond Hui and I am a coding bootcamp alumnus, and I'm here to tell you everything you need to know about diving into tech. If you haven't read my , I share my secrets about how I attended a coding bootcamp and successfully became a software engineer in 3 months. journey about becoming a software engineer As someone who recently abandoned his career to become a software engineer, I want to share my first-hand experience transitioning into tech to inspire new developers and help them make informed decisions. If you are thinking about becoming a software engineer you probably have many questions. I'll try to answer the most common ones with my personal perspective and a modern lens as someone who attended and graduated from a coding bootcamp during the Covid-19 pandemic. The most important step for success, making a plan You may have heard that becoming a software engineer is an easy way to increase your income. Many of my friends told me, "just learn how to code" as an easy way to secure the bag. When I started my coding journey, I was not prepared for the amount of work that was required to make the transition into tech. Becoming a software engineer through coding bootcamps may not even be possible depending on your current situation. Some people may not be able to dedicate the time required to succeed and may need to take a different route. It definitely isn't as easy as everyone makes it out to seem. If it were that easy, then it wouldn't be valuable. Basic programming skills are easy to pick up. I learned some code at a young age and was always interested in tech. I even took multiple intro programming courses and an advanced placement computer science course in high school. When you get into the job market, companies aren't looking for warm bodies that know how to code. They are looking for a specific person with a niche skillset who can help solve the problems they are facing. This comes with experience and niche knowledge about coding languages and their relationships with other libraries and frameworks. This is where many bootcamps fall short. Bootcamps have a hard time teaching the idiosyncrasies of software engineering. You can only learn this through making mistakes and coding without guard rails. This is why it is extremely important to continuously learn as a software engineer. Do extensive research before pulling the trigger because once you start learning how to code, you have to be fully committed. People who think it will be enough to code part-time You will have to sacrifice to make this switch. Whether this is quitting your job, not going out on weekends, etc. You will have to be prepared to make changes in your lifestyle to put aside some time to study or join a bootcamp. WILL NOT SUCCEED. You have to put in the time. Should you do a bootcamp? According to the , Many bootcamps have payment plans that can help you stomach this cost. At App Academy, I did not have to pay for my tuition until I landed a job. App Academy also offers a discount for students that want to pay upfront. Career Karma 2021 State of the Bootcamp Market Report the average coding bootcamp cost is $11,272. According to the , This data is based on reports from 46 different coding bootcamps. Keep in mind that many bootcamps hire their own graduates as teachers so this number may be inflated. You can also google the Lambda School lawsuit as well. "Scambda School" inflated its outcome metrics and used other deceptive marketing practices to swindle students hand over fist. Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) 79 percent of bootcamp grads find a job within 180 days of completing the program. In the context of the (which analyzes the bootcamp market) reported in 2021 that U.S., Course Report the average bootcamp graduate earns a starting salary of $69,000. These statistics sound great, but will a bootcamp work for you? I'm here to give you my thoughts on whether you should do a bootcamp because they definitely work if the conditions are right (see me for example). You will have to dedicate 9 - 12 weeks with large blocks of time where you cannot be interrupted to successfully complete a coding bootcamp. The biggest hurdles to doing a bootcamp are the time commitment and the high costs of tuition. When going into App Academy, I fully expected to be able to continue working while I did the coursework. I quickly realized that this was not going to be possible. There are large opportunity costs when going the bootcamp route and I want to explain the full picture so readers will be able to make an informed decision. Sigma coding bootcamp student grindset 📖🕖🕛🕟🕗 Take a look at a normal day at a bootcamp. There were 51 minutes of materials we had to go through, 34 minutes of additional resources we had to read, 1 hour 30 minutes of homework, and 7 hours of projects. This is also on top of the lectures and questions we had to go through every day. Let's say we had a 1-hour lecture, that would mean we have committed 10 hours and 55 minutes to the bootcamp, JUST TODAY. coding and learning throughout the duration of the course. There is no sugar coating it. If you are in a reputable program you will be expected to meet minimum coding standards. App Academy had tests every few weeks and if failed, you would be moved to a later cohort. If failed again you would be removed from the program and your deposit refunded. Students are expected to spend 80 - 100 hours per week Luckily, I had my parents who were there to support me throughout my journey. I would not have been able to survive without them. Having the comfort of home-cooked meals helped my mental health and allowed me to persevere. A support system you can turn to if things are becoming too much to handle is extremely helpful. I also moved in with my parents at the time so I didn't have to worry about rent, utilities, or other expenses. My only concern at the time was learning how to code. Selling the shovels to the next gold rush "The people that made the most money in the gold rush were selling shovels, not digging gold" In the modern era, there is nothing that a bootcamp or school can teach you that you cannot teach yourself for free. Bootcamps package this free info into a neat package and then charge you an arm and a leg. Many bootcamps require payment upfront and don't guarantee a job. Others like App Academy offer ISAs or income share agreements that require you to pay a large percentage of your income after you land a job. These often cost more than paying upfront, and it's possible you'll net less than your previous job after paying tuition payments! If you change your mind or cannot continue you will lose a lot of time and money with NOTHING to show for it. In my opinion, bootcamps only make sense in situations where you can give up the next 1 - 2 years to dedicate to transitioning into the tech industry. Should you self-study? At my first job out of bootcamp I met a dev named Brodie. He was self-taught and is still the most talented programmer I have met. It goes to show you can become an amazing developer without any formal technical education. Previously, he was a banker at Wells Fargo and taught himself HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP. I would say his ability to learn and pick things up quickly was what impressed me the most. When I asked him his thoughts on self-studying this is what he said. I'm happy that I went into tech but I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend it unless you can go all in for the first couple years. It just seems like there are so many concepts to learn and things to study for interviews that it's much harder to break in now than a few years ago. There are so many more CS and bootcamp grads that you are competing with that you have to somehow stand out amongst them which the only way is just endless hours of work. It seems that self-taught developers have the same problems bootcamp graduates do, but they have even more competition. The only perks of self-studying are that you can do it on your own schedule and it's free. Graduating from a bootcamp does not give you any inherent advantage in the job search. It all comes down to your projects, portfolio, and interviewing skills. Bootcamps help you prepare for your first job quickly and efficiently while learning on your own may take a lot more time as you figure things out. You have to be confident that you can persevere and succeed. Motivation will get you started, good habits will keep you going. Before you know it you will be coding every day, just like how you brush your teeth every day. You should self-study If you are someone who can keep yourself accountable. Another thing that Brodie said piqued my interest. There were so many things to study. You may not know what to start on. It's so easy to get analysis paralysis. Bootcamps help because they guide you and basically hold your hand through the whole process. When self-studying, you have to identify what you are deficient in, and what you need to improve on, then create your own curriculum. Free resources for self-taught developers My suggestion to people thinking about self-studying would be to just start. Code as much as you can, as often as you can. Listed below are some of my favorite resources that may help a self-taught developer: is a non-profit organization that consists of an interactive learning web platform, an online community forum, chat rooms, online publications and local organizations that intend to make learning web development accessible to anyone. freeCodeCamp is an open-source curriculum for learning full-stack web development. We help users learn the skills and build the impressive portfolio of projects they need to get hired as a web developer. The Odin Project (TOP) With you’ll get free access to App Academy’s entire 24 Week Online Software Engineering Program curriculum (that's over 500 hours of material!), which has placed thousands of people in software development jobs. This is exactly the same course that I took and paid ~$30,000 for. App Academy Open is a challenge that will help you become a better programmer. It helps you build momentum and makes coding a habit you look forward to. You will also meet like-minded individuals with similar goals to help motivate you to succeed. 100 days of code is a free challenge that helps you become more comfortable with javascript by walking you through simple projects. This is for beginners who already know the basics of javascript. Javascript 30 Lastly, this is a GitHub repository called that compiles some of the best free coding tutorials available online. I believe that the easiest way to learn is to do a project. With project-based learning you can do projects in any language of your choice. I highly recommend checking the repo out and giving it a star ⭐ (I am not affiliated with them). Project Based Learning Conclusion If you are still determined to become a software engineer after reading this article, it shows you are seriously committed. I believe if you try to get into the tech industry with the wrong intentions you will not have a good time. It is not as easy as going to class for a few months and then coming out with a 6 figure job. Even after you land your first job as a software engineer or developer that is just the start of your journey. You cannot know everything about best practices and code standards after 3 months of learning. I have gotten hate saying I was not a "software engineer" because I only had 3 months of experience. I have been doing this for 2 years now and I am constantly learning and growing. I think that is what truly makes you a "software engineer". Having the courage to continue writing code and improving is what will set you on your path to achieving your goal. Also Published Here

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If you’ve gotten started programming with HTML and JavaScript (JS), you know how easy JS is to use. The interface is right at your fingertips. You can easily access your entire web page with simple commands. Everything is editable, and asynchronous — you don’t have to wait for one task to process before another gets processed. There is even a kind of object-oriented programming. No wonder JS has become the go-to language for beginners and startups. Then, all these people go and make a ton of software. And then they need that software to interface with servers. Here is where Node.js comes into play. What is Node.js? Node.js is a piece of software that lets you run JavaScript code on a server, without a browser. This can be useful if your software needs to talk to a database, do some server-side calculations, or run all the time on a remote machine. For example, you can use Node.js to run a bot for a server-side part of your own messaging app. You can have a JS-based game that runs in a browser, and there can be an online scoreboard maintained over NodeJS. You can have a DIY smart home system that runs on JS-enabled devices, and you can use Node.js to collect the data from the devices. You can even have your own customized automation system: for example, you press a button on your phone, and the files on your server get synced up with a different server. This, too, can be done with Node.js. What is it good for? Like JavaScript, Node.js is good for asynchronous processing — when your software needs to be able to respond to many requests from different users at different times. When there is a task it needs to handle, Node.js will do its work. And when there is no work to be done, Node.js will remain idle, which is good for performance. That’s why Node.js is often used for scalable web apps. But most importantly, Node.js is good for people who already know JavaScript because they can write software with it quickly and efficiently. You just take whatever code you already have and adapt it to the server environment. Should you try it? If you already know JavaScript and have a need to run some JS code on a server, this is basically the only solution you have. If you are looking to start programming, JavaScript will be a quick and easy way to start. The tech is not the key Funny thing is, you don’t need to look for that perfect technology, framework, or language to get your programming going. Most basic tasks can be accomplished in any language. Just open up your text editor, and get that software running. To learn more about becoming a developer, check out . We offer online education and mentorship to help you learn essential skills and build a successful career in tech. Practicum

Is Node.js Worth The Hoopla?

I’ve found that almost anyone I talk to agrees with the statement: There is something wrong with education, particularly higher education. Interestingly enough, everyone also has very different ideas about what the problems are, and how we should solve them. A few popular ideas include: Pay teachers more Make university free Cancel existing student debt Online-first university A couple of weeks ago I was listening to an old podcast where the interviewer was speaking with Austen Allred, the founder of Lambda School (now Bloom University). Austen said that he believed the biggest problem with education is one of the incentives - particularly that . I tend to agree, though , my current side-project, has ended up taking a different path than the one Lambda took. Indiehackers universities don’t care whether or not their students are placed in a good job upon graduation Boot.dev Lambda School has been in the news over the past few years, sometimes good things were reported, sometimes not. I’m not here to gossip, instead, I simply want to look at them as an example of how Austen’s original beliefs on educational incentives ended up panning out. First, let’s talk about where Austen and I agree, and then we’ll get into some of the things I think we can learn from Lambda school, and how we can make education even better. What does it mean to “align incentives”? Let’s look at a simple example using a hypothetical company “Auto Parts United”. Here are a few of their salespeople, all of whom will be guinea pigs trying out 4 new compensation structures. Name Base Commission Explanation Sally 50k 10% Flat 10% commission John 100k 0% No commission George 40k 10%, 20% 10% commission for the first 10 sales, then 20% Taylor 70k 10% capped 10% commission for the first 10 sales, then no commission Based on historical data, the accounting department at “Auto Parts Unlimited” was able to show that if a salesperson made the number of sales, 20 sales each month, then all of these compensation packages would end up paying them the same $100k yearly. As you can probably guess, however, these different compensation structures create different incentives for the salespeople. average very Now, I don’t run a sales organization, but I can tell you with confidence that the “Johns” and “Taylors” of the company aren’t going to be great performers once the new compensation packages are rolled out. They aren’t incentivized to sell! John is incentivized to he is selling so he doesn’t lose his cushy 100k salary. Taylor is incentivized to quickly make 10 sales, then slack off for the rest of the month. appear as if Only “George” and “Sally” have their incentives with those of the company. When the company does well, George and Sally do well. This kind of system is ideal in almost any relationship that can support it. Win-win/lose-lose deals are much more sustainable than any sort of once sided structure. We see examples of this kind of alignment all over the place, though some end up being less aligned than others. For example: aligned Pay-for-what-you-use server costs Percentage-based transaction fees Free returns on e-commerce purchases The problem with university I think it’s safe to say that Austen was right when he pointed out on the podcast that universities aren’t incentivized enough to care about job placement rates. Not only do the institutions have no reason to worry about job placement, but oftentimes the professors themselves consider teaching an afterthought. Many are there primarily to do research, publish papers, and advance the boundaries of their field. How Lambda School approached a new incentive model Lambda was the pioneer of the “income share agreement”, or ISA. The idea is that you do not pay upfront for your tuition. Instead, you get a job upon graduation, you pay the school back a percentage of your wages until you hit a cap. What this does is ensure that Lambda School is incentivized to make sure you get a job upon graduation. if Okay, so far so good. ISAs fixed everything right? If ISAs are so great, why all the fuss about Lambda? If you want to dig up the dramatic history about Lambda School I’ll let you do that, I don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of he said/she said. Instead, I’ll give you my summary based on the digging I’ve done. I’ve found that most of the more viral complaints boil down to two simple gripes. Some students have vocally complained that the quality of the education has declined over time. Some students consider it to be expensive. Most students end up paying somewhere between $20,000 or $40,000 dollars for the ~6-month program. very If I had to guess about the cause of these problems, I’d say it’s likely that margins ended up being tighter than anticipated, and the bets they made on their student’s placement rates ended up being worse than anticipated. Lambda pays for each student’s education upfront, that student gets a job. If any poor performers are sucking up resources without landing jobs, Lambda is footing the bill. Over time, Lambda gathers data on their costs and realizes they need to charge a lot of money to the best performers to subsidize the cost of those who don’t pay. whether or not This gets interesting because it Lambda is paying for the education of any students who are unable to get jobs. In reality, if Lambda is to continue as a successful business, the high performers end up paying for the tuitions of the underperformers. sounds like To sum all this up, what is Lambda incentivized to do? highly To only allow the highest performers into the program, who ironically are the ones who need it least. To ensure that everyone who goes through the program lands a job paying at least $50k Let’s review what they incentivized to do: are not highly Teach their students in a way that will help them advance post-placement Provide education to those that are less likely to be high performers What other models could be better? Instead of immediately hypothesizing about better solutions, let’s look at a few more competitors in the “learn to code” space, and guess at what incentive structures they might have. Dev Mountain Dev Mountain is a traditional web development boot camp in my area. I expect their product is similar to Lambda in that it’s an in-person web development school. They charge around $10k for a 16-week program. Likely incentivized to: Prepare students for a job, but only so they can keep their marketing “placement rate” high. Keep costs lower so that students can afford them up-front Not likely incentivized to: Create an engaging and motivating experience Care how much students earn in their first job Codecademy Codecademy has a straightforward business model. They charge $19-39 per month at the time of writing for “pro” access to their online courses. Unlike lambda school, their digital content is consumed at scale asynchronously by students, meaning they can get away with lower tuition costs. much Likely incentivized to: Create an engaging experience so that you don’t cancel your subscription Keep the monthly cost low to compete with other digital information products Not likely incentivized to: Prepare students for a job Care how much students earn in their first job FreeCodeCamp FreeCodeCamp is unique on this list - they’re totally free! That said, that doesn’t mean the creators and maintainers don’t have an incentive structure. There is always an incentive mechanism, even if it’s not obvious. Likely incentivized to: Keep costs extremely low Monetize users indirectly (for example via ads, data mining, or something else) Prioritize traffic and engagement over learning outcomes Not likely incentivized to: Prepare students for a job Udemy Udemy is a marketplace, they don’t create their own content, instead, they allow creators to publish their work on the platform and then Udemy takes a cut. Likely incentivized to: Emphasize a of learning content quantity Prioritize content made by teachers who have marketing skills Not likely incentivized to: Prepare students for a job Create a cohesive learning path So what would a better incentive structure look like? First off, let’s address the elephant in the room, I’m a big ‘ol hypocrite at the moment. is my side project, and its business model is basically a carbon copy of Codecademy’s. For now, I’m trying to get the project to a level of revenue where I can afford to go full-time on it. In the meantime, I’m thinking about how a different model could create a better incentive structure. We’ll get there, but we aren’t there yet. Boot.dev Okay, so what might this “better model” look like? Well, we want a platform that is strongly incentivized monetarily to do as many of the following as possible: Create an engaging experience while prioritizing learning outcomes Ensure students land their first coding job Help students continue to be successful in their careers after their first job Prioritize quality over quantity so that the best materials are easily accessible Refrain from serving ads or selling user data Ensure that slower learners can be successful as well Keep overall costs for students as low as possible so that price is never a barrier Free + recruitment fee One plan would be to go the FreeCodeCamp route. We could open up all the learning content for free, then instead of selling ads, I could monetize through job placements. I’d like to do more research on this path, but with the data, I currently foresee some problems: Companies won’t pay to recruit junior talent, only senior talent Boot.dev would be incentivized to create an amazing product for recruiters while education becomes an afterthought There is no monetary incentive to help students who get stuck - they are likely underperformers who won’t be placed Codecademy + Career coaching/tutoring services The big problem with our current model at Boot.dev (the Codecademy model), is that we have no real monetary incentive to help students land a high-paying job, other than to collect some sweet testimonials. We also aren’t incentivized to care about what happens to them after they graduate. In fact, you could even argue that our current model actively doesn’t want them to get a job, because they will be more likely to cancel their subscription. This is the hypothetical model that I think has the most promise: Students pay a small monthly tuition for access to the learning content This ensures that the learning side of the platform remains top-of-mind for us. When I say small, I mean less than it is now. Something like $15/mo. I never want to be turning people away due to a price barrier. A free-if-you-get-placed career coaching funnel for students that complete our materials. The career coaching services and materials would ensure that we care about the career success of our students. We could even offer them to those who are looking for second and third jobs or even just looking to get promoted or snag a raise. It also has the nice side-effect of helping us keep our learning content streamlined and career-applicable because in order to maximize revenue we need to be able to place those students in jobs. Payment for the optional career coaching might be an ISA model, or maybe it’s a flat fee that’s paid back x months after the desired career outcome - I’m not sure. But all in all, I think this be a great path forward for us. could If you have any other ideas or thinks we could be doing something better, let me know on . Also, if you know anyone who’s looking to throw funding at a project with traction, we’re . Twitter happy to chat Also Published Here

The Problem with Education is a Problem of Incentives

El problema de la educación es un problema de incentivos

Le problème de l'éducation est un problème d'incitations

शिक्षा की समस्या प्रोत्साहन की समस्या है

教育の問題はインセンティブの問題

O problema da educação é um problema de incentivos

Vấn đề Giáo dục là Vấn đề Khuyến khích

教育问题是激励问题

I’m starting #100DaysOfCode today, but this ain’t my first rodeo. In 2017, I attended a free coding bootcamp through , and was lucky to be hired as a software engineer within a few weeks of graduation. But I quit the job in less than a year. As the only woman on the engineering team, and a bootcamp grad without a four-year computer science degree, I was overwhelmed by imposter syndrome and having daily panic attacks on the job. Since the company was mostly remote, I spent most of the week feeling isolated in the dark as a junior developer, struggling to figure out what I was doing wrong, but not getting enough contact with a senior developer to ask the questions I needed to move forward. Per Scholas I regret leaving that job without fighting harder to keep it. I wonder how I could have asked for more help, or found a way to keep going. I went back to the nonprofit sector work I had been doing before the coding bootcamp, but never stopped wishing to be a software engineer. This year, I’m starting over on Feb. 22, 2022, to document my second try. Table of contents A Bootcamp Won’t Make You an Engineer Troughs of Sorrow...Forever? Coding As Character-Building Happiness is in the Chase Coding As Healing Practice Thou Shalt Debug Thyself A Bootcamp Won’t Make You an Engineer This should be obvious, but I’ll spell it out anyway: completing a coding bootcamp does not mean you will have a successful career as a software engineer. It provides a foundation, but in order to succeed, there’s much more work to do on your own. Many of my classmates at General Assembly struggled to find a job after graduating from our 12-week intensive course, and a few never did find a tech job. The top students became Instructional Associates at the program and continued honing their skills for a few months while teaching newer students. A few attended a second coding bootcamp, to continue deepening their skills, and got a job after their second 12-week intensive bootcamp. Among the graduates who found a job, many were not able to keep their first job for a full six months or year. Some persevered and applied to a second and a third job, until they found one that would be patient enough to nurture their growth. Others gave up or found a different role, in product management or teaching. Only a fraction of people who graduated my cohort are still working as software developers today. A few are extremely successful now at top companies. A longitudinal study of these numbers beyond the first job would show continued drop-offs over the course of the first two years, with a series hurdles after bootcamp, which are not necessarily reflected in elevator pitches for admissions. Why were some my classmates successful in becoming software engineers after completing the bootcamp, and why did others struggle? How do I truly cultivate the craft of software engineering, with the degree of rigor and depth that I need to succeed in this field? Over the next few weeks, I plan on having “coffee chats” with some of my old classmates to find out about their journeys since Bootcamp. Stay tuned. Troughs of Sorrow...Forever? At a free online bootcamp over Discord and Twitch called , the brilliantly inspirational instructor, , promises hundreds of participants in each cohort of his program that they can become software engineers within a year if they faithfully follow each step in the program, and overcome what he calls the “troughs of sorrow.” #100Devs Leon Noel The “troughs of sorrow” are those spiraling feelings of frustration you get when you’re stuck on a problem you can’t solve, which makes you feel hopelessly incompetent, doomed in your career choice, and possibly not cut out for this world. What few students know at the beginning of their journey is that those troughs of sorrow don’t stop after bootcamp, or after you acquire some mystical level of knowledge. In fact, it never stops. It only intensifies on the job. The job is quintessentially the hourly joyride of banging your head against the wall, backing up, and banging it again; the weekly cup of programmer tears, mellow wine in which to dip your hard-earned daily bread. They don’t tell you that to make it as a coder, you have to get intimately acquainted with frustration, humbly let it ravage you, and learn to enjoy the process. You have to find genuine joy in difficult problems, and create equanimity for yourself as a reward for resolving each incremental issue, hour by hour, day by day. Or you just won’t make it. Learning to code is the California gold rush of the 2010s and 2020s. The world is changing fast, and there are so few reliable options. (Who cares about your Passion is so Millenial; Gen Z is getting paid.) Outside of tech, all jobs are getting more precarious. Gig economy means contract labor without benefits. Creator economy means 1% of influencers get 90% of the wealth; there’s . Algorithmic trading has even automated finance bros, who form the at coding bootcamps. The more of us rush out to pan gold, the more we find blue. In our lifetimes, coding may become a Instead of working together to fix our crumbling safety net, let’s play cowboys instead, and hope we strike it rich! Let’s be pioneers in the Wild West of internet-native commerce; and bank on the triumph of our personal genius over societal decay. passion? no middle class biggest demographic blue-collar job. If that bargain doesn’t sound good to you, ? should you even learn to code Coding As Character-Building Personally, I'm re-committing to coding because I realize the journey is important for my personal, emotional, and character development. It’s possible to cultivate the mindset of a persistent coder even if you don’t naturally have it. (I don't!) I believe that developing the kind of patient problem-solving mentality necessary for software development is a character-building exercise that is valuable as an end in itself. Here are ten virtues that you can cultivate in the journey to becoming a software engineer: Discipline Goal-setting & Reflection Dealing with failure & frustration Resilience Overcoming fear and anxiety. . Cultivating Stoicism Humility. Ego is the enemy. Organization skills. Cultivating clarity of thought & action. Toil — work ethic! Systematic self-improvement ( — what this blog will focus on.) Kaizen Helping others in the dev community, and realizing that this mutual gift passed down through the community is what makes it all work... In the process of making a career transition to coding, you take accountability and responsibility for your own life, to make yourself better for the people you love. You take a big risk, and you work hard to be able to meet the demands of that risk. You give yourself the opportunity to earn trust in yourself. The trust that you earn through hard work — that real self-confidence and self-respect — is worth more than any salary. Happiness is in the Chase According to psychological conducted at the University of Missouri by Marsha Richins, . Happiness is in the chase. research wanting things makes us happier than having them I felt happier during my time in coding bootcamp than almost at any other point in my life because I had concrete dreams that I was working hard towards every day. Striving within a defined structure that promised big, meritocratic rewards, I was excited to make tangible progress every day. The good pain of shared late nights of hard work with classmates during our short, intense sprints was so much more tolerable, even enjoyable, when compared to the bad pain of imposter syndrome at my first job. I realized that I was happier during bootcamp, chasing after the dream of becoming a software engineer, than I was at my first job as a software engineer. In fact, once I attained my job, all I could feel is existential angst, and loneliness, and dread. There was no structure and little comraderie during my first year as a junior developer to help me understand where to go from there: how to improve at my job, what to do when I’m stuck for many days in a row, what kinds of questions are in fact to ask your boss, who to turn to for the dumbest of dumb questions, and where to find creativity, joy and hope. too dumb Growing up with immigrant parents who demanded perfection of me, any small mistake or less than perfect grade would be punished with a physical beating. I carry their voice within me, and it becomes the voice of the Terminal and the Console. At my first job, I had mini emotional breakdowns every time I ran into an error I could not solve. Banging my head against the wall, I would murmur to myself that I must be the stupidest person in the world if I can’t solve an issue. When I do solve the issue, instead of celebrating, I would berate myself for having made a stupid, careless error. I could barely focus on the problems at hand because my mind would become an echo chamber of accusations, fears and premonitions, warnings of a terrible life of destitution ahead. Every error message in the console would be a crystal ball to my inevitable failures as a human being. Needless to say, all of this mental chatter slowed down my coding. What could I have done differently? How can I train myself to deal better with frustration and anxiety? I’m willing to try again, and do it smarter, with more emotional equanimity. I don’t think that every work environment will be the same as the startup I had joined as a junior developer. How can I also make sure to find a workplace with more mentorship and support from senior engineers, especially for women and people of color? Coding As Healing Practice Writing clean, DRY code requires maintaining clear mental models. As a survivor of violent assault and complex trauma, there are particular challenges that PTSD and anxiety attacks play in being able to hold the concentration and emotional calm necessary to be successful in software engineering. These emotional patterns are part of a disability that I have to learn to live with. However, I know the severity of these patterns can be reduced and even overcome. In fact, I believe that the practice of coding, and cultivating my mind with the mental habits of a computer programmer, can actually be healing for the parts of me that overreact to frustration and anxiety. I spent the last few years cultivating a meditation and yoga practice, and I believe there are lessons in . meditation that can make you a better programmer Thou Shalt Debug Thyself Most of one’s time as a programmer is spent in debugging code that won’t run as expected. Coding is a systematic process of: Gracefully dealing with error messages Persistently chasing down deviations between output value and expected values, and isolating the source of the error Resourcefully searching the internet for helpful remedy Optimistically testing out various possible solutions Pragmatically patching up the problem with duct tape copied from the internet Conscientiously ripping out the duct tape and refactoring the sticky part so it works invisibly without the ugly parts showing. (And writing helpful comments next to the all stickiness for others on the team.) Taking a similar approach to my own personal journey and self-development as I would take to finding a bug in a piece of code, I will isolate where the problem might be coming from. I will experiment on different strategies that might make it better. I will write tests that I can apply to my daily life to keep checks on whether I am doing the things that I need to be doing to stay on track. I will keep trying and trying until I can get to where I want to be. In this new “coding journey” blog, I am committed to documenting my second try at becoming a software engineer, by writing about #100DaysOfCode as a journey of character-building, towards nurturing emotional resilience and mental health. Because chasing the dream makes me happy. The date is . Here’s to my second try at coding! February 2, 2022 Also published here.

A Bootcamp Won’t Make You an Engineer

As the name implies, pair programming is where two developers work using only one machine. Each one has a keyboard and a mouse. One programmer acts as the driver who codes while the other will serve as the navigator who will check the code being written, proofread and spell-check it, while also figuring out where to go next. These roles can be switched at any time the driver will then become the navigator and vice versa. Though my experience in an online school, we did remote pair programming which we had 2 sets of computers and the navigator had to share their screen for the driver to see and vice versa. It’s also commonly called “pairing,” “programming in pairs,” and “paired programming.” There are proven benefits of pair programming you and your team can take advantage of. I recently started pair programming through the help of an online school. I have pair programmed with a lot of people across the world. Every time while pair programming I have learned something new from the other person regardless of my colleague’s programming experience and I am going to talk about some of my experiences with pair programming. I believe you and your team can also reap these rewards of pair programming, So here are some of the advantages of pair programming. Code Reviews As pair programming involves 2 engineers writing code for the same task at the same time on a single computer the code is reviewed on the go. As the driver is writing code, the navigator is reviewing it in real-time and also thinking about any design, architecture related issues, and possible bugs. It is much better than an asynchronous code review because both software engineers are already familiar with the task and problem in context as well as know if the code is working or not at the same time. During my pair programming sessions, my partner is always giving insightful feedback while I am writing the codes and vice versa when he is also writing the codes, this makes the process really easy and leaves little room for errors Knowledge Transfer This is probably a very underrated benefit of pair programming. While pair programming you observe the other software engineer and learn lots of things on the go. While you are on the go you pick up how the other engineer uses keyboard shortcuts or tools that you were not aware of. This is really helpful when you pair program with someone senior to you, you get to know their routine and how they use the same tools more productively. This helps you grow as a software engineer because there are always one or two things to learn from the other person. Pair programming can be an excellent way for programmers to learn rapidly from other developers. You learn the entire complex process, not just by watching, but by participating . I also did not really know much about programming when I started and this has really helped me, I have learned a lot from my partners, though some of us might have different cultural backgrounds we find a way to make it work and learn from each other. It is a great on-boarding for new members Pair programming can be one of the tools to make your company’s and team’s on-boarding process for software engineers even better. If new team members can have a good session of pair programming with one of the experienced team members they will get to know the ins and outs of the system much faster and hands-on. New members will get acquainted with and used to the new tools and process which the company/system runs in a more practical way. Outright Solutions to Problems Sometimes you can’t do your task because it is blocked by another task being done by one of the software engineers in your team. Rather than waiting for the software engineer to finish that task, you can help them accomplish it through pair programming. In the end, its the team’s achievement or goals that matter more than individual ones. When developers pair, all of the choices they make can benefit from the experience of both developers and the dialog they have with each other, which makes the decision making more effective Improves productivity and knowledge When two people pair program on a certain task as they say two heads are better than one, I think it is a more productive episode of work. If the driver encounters a road bump the navigator can help solve the issue. On top of that, it can really help to share knowledge about parts of the system the other software engineer is not much aware of. For example, I pair programmed with someone on Ruby which I had never worked on before to teach me a few things which would help my learning process become smoother. Conclusion Pair-programming might seem a little strange if it is something you have never tried out before and it involves a lot of communication among team members and between partners but as you try pairing, experiment with different modes and pair combinations. Some pairs stick together for a week or more, others swap every day. Some developers may prefer the driver or navigator role or prefer to switch back and forth depending on the situation. Developers on a team will have different backgrounds and levels of experience. Try various combinations of both to determine what works best.

Benefits of Pair Programming

In software engineering, Creational Design Patterns deal with object creation mechanisms, trying to create objects in a manner suitable to the situation. The basic or ordinary form of object creation could result in design problems or added complexity to the design. Builder Design Pattern in C++ solves this specific problem by . separating the construction of a complex object from its representation By the way, If you haven’t check out my other articles on Creational Design Patterns, then here is the list: Factory Builder Prototype Singleton The code snippets you see throughout this series of articles are simplified not sophisticated. So you often see me not using keywords like override, final, public(while inheritance) just to make code compact & consumable(most of the time) in single standard screen size. I also prefer struct instead of class just to save line by not writing “public:” sometimes and also miss , constructor, , prefix std::, deleting dynamic memory, intentionally. virtual destructor copy constructor I also consider myself a pragmatic person who wants to convey an idea in the simplest way possible rather than the standard way or using Jargons. Note: If you stumbled here directly, then I would suggest you go through first, even if it is trivial. I believe it will encourage you to explore more on this topic. What is design pattern? All of this code you encounter in this series of articles are compiled using C++20(though I have used features up to C++17 in most cases). So if you don’t have access to the latest compiler you can use which has preinstalled boost library as well. Modern C++ https://wandbox.org/ Intent To create/instantiate complex & complicated object piecewise & succinctly by providing an API in a separate entity. Builder Design Pattern is used when we want to construct a complex object. However, we do not want to have a complex constructor member or one that would need many arguments. The Builder Design Pattern constructs a complex object step by step & the final step will return the object. The process of constructing an object should be generic so that it can be used to create different representations of the same object with the help of a variety of methods. Life Without Builders Suppose you have to create the HTML generator using C++ then very naïve way to do it is : text = ; output;
output += ;
output += text;
output += ; ( , text); words[] = { , }; oss;
oss << ; ( w : words)
 oss << << w << ;
oss << ; (oss.str().c_str()); // hello auto "hello" string "" "" printf "%s" // <ul><li>hello</li><li>world</li></ul> string "hello" "world" ostringstream "<ul>" for auto " <li>" "</li>" "</ul>" printf A sophisticated dev will create a class with a bunch of constructor argument & method to add a child node. This is a good approach though but it may complicate the object representation. In general, some objects are simple & can be created in a single constructor call while other objects require a lot of ceremonies to create. Having an object with 10 constructor arguments is not productive. Instead, we should opt for piecewise construction. Builder provides an API for constructing an object step-by-step without revealing actual object representation. Builder Design Pattern Example in Modern C++ m_name; m_text; <HtmlElement> m_childs; m_indent_size = ;

 HtmlElement() = ;
 HtmlElement( &name, &text) : m_name(name), m_text(text) {} : { oss;
 oss << (m_indent_size * indent, ) << << m_name << << ; (m_text.size()) oss << (m_indent_size * (indent + ), ) << m_text << ; ( &element : m_childs)
 oss << element.str(indent + );

 oss << (m_indent_size * indent, ) << << m_name << << ; oss.str();
 } <HtmlBuilder> build( root_name) { make_unique<HtmlBuilder>(root_name); }
}; HtmlElement m_root; :
 HtmlBuilder( root_name) { m_root.m_name = root_name; } {
 m_root.m_childs.emplace_back(HtmlElement{child_name, child_text}); ;
 } { m_root.str(); } { m_root; }
}; { builder = HtmlElement::build( );
 builder->add_child( , )->add_child( , ); << builder->str() << ; EXIT_SUCCESS;
} ; class HtmlBuilder { class HtmlElement string string vector constexpr static size_t 4 default const string const string friend ; class HtmlBuilder public string str ( indent = ) int32_t 0 ostringstream string ' ' "<" ">" endl if string 1 ' ' endl for auto 1 string ' ' "</" ">" endl return static unique_ptr string return { class HtmlBuilder public string HtmlBuilder * add_child ( child_name, child_text) string string return this string str () return operator HtmlElement () return int main () auto "ul" "li" "hello" "li" "world" cout endl return /*
<ul>
 <li>
 hello
 </li>
 <li>
 world
 </li>
</ul>
*/ We are forcing users here to use builder by making data members of HtmlElements private. As you can see, we have declared the HtmlBuilder & HtmlElement in the same file & to do so, we need forward declaration i.e. class HtmlBuilder; as it is an . And we can not create the object of incomplete type before compiler parses its actual declaration. The reason is simple, the compiler needs the size of an object to allocate memory for it. Hence pointer is only way around so we have taken <HtmlBuilder>. incomplete type unique_ptr Sophisticated & Fluent Builder Design Pattern Example Following is the more sophisticated example of the Builder Design Pattern in C++ organized in four different files (i.e. Person.h, Person.cpp, PersonBuilder.h PersonBuilder.cpp). Person.h ; :: m_name, m_street_address, m_post_code, m_city; :: m_company_name, m_position, m_annual_income; Person( :: name) : m_name(name) {} : ostream& <<(ostream& os, Person& obj); ;
}; # once pragma # include <iostream> using namespace std ; class PersonBuilder { class Person std string // Personal Detail std string // Employment Detail std string public friend ; class PersonBuilder friend operator const PersonBuilder static create ( :: name) std string Person.cpp PersonBuilder Person::create( name) { PersonBuilder{name}; }

ostream& <<(ostream& os, Person& obj)
{ os << obj.m_name
 << :: << << :: << << obj.m_street_address
 << << obj.m_post_code
 << << obj.m_city
 << :: << << :: << << obj.m_company_name
 << << obj.m_position
 << << obj.m_annual_income;
} # include <iostream> # include "Person.h" # include "PersonBuilder.h" string return operator const return std endl "lives : " std endl "at " " with postcode " " in " std endl "works : " std endl "with " " as a " " earning " As you can see from the above example Person may have many details like Personal & Professional. And so does the count of data members. In our case, there are 7 data members. Having a single class for all the actions needed to create a Person through constructor might make our class bloated & lose its original purpose. Moreover, the library user needs to take care of all those constructor parameters sequence. PersonBuilder.h Person person; :
 PersonBuilder( name) : person(name) {} { move(person); } ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
}; # once pragma # include "Person.h" { class PersonBuilder public string operator Person () const return PersonBuilder& lives () PersonBuilder& at ( :: street_address) std string PersonBuilder& with_postcode ( :: post_code) std string PersonBuilder& in ( :: city) std string PersonBuilder& works () PersonBuilder& with ( company_name) string PersonBuilder& as_a ( position) string PersonBuilder& earning ( annual_income) string PersonBuilder.cpp PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::lives() { * ; }

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::works() { * ; }

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::with( company_name) {
 person.m_company_name = company_name; * ;
}

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::as_a( position) {
 person.m_position = position; * ;
}

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::earning( annual_income) {
 person.m_annual_income = annual_income; * ;
}

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::at( :: street_address) {
 person.m_street_address = street_address; * ;
}

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::with_postcode( :: post_code) {
 person.m_post_code = post_code; * ;
}

PersonBuilder& PersonBuilder::in( :: city) {
 person.m_city = city; * ;
} # include "PersonBuilder.h" return this return this string return this string return this string return this std string return this std string return this std string return this Rather stuffing all those construction related APIs into Person, we can delegate that task to separate entity i.e. PersonBuilder. Main.cpp ; {
 Person p = Person::create( )
 .lives()
 .at( )
 .with_postcode( )
 .in( )
 .works()
 .with( )
 .as_a( )
 .earning( ); < # include "Person.h" # include "PersonBuilder.h" using namespace std int main () "John" "123 London Road" "SW1 1GB" "London" "PragmaSoft" "Consultant" "10e6" cout endl return Isn’t the above construction looks more intuitive, natural & plain English? If you are concerned about blank methods like lives() & works(), then do not worry, it will be eliminated in optimization. You can also observe that we are forcing user’s to use builder rather than constructor by making the constructor private & exposing only create std::string name API. ( ) Do not over complicate things by designing an interface or abstract classes unless you need it. I have seen this in many Builder Design Pattern Examples on Web. Benefits of Builder Design Pattern The number of lines of code increases at least to double in builder pattern. But the effort pays off in terms of design flexibility, fewer or no parameters to the constructor and much more readable code. Builder Design Pattern also helps in minimizing the number of parameters in constructor & thus there is no need to pass in for optional parameters to the constructor. null Immutable objects can be built without much complex logic in the object building process. Segregating construction from makes the object representation slice & precise. Having a builder entity separate provides the flexibility of creating & instantiating different objects representations. object representation Summary by FAQs When should the Builder Design Pattern be used? Whenever creation of new object requires setting many parameters and some of them (or all of them) are optional. Why do we need a Builder class when implementing a Builder Design Pattern? It isn’t necessary but there are some benefits in doing so: The concern of building object should be in the separate entity as per . SRP The original object would not be bloated. Easy & maintainable code. Testing & understanding a constructor with many input arguments gets exponentially more complicated. Greatest Advantage of Builder Design Pattern! More expressive code. MyClass o = new MyClass(5, 5.5, 'A', var, 1000, obj9, "hello"); Instead MyClass o = MyClass.builder().a(5).b(5.5).c('A').d(var).e(1000).f(obj9).g("hello"); You can see which data member is being assigned by what & even change the order of assignment. What’s the difference between Abstract Factory and Builder Design Pattern? Factory produces the objects in wholesale that could be any object from inheritance hierarchy(like Point, Point2D, Point3D). While Builder deals with instantiation of an object that is limited to a single object(Although this statement is still debatable). You see Factory is all about wholesale object creation while the builder is piecewise object creation. In both the patterns, you can separate out the mechanism related to object creation in other classes. Previously published at http://www.vishalchovatiya.com/builder-design-pattern-in-modern-cpp/

Design Patterns: Builder Pattern in Modern C++

Patrones de diseño: patrón de constructor en C++ moderno

ependency nversion rinciple in C++ is the fifth & last design principle of a series SOLID as a Rock design principles. The SOLID design principles focus on developing software that is easy to maintainable, reusable & extendable. In this article, we will see an example code with the flaw & correct it with help of DIP. We will also see guideline & benefits of DIP inclosure of the article. D I P By the way, If you haven’t gone through my previous articles on design principles, then below is the quick links: RP – Single Responsibility Principle S CP – Open/Closed Principle O SP – Liskov Substitution Principle L SP – Interface Segregation Principle I IP – Dependency Inversion Principle D The code snippets you see throughout this series of articles are simplified not sophisticated. So you often see me not using keywords like override, final, public(while inheritance) just to make code compact & consumable (most of the time) in single standard screen size. I also prefer struct instead of class just to save line by not writing “public:” sometimes and also miss , constructor, , prefix std::, deleting dynamic memory, intentionally. I also consider myself a pragmatic person who wants to convey an idea in the simplest way possible rather than the standard way or using Jargons. virtual destructor copy constructor Note: If you stumbled here directly, then I would suggest you go through first, even if it is trivial. I believe it will encourage you to explore more on this topic. What is design pattern? All of this code you encounter in this series of articles are compiled using C++20(though I have used features up to C++17 in most cases). So if you don’t have access to the latest compiler you can use which has preinstalled boost library as well. Modern C++ https://wandbox.org/ Intent 1. High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions. 2. Abstractions should not depend on details. Details should depend on abstractions. Above lines might seem cryptic at first but don’t stick here keep going. You will get it by example. What are the High-level & Low-level modules? : which is more abstract in nature & contain more complex logic. These modules orchestrate low-level modules in our application. : more specific & individual to components focusing on details & smaller parts of the application. These modules are used inside the high-level modules. High-level modules describes operations Low-level modules describes implementations Motivation: Violating Dependency Inversion Principle parent, child, sibling }; m_name;
}; <tuple<Person, Relationship, Person>> m_relations; {
 m_relations.push_back({parent, Relationship::parent, child});
 m_relations.push_back({child, Relationship::child, parent});
 }
}; Research( Relationships &relationships) { ( &&[first, rel, second] : relationships.m_relations) { (first.m_name == && rel == Relationship::parent) << << second.m_name << ;
 }
 }
}; {
 Person parent{ };
 Person child1{ };
 Person child2{ };

 Relationships relationships;
 relationships.add_parent_and_child(parent, child1);
 relationships.add_parent_and_child(parent, child2);

 Research _(relationships); EXIT_SUCCESS;
} enum { class Relationship { struct Person string { struct Relationships // Low-level <<<<<<<<<<<<------------------------- vector void add_parent_and_child ( Person &parent, Person &child) const const { struct Research // High-level <<<<<<<<<<<<------------------------ const for auto // Need C++17 here if "John" cout "John has a child called " endl int main () "John" "Chris" "Matt" return When later on the container of Relationships changes from vector to set or any other container, you need to change in many places which isn’t a very good design. Even if just the name of data member i.e. Relationships::m_relations changes, you will find yourself breaking other parts of code. As you can see Low-level module i.e. Relationships directly depend on High-level module i.e. Research which is essentially a violation of DIP. Solution: Example of Dependency Inversion Principle in C++ Rather we should create an abstraction and bind Low-level & High-level module to that abstraction. Consider the following fix: <Person> find_all_children_of( &name) = ;
}; RelationshipBrowser { <tuple<Person, Relationship, Person>> m_relations; {
 m_relations.push_back({parent, Relationship::parent, child});
 m_relations.push_back({child, Relationship::child, parent});
 } <Person> find_all_children_of( &name) { <Person> result; ( &&[first, rel, second] : m_relations) { (first.name == name && rel == Relationship::parent) {
 result.push_back(second);
 }
 } result;
 }
}; Research(RelationshipBrowser &browser) { ( &child : browser.find_all_children_of( )) { << << child.name << ;
 }
 } }; { struct RelationshipBrowser virtual vector const string 0 : struct Relationships // Low-level <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<------------------------ vector void add_parent_and_child ( Person &parent, Person &child) const const vector const string vector for auto if return { struct Research // High-level <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<---------------------- for auto "John" cout "John has a child called " endl // Research(const Relationships& relationships) // { // auto& relations = relationships.relations; // for (auto&& [first, rel, second] : relations) // { // if (first.name == "John" && rel == Relationship::parent) // { // cout << "John has a child called " << second.name << endl; // } // } // } Now no matter, the name of container or container itself changes in Low-level module, High-level module or other parts of code which followed DIP will be in-tact. The Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) suggest that the most flexible systems are those in which source code dependencies refer only to abstractions, not to concretions. This is the reason why most experienced dev uses STL or library functions along with generic containers. Even using an auto keyword at appropriate places may help in creating generic behaviour with less fragile code. There are many ways you can implement DIP, as long as C++ concerns most people use static polymorphism(i.e. unless they need dynamic one), , , , etc. CRTP template specialization Adapter Design Pattern type-erasure Yardstick to Craft Dependency Inversion Principle(DIP) Friendly Software in C++ If you find enforcing DIP difficult then just design abstraction first & implement your high-level module on the bases of abstraction. Without having any knowledge of the low-level module or its implementation. Because of this process DIP is also known as . Coding To Interface Keep in mind that all Low-level-modules/ adhere to the . This is because the Low-level-modules/ will be used via the abstract interface, not the concrete classes interface. subclasses Liskov Substitution Principle subclasses Benefits Reusability Effectively, the DIP reduces coupling between different pieces of code. Thus we get reusable code. Maintainability It is also important to mention that changing already implemented modules is risky. By depending on abstraction & not on concrete implementation, we can reduce that risk by not having to change high-level modules in our project. Finally, DIP when applied correctly gives us flexibility and stability at the level of the entire architecture of our application. Our application will be able to evolve more securely and become stable & robust. Conclusion As you can see we took a basic example of code & converted it into a reusable, flexible & modular piece of code. If I would have to summarize DIP in simple & short sentence then it would be like: . D o not use the concrete object directly unless you have a strong reason to do so. Use abstraction instead DIP trains us to think about classes in terms of behavior, rather than construction or implementation. Previously published at http://www.vishalchovatiya.com/dependency-inversion-principle-in-cpp-solid-as-a-rock/

SOLID Design: Dependency Inversion Principle in C++ 

In this article I'll be walking you through the complete process of availing and unboxing the Github's Student Developer Pack. This article is especially for developers who are currently in enrolled as a student in some University or College. And if you are Student, Github's Student Developer Pack is one of the best resources that you can avail as a Student. It will help get students start out as developers. The GitHub Student Developer Pack delivers $200k worth of tools and training to every student. GitHub is committed to students having access to the best real-world tools and training required to get started as developers. In the first part, I'll be covering each and every step to avail the Student Developer pack and in the Second part, I'll  go through the various benifits and how to get most out of it. So, Let's get started! PART-1: AVAILING THE PACK You can view the Student Developer Pack and all the things that come with it by going . here Step-1: Providing relevant information. Go to and, in the top right, click . Step 1.1 -> GitHub Education Get benefits Under “Which best describes your academic status?”, select student. Step 1.2 -> Add or Select the email address you use for school Step 1.3 -> (If you are adding another email you have to go to your GitHub setting and have to that one). Now,You have to give the proof of your academic status. Step 1.4 -> Click Use your camera to take a picture or place your valid academic ID or other proof of current academic status, then click Take a photo or If you can’t take a picture of your proof of academic status, to upload an image from your computer instead, click Upload image. Make sure that you provide a relevant proof, else it might get rejected. In case your application gets rejected, you can apply again :) Enter your school’s name. Step 1.5 -> You have to describe how you plan to use GitHub. Step 1.6 -> Submit your information Step 1.7 -> Step-2: Getting Verification Email. Once you have applied for Github's Student Developer Pack, then you may receive an email from Github confirming that you have successfully availed the Student Developer Pack. Congratulations!! Here is the screenshot of the mail that I received. PART-2: Unboxing Github's Developers Pack Now the question arises, What's in the pack??, and how can it be for me!?? beneficial Well, my simple answer is, EVERYTHING, this pack contains everything that you required to get started with Coding and development. It contains many premium services and software that you can utilise in order to learn new skills. GitHub is very committed to students having full access to the best real-world tools and training required to get started as developers. Even if you’re building your first website, and want to host it for the global market, or hardware hacking — the Pack provides you with the tools you need to be successful. I'll be introducing you with all the tool and services in order in form of cards as provided by Github itself. chronological Github's Pack contains the following:- The end of long list. So these are all the services and tools that Github provides you for free. Phew! Now that was a lot, wasn’t it! If you ever feel intimidated by all these, just take a deep breath and start slow and simple — one step at a time. Feel free to reach out to me anytime if you want to discuss something. I would be more than happy if you send your feedback, suggestions. Moreover, I love to make new friends and we can be friends, just drop me an email. Image Credit: from Github.Resources import Web: https://portfolio.abhisheksrivastava.me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theprogrammedenthusiast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishek-srivastava-49482a190/ Github: https://github.com/abhishek2x Email: abhisheksrivastavabbn@gmail.com

Guide to GitHub’s Student Developer Pack in 2020

is a Puerto Rican-American software developer, businessman, activist, philanthropist, and tech entrepreneur who has started multiple online and software-based businesses. He is the founder of an online media, and education company that has leveraged the power of social media and technology to transform the lives of the students all throughout Latin America. Tony is on a humanitarian mission to help the 3 million people who live on the island of Puerto Rico, by teaching the principles of technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He thinks the word "nerd" should be considered a curse word in school, as it shames kids from being smart and excelling in life. He wants to change young people's mindsets and make them become open-minded and have a different view of technology and the opportunities it contains. Tony Delgado Disrupt, What does it take to open someone's mind and change his mindset? Tony knows that his mission is not another simple mission. Tony has, therefore, focused on knowledge as his number one priority. He wants to enlighten people in Puerto Rico. Using Technology and Entrepreneurship To Fight Inequality In Puerto Rico Unless you live under the rock, you must be knowing how hard Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico. Tony Delgado was among the people who went there to access the situation on the ground and possibly help how they could rebuild and restore the devastated Island. He interacted with the people, and as a tech entrepreneur, he was fast to notice that Puerto Rico was missing big in the technological sector. Forced to rethink his priorities, Tony resigned from his lucrative job as a CTO in Fownders, a social impact accelerator owned by one of Tony's biggest mentors, Gerard Adams. At the time, Delgado and Adams were investing in minority-owned businesses in the inner city of Newark, NJ, and providing mentorship and guidance to young Latino and African American aspiring entrepreneurs in the area. Tony saw the opportunity to create a similar entrepreneur movement to help the people in his home country of Puerto Rico. Tony, 34, spent a significant amount of time around computers. Throughout his career, Tony had previously worked with top companies in the technology sector, including LG Electronics, Google, and Microsoft. Raised by his single mother, who also happened to be a computer programmer, he had access to a computer at a young age, which prompted him to learn coding in the 2nd grade. As he grew, his entrepreneurial tendencies made him start selling on eBay and Amazon. He shot from $50 weekly to $3,000 in a day using the internet. Tony had concrete proof that indeed, the internet can earn you a fortune. He still believes that all you need to succeed is Wi-Fi and a Dream. In 2009, Tony scaled a 7-figure eCommerce business and launched an online magazine called Hyper Eater. It focused on music, fashion, and pop-culture. He used his programming skills to launch several online magazines, Twitter Bots, content aggregators, and secure video sharing sites. He monetized them with Google Ads and Amazon Affiliate Marketing. In 2015, Tony landed a role as a lead developer at Websignia, a digital marketing agency servicing corporate clients in the New York City metropolitan area. It was during this era that Tony became a professional developer getting his other name as a hacker. He won numerous hackathons sponsored by Fortune 500 tech companies. He then moved to New Jersey, where he became business partners with Gerald Adams, an internet entrepreneur after selling his company, Elite Daily, for $50 million to The Daily Mail. Post-Hurricane Maria During a recent interview on Tony tells the story of how he went from. Fownders, the company he started with his mentor Gerard Adams, had picked up as expected, and things were now moving on well. Tony was the CTO by then. When he heard that Hurricane Maria had struck the Island of Puerto Rico, he was among the first to answer Puerto Ricans' distress call. He saw how almost half of the households had no electricity. He supported by offering over 300 solar panel lights, among other basic needs like food and water. This was the beginning of a shift in Tony’s life. Power 105.1 FM He spent days then went back to New Jersey, where he was carrying on with his normal lifestyle. He was constantly thinking of the people he left in Puerto Rico – how they were facing economic hardships. There was a clear diversification between the rich and the poor. Only the rich had food, water, and electricity. The poor had become poorer after the incident. It was then when he took a bold step and resigned his role to go live on the Island and start a non-profit, The Disrupt Foundation. Through the foundation, Tony and his team host free hackathons, conferences, and technology workshops for college students on the island, and they were recently featured on for giving out over 100 laptops to students after the COVID-19 outbreak left many students without access to the internet. Tony has also hosted multiple Disrupt Puerto Rico hackathons helping over 1000 students to learn to code and giving away scholarships to CodeTrotters coding school in partnership with Piloto 151. Univision TV Wi-Fi and a Dream In August of 2018, Tony decided to to make the biggest impact on the island and start a new life. Knowing how powerful the internet can be, he started The Disrupt University, an online learning ecosystem that helps young adults learn the ins and outs of entrepreneurship. Disrupt University gives scholarships to students in Puerto Rico who can't afford the tuition and makes a major of its profits from customers in the United States. For every stateside student, a scholarship is given to a student from Puerto Rico. move to Puerto Rico Tony Delgado is now a full-time resident of Puerto Rico, where he has not derailed from his blueprint – helping the people of the island and improving the economy using entrepreneurship. He knows that by teaching young people how to make money online, and how to run a social media powered business, that would grow the economy of Puerto Rico. Tony has since helped start multiple socially impactful startups, disrupting the online space, that have all been launched from the comfort of his home in Puerto Rico. Among them are , , The Disrupt Foundation, and, ultimately, the . Latino Wall Street Disrupt Week Disrupt Magazine Today, Disrupt tells the stories of the world's top entrepreneurs, developers, creators, and digital marketers and is on a mission to help make tech cool. Disrupt helps empower young people to teach others the skills they used to grow their careers, chase their passions and create financial freedom for themselves, their families, and their lives, all while living out their true purpose. The Disrupt Podcast has now been host to over 100 interviews and that number continues to grow every day.

Disrupt Founder Tony Delgado Launches Coding Bootcamp In Puerto Rico 

Long story short: F*ck Yes! As I explained on two , I was lately focusing my time on learning at the same time I was managing a business. previous posts how to code Now that the last one didn't need as much attention as it needed at the first 2-3 years, I could finally focus on programming. I tried first some online courses and books with little success, but at least I learnt there the basics of software thinking: arrays, strings, loops, variables, functions... you know, the usual jargon. However, I was clearly lacking a proper roadmap and a schedule, so it was difficult for me to "make" something out of my limited coding knowledge. Yes, I could build HTML/CSS basic websites, but oh my god... they looked -and worked- like a 90's website. So I was sticking-and stuck- to my old Wordpress knowledge when it came to building real stuff. After giving it some thought (explained ), I decided to enroll on the best on my hometown, Barcelona. here part-time coding bootcamp And I knew right on the first class week that it was the best decission possible. 6 months forward (Yesterday), I presented my final project: a website where you can sign up / log in and then create, modify and delete things, made with on the frontend, on the backend and a database. React Node + Express MongoDB For people like me, who love to build online websites, It feels crazy empowering to be able to write those lines, put them together and see a final proper-working site. As someone said: “There is a great satisfaction that comes with truly creating something from scratch, and having a deep understanding of how your code works and how to manipulate it.” But I mean, finishing a coding Bootcamp is not the end, . You finish this course with the basic knowledge, so you can put your feet on the door of a company, get a junior developer job and start learning the real thing. Or, if you're more the entrepreneurship type, like me, then continue building stuff for your own. is just the beginning I feel now like my head is a lot clearer, I can see better. I had so many technical words and concepts related to programming flying around my mind without any order, but after those 6 months, every single one is in place and, most importantly, . I can make the connections between them And I also learned how to learn coding. There's no magic on a bootcamp, just work and tons of practice. I've been very lucky as well to have a great teacher, , who's passionate about the subject and passionate as well about teaching it, and three great TA's that were helping us padawans on the way: and . I think that's very important. Thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. Thor Alex, Manu Jorge So, if you really like this world and you're thinking about it, I can tell you that, for me at least, it's been one of the best professional investments on my life. So, how to make the most out of it? That's what I felt: - .  I've seen classmates learning it from scratch during the bootcamp as well, but I think is a lot better if you struggle first doing one or two free online coding courses and then learn the fundamentals. That will help you a lot. And make sure as well that you really really like this stuff. Don't sign up for a coding Bootcamp with zero previous knowledge on coding - For me, . I believe the full-time 2 month course is too concentrated, because I'm no genius and, on my mind, I need the concepts to sit in place with a lot of reiterated practice. Coding is very hard at the beginning and you need to understand well the basics before learning the next steps. For example, you will struggle learning React if you didn't learn properly Javascript before. 6 month part-time has been perfect - Theory will be good, but you need to write a lot of messy code, so your mind can learn how to think in a new way, the programming way. It's a safe environment, so try new things and break constantly your websites and apps, without comparing yourself to other classmates. Practice a lot. By the way, you don't need a Mac to program decently, I've done it all with my beloved laptop and I couldn't be happier with it :) Xubuntu That's it, I'm very open to any questions in regards of the coding bootcamp experience. Now let's go build some things!

I Just Finished a Coding Bootcamp... Was It Worth It?

This is the second part of a five-part series about SOLID as Rock design principle. The SOLID design principles, when combined together, make it easy for a programmer to craft software that is easy to maintain, reuse & extend. pen- losed rinciple(OCP) is the second principle in this series which I will discuss here with minimalistic example in along with its benefits & generic guideline. O C P Modern C++ /!\: Originally published @ . www.vishalchovatiya.com By the way, If you haven't gone through my previous articles on design principles, then below is the quick links: RP -- Single Responsibility Principle S CP -- Open/Closed Principle O SP -- Liskov Substitution Principle L SP -- Interface Segregation Principle I IP -- Dependency Inversion Principle D The code snippets you see throughout this series of articles are simplified not sophisticated. So you often see me not using keywords like override, final, public(while inheritance) just to make code compact & consumable(most of the time) in single standard screen size. I also prefer struct instead of class just to save line by not writing "public:" sometimes and also miss , constructor, , prefix std::, deleting dynamic memory, intentionally. I also consider myself a pragmatic person who wants to convey an idea in the simplest way possible rather than the standard way or using Jargons. virtual destructor copy constructor Note: If you stumbled here directly, then I would suggest you go through first, even if it is trivial. I believe it will encourage you to explore more on this topic. What is design pattern? All of this code you encounter in this series of articles are compiled using C++20(though I have used features up to C++17 in most cases). So if you don't have access to the latest compiler you can use which has preinstalled boost library as well. Modern C++ https://wandbox.org/ Intent classes should be open for extension, closed for modification This literally means you should be able to extend a classes behaviour, without modifying it. This might seems weird to you & may raise a question that how can you change the behaviour of a class without modifying it? But there are many answers to this in like , , template, etc. object-oriented design dynamic polymorphism static polymorphism Violating the Open Closed Principle RED, GREEN, BLUE }; SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE }; m_name;
 COLOR m_color;
 SIZE m_size;
}; Items = <Product*>; {
 Items result; ( &i : items) (i->m_color == e_color)
 result.push_back(i); result;
 } {
 Items result; ( &i : items) (i->m_size == e_size)
 result.push_back(i); result;
 } {
 Items result; ( &i : items) (i->m_size == e_size && i->m_color == e_color)
 result.push_back(i); result;
 }
}; { Items all{ Product{ , COLOR::GREEN, SIZE::SMALL}, Product{ , COLOR::GREEN, SIZE::LARGE}, Product{ , COLOR::BLUE, SIZE::LARGE},
 }; ( &p : ProductFilter::by_color(all, COLOR::GREEN)) << p->m_name << ; ( &p : ProductFilter::by_size_and_color(all, SIZE::LARGE, COLOR::GREEN)) << p->m_name << ; EXIT_SUCCESS;
} enum { class COLOR enum { class SIZE { struct Product string using vector # ALL(C) begin(C), end(C) define { struct ProductFilter Items static by_color (Items items, COLOR e_color) const for auto if return Items static by_size (Items items, SIZE e_size) const for auto if return Items static by_size_and_color (Items items, SIZE e_size, COLOR e_color) const const for auto if return int main () const new "Apple" new "Tree" new "House" for auto cout " is green\n" for auto cout " is green & large\n" return /*
Apple is green
Tree is green
Tree is green & large
*/ So we have a bunch of products & we filtered it by some of its attributes. There is nothing wrong with the above code as far as the requirement is fixed(which will never be the case in software engineering). But just imagine the situations: You already shipped the code to the client. Later on, requirement changes & some new filters are required. In this case, you again need to modify the class & add new filter methods. This is a problematic approach because we have 2 attributes(i.e. color & size) & need to implement 3 function(i.e. color, size & its combination), one more attributes & need to implement 8 functions. You see where this is going.You need to go again & again in the existing implemented code & have to modify it which may break other parts of code as well. This is not a scalable solution. The open-closed principle states that your system should be open to extension but should be closed for modification. Unfortunately what we are doing here is modifying the existing code which is a violation of OCP. Open Closed Principle Example There is more than one way to achieve OCP. Here I am demonstrating the popular one i.e. interface design or abstraction level. So here is our scalable solution: Adding the level of abstraction for extensibility < T> ~Specification() = ; = ;
}; Specification<Product> {
 COLOR e_color;
 ColorSpecification(COLOR e_color) : e_color(e_color) {} { item->m_color == e_color; }
}; Specification<Product> {
 SIZE e_size;
 SizeSpecification(SIZE e_size) : e_size(e_size) {} { item->m_size == e_size; }
}; < T> <T *> filter( <T *> items, Specification<T> &spec) = ;
}; Filter<Product> { <Product *> filter( <Product *> items, Specification<Product> &spec) { <Product *> result; ( &p : items) (spec.is_satisfied(p))
 result.push_back(p); result;
 }
}; BetterFilter bf; ( &x : bf.filter(all, ColorSpecification(COLOR::GREEN))) << x->m_name << ; template typename { struct Specification virtual default virtual bool is_satisfied (T *item) const 0 : struct ColorSpecification bool is_satisfied (Product *item) const return : struct SizeSpecification bool is_satisfied (Product *item) const return template typename { struct Filter virtual vector vector const 0 : struct BetterFilter vector vector const vector for auto if return // ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ for auto cout " is green\n" As you can see we do not have to modify filter method of BetterFilter. It can work with all kind of specification now. For two or more combined specifications < T> Specification<T> { Specification<T> &first; Specification<T> &second;

 AndSpecification( Specification<T> &first, Specification<T> &second)
 : first(first), second(second) {} { first.is_satisfied(item) && second.is_satisfied(item); 
 }
}; < T>
AndSpecification<T> &&( Specification<T> &first, Specification<T> &second) { {first, second};
} green_things = ColorSpecification{COLOR::GREEN}; large_things = SizeSpecification{SIZE::LARGE};

BetterFilter bf; ( &x : bf.filter(all, green_things &&large_things)) << x->m_name << ; template typename : struct AndSpecification const const const const bool is_satisfied (T *item) const return template typename operator const const return // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- auto auto for auto cout " is green and large\n" // warning: the following will compile but will NOT work // auto spec2 = SizeSpecification{SIZE::LARGE} && // ColorSpecification{COLOR::BLUE}; SizeSpecification{SIZE::LARGE} && ColorSpecification{COLOR::BLUE} will not work. Experienced C++ eyes can easily recognize the reason. Though temporary object creation is a hint here. If you do so, you may get the error of as follows: pure virtual function pure method called
terminate called without an active exception
The terminal process terminated with code: virtual exit 3 For more than two specifications, you can use a variadic template. Benefits of Open Closed Principle => Extensibility "When a single change to a program results in a cascade of changes to dependent modules, that program exhibits the undesirable attributes that we have come to associate with 'bad' design. The program becomes fragile, rigid, unpredictable and unreusable. The open-closed principle attacks this in a very straightforward way. It says that you should design modules that never change. When requirements change, you extend the behaviour of such modules by adding new code, not by changing old code that already works." — Robert Martin => Maintainability The main benefit of this approach is that an interface introduces an additional level of abstraction which enables loose coupling. The implementations of an interface are independent of each other and don’t need to share any code. Thus, you can easily cope-up with client's keep changing requirements. Very useful in agile methodologies. => Flexibility The open-closed principle also applies to plugin and middleware architecture. In that case, your base software entity is your application core functionality. In the case of plugins, you have a base or core module that can be plugged with new features & functionality through a common gateway interface. A good example of this is web browser extensions. Binary compatibility will also be in-tact in subsequent releases. Yardstick to Craft Open Closed Principle Friendly Software In the SRP, you make a judgement about decomposition and where to draw encapsulation boundaries in your code. In the OCP, you make a judgement about what in your module you will make abstract and leave to your module’s consumers to make concrete, and what concrete functionality to provide yourself. There are many design patterns that help us to extend code without changing it. For instance, the helps us to follow Open Close principle. Also, the , or the might be used to design an application easy to change with minimum changes in the existing code. Decorator pattern Factory Method Strategy pattern Observer pattern Conclusion Keep in mind that classes can never be completely closed. There will always be unforeseen changes which require a class to be modified. However, if changes can be foreseen, such as seen above i.e. filters, then you have a perfect opportunity to apply the OCP to be future-ready when those change requests come rolling in. Have Any Suggestions, Query or Wants to Say Hi? 🖱️ Take the Pressure Off, You Are Just a Click Away. Previously published at http://www.vishalchovatiya.com/open-closed-principle-in-cpp-solid-as-a-rock/

Open Closed Principle: SOLID as a Rock 

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LetsUpgrade Free Coding School

About a month ago I started Microverse’s Technical Curriculum and two days ago I finished its first module, HTML and CSS. Before this experience, I didn’t have much knowledge about these two technologies. I didn’t have much experience with writing for computers at all. As an absolute beginner, I think that starting with the basics of the front end is a good idea even if you’re not planning to touch them ever again. This is because learning them correctly will set you on the right path for the rest of your journey. When you start writing HTML and CSS, which by the way aren’t considered programming languages but instructions your browser reads to render beautiful websites, you’ll find yourself entering a new world that although at the very beginning may seem daunting, in a matter of a few days you’ll start to recognize as familiar and ever easier to understand. I think that the most frustrating part of learning HTML and CSS is getting the basics of positioning right. You’ll find explanations of how your browser reads your code from top to bottom and how it is going to be displayed this way. However, soon enough you’ll find that this explanation is too limiting and you’ll find yourself thinking of ways to position your elements in more interesting ways. How about positioning them side to side, fix them on top, center their content and so on. I’ve come up with a simple list of items newbies should keep in mind when they’re just starting their coding journey and they are the following: 1. Every HTML element should be thought of as a box This is the first and maybe the most important concept to keep in mind. Whenever you write an HTML element, think of it as a box with some characteristics and attributes you can change to make your page look the way you want it to look. Once you start learning CSS you’ll find something called “The Box Model”. It states that every element on your HTML page is wrapped by a series of boxes. At the very center of everything, there’s your content. The first box that wraps it is its padding, followed by its borders and finally its margins. Some tools will help you visualize this better. I’ve been using “Pesticide” by Paul Molluzo ( ) and its been a game-changer for me. This is a Google Chrome extension that’ll highlight all the boxes inside any website and will give you a better outlook of how thing are working. I’d recommend you try it first with some of your favourite websites and then use it to debug your sites once you start coding. https://paul.molluzzo.com 2. Absolute and relative positioning is not the end The first thing you’re going to learn about positioning is how to position your elements either absolutely or relatively. At first, these concepts do not make any sense. At all. Don’t worry. These properties are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to positioning. The more you learn, you’ll find that there’s a pretty vast toolset that will help you overcome the limitations of absolute and relative positioning. There’re floats and flexbox, and don’t get me started with grids. They’re awesome and I’ve found myself using them for almost every project I’ve been working on lately. However, you do need to learn absolute, relative, fixed and sticky positioning. I found this video to be a superb resource when I was just starting to learn CSS. It explains the basics of these properties and clears out any confusion you may have had about them. You should repeat it as many times as you need it and work on some projects only using these type of positioning before moving onto learning more interesting tools. It’ll suck big time, but it’ll be worth it later on. 3. Using linters and validators I found out about HTML validators and CSS linters while working on my first Microverse project and I wish I knew about them from the beginning. These tools will help you to produce code of better quality and one that conforms to styling norms that make it easier to read. For my HTML files, I use the W3C Markup Validation Service ( ), and for my CSS files I use Stickler ( ). https://validator.w3.org https://stickler-ci.com These two tools have helped me a lot to correct the small mistakes that’ll inevitably appear when I work on my projects. Even if you are the type of person that notices every single mistake, it’ll be hard to keep up with them once your files start to increase in size and there are too many lines to account for. My advice is that you get used to using these services or any other tools alike so when your code is audited it is more legible and easier to inspect. 4. Drawing your projects before coding them This one is a technique that I’ve applied in many of my projects to visualize them better before jumping into my code editor. When you’re working on complex projects, be it cloning a huge website, or making one from scratch, it is easy to get confused and lost with how many containers you’ll need, where they’re going to go, what positioning technique you’re going to use and so many other factors. Drawing your websites on a sheet of paper will help you to get an overview of the complexity of the project and at the very least to write a basic skeleton for how you’re going to structure your code. This one’s a technique that’s worked for me many times and I hope that works for you as well. So this is it! This is some of the advice that I’ve come up with after a month and a half of coding HTML and CSS for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. I hope that these little tips work for you and make your journey a bit easier. Happy coding!

HTML and CSS Tips From a Newbie

I decided to write this post before being aware of the recent hit pieces against Lambda School (LS) that have been published around (particularly by The Verge and by New York Magazine). In the light of these two pieces, I think the timing is perfect to take a journey of what going through LS was like for me. I was enrolled last year in the 19th cohort of the WEB course and just graduated last November. I hope this post can help other potential students make a more informed decision. this one this one Why I got into Lambda School In college, I did a double major in Industrial Engineering and Economics. Economics, however, wasn’t my first choice for a second major. My first choice had been Software Engineering (SE). I had picked SE because, as part of the Industrial Engineering curriculum, we had to take two JavaScript courses and, while most of my classmates had hated those courses, I’d loved them. I found coding challenging and very rewarding at the same time. So I decided to give Software Engineering a try. What happened, then? Why did I end up taking Economics instead of SE? Well, apparently destiny would let me know that SE wasn’t for me. As I began a new semester, now as an Industrial Engineering and SE student, most of the classes I was going to take were from Industrial Engineering. One, however, was from the SE curriculum. I don’t remember the name of the class right now (wow! I’m just realizing it’s been more than 10 years since then), but I expected something related to the previous JavaScript classes I had taken. Instead, what I had gotten into was the most abstract and boring class I had ever attended. It had nothing to do with code or programming — it was one of those typical university fill classes that end up adding little to no value to your life. I never understood what the hell was going on. It was hell. Being that that was my welcome class to SE, I got frightened and decided it wasn’t for me. In retrospect, I think I could have given SE another chance back then. Maybe with another class. I had assumed most of the curriculum would be like that when maybe that wasn’t true. In any case, I decided to switch from SE to Economics for my second major. A feeling of what would have happened if I had done SE, however, always stayed with me. And the feeling grew as time passed and tech became more and more prominent. Had I missed an opportunity? That’s why when I heard about LS I jumped at the opportunity. Learning to code in just 9 months was a proposal I could not let go. If it had been 4 years, as a traditional university degree, I would have never done it. 9 months, on the other hand, was nothing. Especially taking into consideration that LS graduates were already being hired at tech companies, which signaled to me that it wasn’t a less-time, lower-quality kind of deal, but rather something different. And so I embarked in the LS journey. The Lambda Experience To understand LS, you need to understand their business model. In contrast to how a traditional education works, LS doesn’t charge anything upfront. They only charge once you get a job. They do this through a figure called an ISA, which basically is a contract in which you agree to pay Lambda School a percentage of your future earnings once you get a job. For me, this aspect is the most important differentiator between LS and other bootcamps and also between LS and a traditional education. It aligns the incentives between LS and its students in a very direct way: if students don’t get hired, Lambda doesn’t get paid. Quite different from how traditional education works. In one of the recent mentioned at the beginning of this article, the author argues that incentives between LS and its students are no longer aligned, since LS has started selling the ISAs to investors. hit pieces Even though at first sight this practice may seem troublesome, the reality is that it doesn’t change Lambda’s incentives in any meaningful way, especially in the long run. Basically, if investors notice that LS students are not getting hired, they will stop buying the ISAs. Thus, for Lambda to be able to keep selling the ISAs, it needs to guarantee its students keep getting hired. Furthermore, at least in my experience, the effort to get students hired permeates every aspect of the Lambda experience. It is very noticeable that that’s the main goal of the whole organization. From what they teach to how they do it, every decision seems to be geared towards getting students hired in the most efficient way possible. In the next few sections I’m going to explore why I think this is the case and how it shapes every aspect of the Lambda experience. The curriculum: the stack you need to get a job Simply put, the stack you learn at LS is the stack most companies are looking for. Most of the available jobs I’ve looked at require the stack (or parts of it) you’re taught at LS. No ugly surprises here! At least in the WEB course, which was the one I was enrolled in, there’s a very good match between technologies taught and technologies looked for. Specifically, the WEB course is divided into 5 topics: 1) HTML and CSS; 2) Applied JavaScript and introduction to React; 3) Advanced React; 4) Backend; and 5) Computer Science. Let’s delve into each one of these. During the first part, you’ll learn the building blocks of the WEB: HTML and CSS. Without these two, there would be no WEB — they’re literally present in every website you use. They’re maybe not that sexy, but completely fundamental. Next, you learn some basic JavaScript and how it is applied to the WEB and you get an introduction to the most popular framework for building websites: React. This section, in my opinion, is where things start getting interesting. I found React to be an amazing tool. At this point, you start getting a glimpse of how complex, scalable and dynamic apps are built. To get an idea of the importance of React, check out some of the or built with it. websites apps In the next section you basically get deeper into React, learning some skills needed to develop complex apps. In the 4th section of the curriculum, you learn what’s called backend development, which basically means how to store the information your app uses. For this part of the curriculum, you get to choose the backend language you’d prefer to learn: Node.js or Java. I chose Node.js because it’s basically JavaScript for the backend, but you’ll be free to choose whichever you want. For me, the backend portion of the curriculum wasn’t as magical as the frontend part (all the previous sections) since I’m more design inclined. A lot of my classmates, however, preferred backend development. Last, but not least, Computer Science. I truly loved this part of the curriculum. And I loved it for two reasons. First, because you get to learn Python, which is a beautiful and very useful language. It’s great with numbers, very useful for backend development and also getting a lot of prominence within the Data Science field. Secondly, because you get to learn some more complex stuff such as algorithms, data structures and computer architecture which, for me, where eye-opening. This stuff isn’t for everyone though — most of my classmates struggled during this part of the course. Computer Science, however, is absolutely needed to get a job, and that’s why it’s taught. Basically, most interviews are filled with Computer Science questions and problems you need to know how to solve. The approach: fast-paced and practical Because time at Lambda is so short, talking about a semester or a quarter doesn’t make sense. Instead, the curriculum is divided into Units and Sprints. Each Unit lasts one month and represents a big block of knowledge — i.e. HTML and CSS. Further, each Unit is divided into four Sprints that last one week each and represent smaller chunks of knowledge that add up to that one big block that encompasses a complete topic. At Lambda, you get evaluated at the end of each Sprint and each Unit. Each Friday, which represents the end of a Sprint, you’re asked to do a Sprint Challenge, which basically means a practical evaluation in which you show you’ve grasped the topics taught during the week. In my experience, Sprint Challenges closely reflected what was taught during every week and were relatively easy to pass. If you don’t pass, however, it’s not the end of the world. At Lambda, when you don’t pass a Sprint you get into what’s called Flex, a program that lets you repeat the week before going on to the next Sprint. It’s basically a second chance. I find this to be particularly important for learning to code, since repetition is so important to grasp all these concepts. The second pass you give these topics feels completely different from the first one. At the end of each Unit you get evaluated as well. This time, the evaluation lasts a whole week and is called a Build Week. During a Build Week, you’re assigned to a team comprised of students from different courses (you can get into a team with UX and Data Science students) and cohorts within Lambda, to build an MVP for a given product. You learn a lot through these Build Weeks, and not just about the topics of the given Unit, but also about working together with other people to build software. Build Weeks give you a glimpse of what the real job looks like. Additionally, the products built during Build Weeks can serve as the initial projects of your portfolio. As said before, time at Lambda is very short. This makes the days long and packed with knowledge. It’s not easy. At the end of the day, Lambda packs almost 4 years of knowledge into 9 short months. During this process, it is common to feel overwhelmed by so much that’s going on; by so much new information. Imposter syndrome can become a common feeling. At the same time, however, you learn so much that each day that passes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. At the end of each Sprint, it’s hard to recognize the developer you were at the beginning of the week. And at the end of each Unit, you’re amazed at what you can now do; at what you’re able to understand and code. The process is hard, frustrating and requires a lot of hard work, but the rewards are worth it! Lambda Labs Lambda Labs is a program that intends for Lambda students to experience a real life, professional software development experience. Labs happens at the end of the first 4 Units of your curriculum (before Computer Science) and lasts 2 months. As opposed to Build Weeks, in which the objective is to develop a rough MVP, in Labs you get to develop a polished product — or at least a polished first version of a product. This product might be developed for an external (real) client or for an internal client. In my case, I got to develop the first version of a Data Visualization tool for an ONG that operates in Africa. This product was so important for the ONG that we had a meeting every week with the CTO to report on updates. Throughout these 2 months, the way in which you’re asked to develop the product intends to closely resemble a professional environment. For the first few weeks, there’s no code involved in the process, as everything you do qualifies as meta-work. What happens during these first few weeks is all the planning, scoping, strategizing and thinking needed to do so that the product gets delivered as intended. During these few weeks, you get to learn some of the best practices for software development planning and scoping available out there, such as product cycles, feature canvases and user stories. After this planning phase is done, you get to start coding. Problem-solving becomes a necessary ability for your team as it’s common to need to learn new technologies to be able to deliver what was planned. For my project, the data we received was in such a convoluted format that the first step for us was to develop an ETL that took that data and translated it into something we could work with. Before getting into that project, we had no idea what an ETL was, but we had to figure it out to be able to deliver, just as in a real life professional setting. That process took almost three weeks and was one of the highlights of my Labs experience. Throughout this whole process, additionally, you are assigned an Engineering Manager (someone with lots of software development experience at Lambda) that’s in charge of overlooking product development. We had meetings with our Engineering Manager once or twice a week to put him up to speed on the state of the project and also to strategize and ask him for directions about aspects we weren’t sure about. Frequently, these meetings became problem solving sessions in our Engineering Manager’s whiteboard which felt (in my mind) like part of the early stages of a new and exciting startup. These kinds of details made the experience much more enjoyable and real life-like to me. Career Help In addition to its curriculum and practical approach, another way in which LS prepares its students to get a job is through Career Help, which functions as a department within LS. From the first few weeks of your time at Lambda to the moment you get a job, you don’t stop interacting with them. Their goal: to get you into the best possible shape to land a job. Throughout your life at Lambda, Career Help assists you with your resume, LinkedIn profile, portfolio page, interviews, networking and many other career related aspects. I found their help particularly valuable for polishing my resume and online presence. In my case, the advice and suggestions received amounted to those little, but very important details that take a resume or LinkedIn profile from average to very professional. With regards to their interviewing and networking advice and lessons, I personally found most of the material common sense. To other students with less professional experience, however, these services might be more useful. After Lambda I haven’t gotten a job. In part because I haven’t gotten into the task of fully looking for a job — I’ve been occupied with some important personal matters, but also because I’m not sure whether that’s the path I want to follow. I may start my own company instead. Let me say, though, that after graduating they put A LOT of effort into getting you hired. Since graduating from Lambda, however, I’ve done other interesting stuff which I couldn’t have done without the knowledge I acquired at LS. I developed using a novel backend technology called , for which I get paid monthly for being part of their App Mining Program. I got a sponsorship for Programming Bitcoin course in San Francisco. I wrote on Python (based on Jimmy’s class), which means I can now use the Bitcoin network using only my own code (this blows my mind!). And most recently I’ve been involved in contributing to , which is one of Bitcoin’s most important open source projects. All this in just a few months since graduation. All this, impossible without Lambda. my own app Blockstack Jimmy Song’s my own Bitcoin library BTCPay Server Some Final Thoughts Lambda is a marathon. A 9 month marathon with lots of ups and downs. It’s hard, exhausting and frequently overwhelming. Reaching the goal line, however, is so rewarding that makes the experience 100% worth it. And not just because you reach the goal line knowing how to code (and are probably close to land a job), but also (and most importantly in my opinion) because when you reach the goal you realize you have become a new, better version of yourself than you were 9 months before. Being able to go through such an arduous experience gives you a self confidence boost not much else can. It feels great! I would do it again and recommend it 100% to anyone willing to put in the effort. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments regarding my experience at Lambda. Previously published at https://medium.com/@jj.erlich155/going-through-lambda-school-6545597bdd92

Going Through Lambda School

After training 100s of developers at multiple bootcamps, I believe it is my responsibility to share my learnings on what makes an excellent student and what steps you can take to survive and thrive in an intensive development bootcamp. software Before I dive into the main content here is a little background. I teach web development bootcamp in Houston for . The length of the bootcamp is 16 weeks. The students at bootcamp come from different backgrounds. Some students just graduated college while others have been working in different fields for few years. Needless to say most of the students have little or no prior experience. DigitalCrafts programming Preparation After you have applied and got into a bootcamp don’t just sit and wait for the bootcamp to start. Use this time wisely and prepare for the bootcamp. You can start by going through online coding exercises, reading books etc. Preparing and exposing yourself to programming is going to give you a much better idea of what it is like to be a software developer. The time you are going to invest in preparing for the bootcamp is going to pay dividends once the bootcamp starts. I had few students who were using Mac for the first time during their bootcamp and they did not took the time to be comfortable with the new environment. This resulted in frustration and they had to invest additional time to become comfortable with Mac and macOS. Focus Every morning I give a 2–2.5 hour lecture (with breaks in between) which is based around understanding and coding a feature using a new concept we learned in the class. During the lecture, I advice students to type code in their computers. I have experienced that when students are typing code and trying to follow the instructor they are not paying attention to the discussed in the class. Most of my top students simply use their computer or even paper and pencil to take down notes instead of constantly trying to follow every keystroke made by the instructor. Remember it is a coding class not a typing class. not concepts Punctuality Don’t be late to class… ever! Bootcamp is a faced paced environment and if you miss the first 15–30 minutes of a lecture then you have missed the big part of the main content. You have to form the habit of being on time. If you are not punctual during class time then how can you be punctual when you are working at a job. I am strict when it comes to being punctual in class. Students arriving late in my class have to do extra homework or assignments. Struggle Nobody likes to struggle but trust me when I say this that you are going to learn the most when you are struggling. Deep learning only happens when you are struggling. If you are asking for help every 2 minutes then you never ventured into the deep learning phase. Give yourself at least 30–45 minutes of struggle before you reach out for help. Sometimes you hit brick wall after a brick wall. Don’t look at it as failures but look at it from an optimistic point of view. . Most of my best students learned the most during their struggle phase and ended up much stronger and better than the students who were constantly asking for help. You did not fail you just found 10 ways that it will not work Not Open Heart Surgery Coding is not like open heart surgery, if you make a mistake nobody dies. Yet I see so many students afraid of writing wrong code. The worst that can happen is you will get compile time errors and you may see red squiggly lines in your code editor. Don’t be afraid to type code that does not work. Nobody writes perfect code the first time. Learn from the errors you receive and move forward. Breaking a Problem One of the biggest difficulty for a new developer is the ability to break the problem into smaller pieces. Always think about the solution is small steps. This does not mean that you should blindly jump into implementing a solution which has nothing to do with the rest of the application but it means that you should have an idea of how you are going to implement the solution but you should execute your plan in small steps. Take a Break I know it is a bootcamp and you are here to learn to code but that does not mean that you should not take any breaks in between. I suggest taking 10–15 minute break after every 2 hours. Taking small breaks will recharge your batteries and you will be able to tackle the problem with a fresh mind and with a different angle. There has been countless number of occasions where I was stuck on a problem for few hours, only to solve it while taking a shower or going on a long walk. Next time you are stuck on a problem, go and play a game of ping pong :) Fitness Along the same lines always try to stay fit and healthy. Programming is mostly a sitting job and sitting is the new cancer. After you are done for the day, go out for a long walk, swim, run, weight train, yoga or anything else. There is no for your health. Let me repeat that! . substitute Your health is the most important thing in the world… period Google It Big part of programming is the ability to search for solutions. It may sound easy but I have seen a lot of people struggling with searching. The reason is that sometimes you don’t know what you are searching for and other times you get overwhelmed with the results. Searching is a skill that develops overtime and if you are in the same boat then understand that it gets easier as time goes by. Start a Project This is my number #1 advice to all students. Start a project, any project using any language and framework. The project has to be something that you are passionate about, without passion you will loose motivation. Use the skills that you are learning in the bootcamp and apply it to your project. You will be amazed that how much you will learn by working on a real project. If you live in a city where there is an active civil user group then you can always work on much needed government projects. Ask for Help Nobody knows everything! There will be lot of times when you will be stuck. Do you best and try to solve the problem for 30–45 minutes. If you are not able to solve the problem then ask your peers or the instructor. Apart from that you should get yourself familiarize with online forums like . Create a free account on StackOverFlow and search for your question. It is highly unlikely that someone has not posted the same exact question. If your question is unique in nature then don’t hesitate your post your question. Remember to return the favor in few months when you have learned enough to answer questions on online forums. StackOverFlow Start a Blog Software programming has changed a lot over the course of a decade. No longer you have to sit in your mother’s basement and code 18 hours a day while eating Cheetos (although that sounds like fun). Now you need to be social and market yourself continuously. One of the ways to create your awareness if to start a blog. You can use free services like WordPress, Blogger etc. Your blog are your thoughts about anything. You can discuss what you learned today in class or how you solved a particular problem. Your blog is your place where you can be you. Attend User Groups User Groups is an excellent way to meet people and make connections. Even if you are just starting out, I would encourage you to attend user group meetings at least once a month. At the user groups try to talk to people and take genuine interest in their work. The connections you make at user groups can play an important role during your job search in the future. Stay Hungry and Stay Stupid The habit that you have formed during the course of a bootcamp will play a vital role in structuring your life. Make sure you practice every single day. Learn something new every day. Read books and blogs and absorb as much knowledge as you can. I have been developing applications for over a decade but I still wake up excited every morning, eager to learn something new. I hope that you stay curious and passionate throughout this never ending journey.

Software Development Bootcamp Survival Guide

Examining myths about coding bootcamps and sharing a little evidence to the contrary. Einstein once said: ‘ The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.’ Coding is partly about changing the way you think, so let’s start now. Let’s question how we think about coding bootcamps. #Myth 1: You need to be a Maths or Science expert. For lots of people, coding seems to come with a misconception that you need incredible knowledge of Maths or Science. In fact, to get a job you need high technical abilities. Those can be learned whatever your background. No higher maths required. If you’re not sure that your skills or background will fit, we’ll help you find out. Codeworks’ rigorous application process involves a tech interview, coding assignment and pre-course. And that’s all before you’ve set foot on our Poblenou campus. These three challenges will help you understand what exactly lies ahead of you on a course. Maths might help with these assignments, but it’s not essential. Same for Science. Oh and Computer Science. It won’t hurt to have this knowledge, but you don’t strictly need it. Think of coders and you might imagine geeks working on hard stuff that us simpletons could never comprehend. Mind-bending algebra problems that only a genius could solve. We get flashbacks to school and that feeling when your classmates miraculously ‘got it’ and perhaps you didn’t. Perhaps you just saw numbers swirling in a vortex of doom. Well, coding is the opposite. No vortex of doom. Instead we offer a lot of intense learning and a little blue sky. A background in Ping Pong always helps. © Codeworks From project managers to those working in finance, arts and the creative fields, our students come from a huge range of backgrounds. Lucy for example, joined Codeworks after teaching English in Hong Kong. Lucy switched from teaching in Hong Kong to coding and loved it. © Codeworks Our graduate George also helps to debunk this myth. George worked as a Project Manager in a marketing company before making the switch to Codeworks. He says: ‘I always thought you had a be a certain type of person who was great at maths and was a wizard with a computer. However, I can firmly say you don’t need to be Rain Man or the next Steve Wozniak to become a developer — all you need is discipline’. We agree. A pinch of discipline and a big dollop of that problem-solving mindset is more important. In fact, you could have nothing but a a degree in and still successfully pass our pre-course. Bagpiping #Myth 2: They’re too expensive When investing in your own learning, the old saying is true, you get what you pay for. Our handy table shows clearly how far your teaching hours go in comparison to other bootcamps. here Here’s a few more reasons it’s not as expensive as you think. You’re likely to get a nice salary Soon after you graduate, you’re likely to have your first developer job. Salaries obviously vary hugely depending on sector and company size. But even on a developer starting salary, the Return on Investment (ROI) is fast and secure. You’re able to safely pay back the tuition fees with the pay cheque you’re likely to earn afterwards. Cost per hour of learning is super low Have a think about how many hours of learning you need. Our course costs € 10,30 an hour for approximately 952 hours of learning. Compared to the tuition fees for relatively fewer hours of learning per week, on a longer course, we think it’s worth it. You can deal with the opportunity cost Consider the opportunity cost of spending three months at bootcamp vs. three years at University, with all the outgoings and loss of earnings that that entails. Considered in this way, bootcamp is much cheaper. As bootcamps are shorter than a degree, your total outgoings won’t be as high and you’ll be earning sooner. Barcelona is sunny and cheap Finally, the fact that you’re learning in sunny Barcelona means Renting a central, nice room in a shared apartment in Barcelona costs around €400–500 per month. Renting the equivalent in London costs on average 750 a month. Considering your free healthy breakfast and the beautiful beach on your doorstep, your quality of living is better here too. the cost of living is lower. £ The Codeworks campus terrace during a lecture © Codeworks #Myth 3: You could teach yourself the same stuff remotely When our Codeworks co-founder Alex started to learn coding, he tried to go solo for a couple months. He taught himself wherever and whenever he had a chair and a laptop. He says: “It ended up as just me and the monitor and I knew it wouldn’t work. After a certain point, you hit some walls. We’re born to interact. We’re social beings.” A lecture at the Codeworks campus © Codeworks To successfully join Codeworks, you need to be familiar with coding fundamentals, and have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, HTML and CSS. If you’re not yet familiar with the fundamentals, we’ll provide you with the materials to get there. Yes, you could try to learn this theory by yourself, just as Alex did, but it would only get you so far. Immersing yourself fully in the Codeworks campus is proven to be a more effective approach. Like learning a language, you need to surround yourself in what you’re learning. You’ll need that original ‘teach yourself’ mentality, but it’s crucial to on that prior learning with others. build A little daily interaction is good for the mind! © Codeworks Without great support, people normally get stuck along the way and lose motivation, eventually giving up. That’s why our retention rate is high. If you get stuck a team of instructors are on hand to help you. You’re never alone on campus! We even have dogs hanging around to boost your motivation. What’s more, working remotely wouldn’t include the important extras a bootcamp offers, like pitching ideas, presenting in front of a group and interviews with potential employers during our Hiring Day. So there you have it. Immersion works. #Myth 4: Bootcamp won’t give you a job This is a funny one. It’s not a myth, it’s true. No bootcamp will you a job on a plate. give Let’s break it down. ‘Bootcamp’ is a broad umbrella term. Dig a little deeper and the more immersive bootcamps should have rigorous data available. Investigate how they measure their hiring rate. Do they count internships in that rate? Some bootcamp programs are light, others are more advanced and so cost more money. Some will get you up and running, coding your first website. Others will direct you to a more professional outcome. is one of those. Whether it’s for your startup, or to join an existing team, we’ll get you 100% of our recent graduates who looked for work after finishing the course, are now in work. That figure includes Hannah who says: Codeworks ready. “I wanted to learn the front–end and the back–end, to get a career in tech.” And that’s just what she did. After graduating, Hannah got a job as a Full-Stack Engineer at rapidly growing, Barcelona based . Glovo Hannah wanted a career in tech, and like the rest of our cohort, she got one. © Codeworks We at Codeworks only count real coding jobs like Hannah’s when we calculate our hiring rate. Product management, marketing and design don’t count as successes in our statistics. Our rate is measured as the percentage of students who receive a job offer within six months of graduation from Codeworks, as long as they can legally work in the EU and are actively looking for employment. After this time, if one of our students doesn’t receive a job offer, we count it as a failure. Our CV management includes a headshot for your LinkedIn profile, and interview tips. © Codeworks Basically, we take outcomes seriously. We have the highest standard in the industry: many institutions don’t specify how they calculate their graduates’ hiring rate, and their stats include jobs that are not related to coding. Codeworks is completely . transparent about this We won’t give you a role on a plate. We’ll give you all the ingredients to cook up a job for yourself. Those ingredients include interview tips, professional CV management and networking opportunities. Most of all they include the skills built over the three month course that enable you to win your first offer. Student David (left) meets IBM at Hiring Day on campus. © Codeworks You’ll need to put some effort in too of course. We encourage students to put aside plenty of time towards the end of the course to send out batches of tailor made applications. The tech sector is thriving with job opportunities and we select our students well. If this is you, we’ll train you in best possible way, and get you in touch with top companies that are looking to expand their teams. If you’re interested in finding out more about jobs after bootcamp, get in touch. #Myth 5: Bootcamps don’t give you the certificate you need. Codeworks is proudly unaccredited. We don’t give you a certificate for one simple reason, you don’t need one. That’s why most coding bootcamps don’t pursue accreditation for their courses, like a traditional College or University might. Your future employers actually don’t want a certificate, so they won’t be asking you for one. Instead, for most jobs, you’ll take a technical test, using much of what you’ve learnt on the program. In this test employers will want to see your solution to a problem. They’ll know that problem inside out. They’ll know the places you might trip up, and how your solution would work long term. It’s down to you to find the solution. You’ll need to simply knuckle down and breeze through the hiring process. © Codeworks So shift your mindset a little and remember you’re learning dynamic new skills rather than gaining a piece of paper. Going into interviews for your post bootcamp developer position will be a purely test-driven, rather than qualification-driven experience. We could happily give you a certificate, but without being able to apply your skills in a test or in a team, it could be a little tokenistic. As graduate Cameron adds, “Once you’ve graduated, don’t worry too much about not having that pure computer science theory in place because it’s rarely asked of you. I would suggest having your finger on the pulse for the techniques, patterns and best practice from leaders in the field.” Graduate Cameron enjoys writing well-organised, clean code in his new job. © Codeworks After graduating, Cameron got a job as a Above all, companies are looking for candidates like him, with an ability to learn quickly. They’ll see if you’re a good culture fit and have the right attitude. They’ll test your technical prowess. Don’t worry, you’re not always expected to be an expert in a specific code or programme. You should have a solid foundation in programming fundamentals, but you might not be tested on this theory. We’re confident that after bootcamp, you’ll learn whatever tech stack the company uses. You’ll pick it up with your new ability to learn fast and solve the problem at hand. Software Engineer at Fiit. Whatever your doubts about coding bootcamps, keep an open mind. Have a look at the evidence and ask your potential bootcamps for missing information, they should provide it. There are all sorts of ways to learn coding. We’ve dispelled a few myths here, but that’s not to suggest Codeworks is for everyone. Everyone has a different way of learning and our method is unique. Ask yourself what do I want from this experience? What do I want to build? When do I want to start working? If you’re up for three months of intense learning and a job at the end of it, think about Codeworks. Working on problems as a team will boost your skills far better than working remotely. © Codeworks Do your research, trusts your instincts. If you’re still interested in coding bootcamps, browse the program and talk to us, we’re happy to help.

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