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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

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