Intelijus

intelijus

2021’s Startups of the Year , and it seemed as if it could never be topped. Until now. was a huge success The 2023 Startups of the Year was a global phenomenon. Over were nominated and fought for the right to be called the Startup of the Year. Over 600,000 votes later, the dust has settled, and the winners are ready to be declared. 30,000 startups And one of the regions with the most excitement and energy was South America. Let’s take a look and celebrate the . Startups of the Year in South America Startups of the Year in South America Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The Startup of the Year in Rio de Janeiro is with 37 votes! Insidemetrics Bogota, Colombia The winner in is with 25 votes! Bogota TPAGA Antioquia, Colombia emerged as the winner in with 87 votes! Thousand Antioquia State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil takes the cake in the ! DoctorCondo State of Rio Grande do Sul Goiania, State of Goias, Brazil The Startup of the Year in is with 42 votes! Goiania Intelijus Fortaleza, State of Ceara, Brazil emerges victorious in ! TEAMGUIDE Fortaleza Buenos Aires, Argentina The winner in is with 191 votes! Buenos Aires Tributo Simple Belo Horizonte, Brazil The Startup of the Year in is ! Belo Horizonte Fluna State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, In the , came out the winner! State of Minas Gerais 42 codelab Montevideo, Uruguay is the winner in with 127 votes! Light-it Montevideo Santiago, Chile With 376 votes, is the Startup of the Year in ! UpGirl Santiago Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia is the Startup of the Year in ! MTCorp Santa Cruz de la Sierra Medellin, Colombia The winner in is with 60 votes! Medellin Cogniflow Lima, Peru emerged victorious in with 33 votes! GetLavado Lima Quito, Pichincha Province, Ecuador The Startup of the Year in is ! Quito Reliv Florianopolis, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil, is the winner in ! DataSpoc Florianopolis Valencia, Venezuela In , the Startup of the Year is ! Valencia Riskallay Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia is the winner in ! Optimify Bucaramanga Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia The Startup of the Year in is ! Cali Bitsports Sao Paulo, Brazil With 217 votes, is declared the winner in ! Klever Sao Paulo Cordoba, Argentina The Startup of the Year in is ! Cordoba Quantex Colombo, Brazil The winner in is ! Colombo Callerwise Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil is the Startup of the Year in ! Trabalhem Porto Alegre Recife, State of Pernambuco, Brazil is the winner in ! iBoltt Recife Caracas, Capital District, Venezuela In , comes out the winner! Caracas Cygnus Valle del Cauca, Colombia is the Startup of the Year in ! Monitev Valle del Cauca Escazu, San Jose Province, Costa Rica is the Startup of the Year in NextControl Escazu, San Jose Province, Costa Rica Congratulations y’all. We will contact you with details on your winnings! See the global and other regional announcements . here About HackerNoon’s Startups Of The Year Startups of The Year is HackerNoon’s Flagship community-driven event celebrating startups that survived and thrived in 2023. 30,000 startups across 4200+ cities and six continents participated in 2023 to be crowned the best startup in their city. Visit our page to learn more. FAQ Companies that blog more get 67% more leads - Jumpstart your company’s blogging journey by purchasing our . Business Blogging Package The 2023 Startups Of The Year is sponsored by: . . The winners will get a free .Tech Domain, a HackerNoon NFT, and a Tech Company News Page. TECH Domains

Startups of the Year 2023: Winners of South America

A Marriage And A Funeral My friend Jane heard of mylife.com when her friend’s father died. They did a Google search of his name and in the results was mylife.com; his picture and a list of his prior home addresses. With one visit to the site, they had access to his date of birth, location of death, siblings, children, spouse, net worth, and finally, a big red reputation score, a 3.6 out of 5. Jane was creeped out. Her friend was offended. Really, a reputation score? Jane looked up herself. She looked up her parents. She scrolled through similar details pausing at ‘marital status: divorced’ listed under her father’s name. Her parents had been together since she was born and still lived in her childhood home. She wasn’t surprised that a shady site like mylife.com would have some errors. Then she showed her mom. And when Jane pointed out the divorce error, her mom hesitated then said they needed to talk. Jane’s parents were indeed divorced. They’d been since she was in middle school. They didn’t tell the family and continued to live together to avoid disruptions. But after waiting years, the timing never felt right to share the news. From mylife.com, Jane learned that her parents had been divorced for 5 years. Jane told me this story when I let her know about , the project I started to track down and stop sites collecting and selling personal information without consent. After years of working in political analytics, I saw how the sausage was made and wanted to restore the privacy we'd lost. She immediately understood why the project was important and why more people needed to find out what was going on with their personal information. Kanary The Data Tracking Ecosystem MyLife is a class of website called a The definition of a broker is, “a person who buys and sells goods or assets for others.” Real estate brokers sell real estate that’s not theirs. Stock brokers sell stock that’s not theirs. data broker. A data broker sells data that’s not theirs. In the data broker taxonomy, MyLife is in a subclass called . They don’t just sell information, they post it publicly. Anyone can look up someone by name, email, phone number, or address and purchase their full profile including reputation score. people search sites There are thousands of data brokers like mylife.com. Their only purpose is to compile social and behavioral data about as many people as possible. They’re creating hireability scores, reputation scores, social scores, and persuadability scores. They call these scores and tell brands that they’ll save a lot of money if they use them to target the right people with ads. “Find out who doesn’t like you, then don’t waste money sending advertisements to them,” they claim. For companies, it makes sense. Why would an engagement ring company send an ad to someone who isn’t interested in buying an engagement ring? data enhancements On an individual level, it feels pretty harmless. You might not care if an engagement ring company knows you’re not interested in buying an engagement ring. You might be grateful to not get ads about stuff you don’t want. But you care about who knows this information about you and . should how they know it How They Profit Off You If you had to make your best prediction about whether someone was going to get engaged in the next 6-12 months, what would you want to know? You might want to know how old they are, their gender, their sexual orientation, their relationship status, the length of their current relationship, how many relationships they’ve had in the past, if their parents or siblings are married, if they’ve ever been divorced, how much of The Bachelor they’ve watched... feeling invasive yet? to make the perfect prediction. They find out where you live, the marriage rate in your zip code, the marriage rate across your social network, if you’ve recently been laid off, your criminal record, your alcohol and drug consumption, how much money you make, how much debt you have, if you have children, if you still have accounts on dating apps, your political affiliation, your credit score, and maybe even your workout schedule. Data brokers keep digging Data brokers acquire this information through data partnerships, contracts, and website scraping. They pay state governments for voter records. They pay the DMV for your age and driving records. They purchase census data to understand marriage rates and income levels in your zip code. They find your family information through online phone books and ancestry lists. They pay court houses to pull marriage and divorce records. They pay streaming services to find out what shows you watch. In a couple lines of python, they scrape the relationship statuses of you and your friends from Facebook or Instagram. They purchase your stock buying history from Robinhood and your debt levels from the credit bureaus. They buy leaked databases of employment records or simply scrape your LinkedIn profile. They partner with mobile apps to scan your phone for active Tinder or Grindr or Feeld accounts. They partner with free VPNs to collect every website you visit. The most advanced brokers will mine photos of your face to determine your agreeability, likability, or attractiveness. With this raw information, why would they stop at engagement predictions? They can predict other valuable outcomes like who you’ll vote for, how you’ll respond to a payday loan offer, or what price you’ll be willing to pay for your next rideshare. All these predictions become profiles and scores sold to advertisers, employers, or random people looking you up on the internet. It’s been estimated data brokers made $200 billion in revenue last year. The Ones You Should Know About And How To Stop Them I started working on tracking down these sites and removing information from them about a year ago. Since starting I've built a small team and a software platform that tracks over 2,500 websites that share and sell personal information without consent. You manually go through and remove yourself from each one. But 2,500 sites x 5 minutes per site to find and remove your info = 208 hours. Doing this at least 2 times a year as data pops up and recirculates would take 408 hours or 51 eight-hour work days. This is why we’re automating the removal processes so all it takes to remove yourself is . could Keeping up is an inhumane task. one click But if this is your first introduction to who these companies are, what they know about you, and why this puts your privacy, security, and safety at risk, you might want to see it for yourself. I recommend starting with the following 8 sites that have fairly straight forward opt outs and track a lot of information about you. It takes about 30 minutes to submit the removal requests and opt outs across these sites, and 2-3 weeks to receive confirmation they’ve removed you from their systems. #1 Acxiom They boast having 11,000 attributes about over 2.5 billion people. This means you’re likely in their database and they’ve collected or predicted 11,000 things about you. They also make ~$900,000,000 each year selling personal information and predictions. Why: Go to , fill out the information you’d like to remove from their databases, enter an email you can use to confirm the request (ideally use an alias email, not your primary email), complete a captcha, submit the request, then click the confirmation link they send to your email, and complete another captcha. They claim they will not use any new information used to submit the opt out in their terms and conditions. How To Opt Out: https://isapps.acxiom.com/optout/optout.aspx #2 LexisNexis On their site they highlight offering scores that show the best way to collect debt from people. They also claim their socioeconomic health attributes help insurance companies forecast potential risks (aka high costs associated with certain patients). Why: Note: this one requires a California address* and proof of ID like drivers license # or SSN. Go to , fill out the form, (share your driver’s license, not SSN, if possible), select both the ‘do not sell’ and ‘delete my information’ options. Complete the captcha and submit the request. In about 2 weeks they will send a letter to the address you entered confirming they’ve removed you from their database. If they can’t confirm your identity from the info you submit, you won’t receive anything. How To Opt Out: https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request#california If you don’t have a California address, you can still bug them to remove your information by emailing a removal request to or calling them at 1-888-497-0011, but no guarantee they'll respond. consumer.documents@LexisNexis.com *This is why we need comprehensive Federal Data Privacy Regulation in the United States. #3 BeenVerified They aggregate information across social media sites and make it publicly searchable by name, address, phone number, and email. One of their testimonials is from someone who claims BeenVerified helped them snoop on their significant other to find out they were a liar. Great relationship goals. Why: Go to , fill out your name and state, click submit. Go through the results to find the records that look like you or family. Click one, fill out the captcha, submit a unique email or email alias, go to your email and click the confirmation link. They’ll require a unique email for each request you submit. They’ll email you again once the request has been received and once the information has been taken off their site. How To Opt Out: https://www.beenverified.com/app/optout/search #4 MyLife Their information is publicly searchable by name, email, phone number, or address. They sell premium subscriptions to access additional information like criminal records and reputation scores. for misleading practices and false claims. Why: They’ve been sued by the FTC Go to , search for your information. Click the results that match and you want removed. Email the links to your information to with a subject and message saying “delete my information and remove me from your site immediately”. They’ll respond within 2-3 weeks and confirm the removal. How To Opt Out: www.mylife.com privacy@mylife.com #5 Spokeo They’ve also been . They claim to have 6,000,000,000 consumer records publicly searchable so your information is likely on their site. They have the ‘Forbes’ logo listed but immediately have a disclaimer saying that Forbes hasn’t endorsed or sponsored them for anything. Why: sued by the FTC Go to , search for your information, copy each link to your results individually and paste them on this page . Add an alias email to the form, solve the captcha, and press submit. Go to your email and click the confirmation link they send you. They’ll email you in 2 weeks confirming the removal. How To Opt Out: www.spokeo.com https://www.spokeo.com/optout Note: They don’t remove address information, but they will remove your name from an address listing. #6 Radaris They are one of the source systems for many little data brokers and people search sites. Removing your information from Radaris is like pulling a weed out by the roots. Why: Go to , search for your information, copy each link to your results individually and paste them on this page ; make up a username, don’t use your real name. Add an alias email to the form, solve the captcha, and press submit. Go to your email and click the confirmation link they send you. They’ll email you in 2 weeks confirming the removal or telling you they can’t find your information. Another alternative is to email them directly at with the links and personal information you want removed. Again, use an alias where possible. How To Opt Out: https://radaris.com/ https://radaris.com/control/privacy removals@radaris.com #7 Intelius They are owned by a personal data broker monolith called People Connect. They’ve been recently hit with a class action lawsuit for charging people without letting them know. Unfortunately, People Connect is unresponsive to removal requests, so removing yourself from Intelius is the next best thing. (Feel free to try bugging privacy@peopleconnect.us, but it's unlikely they'll respond) Why: Go to , search your name and state. Enter an alias email. Review the results and click to remove a result that matches your information. Complete the captcha and click on the confirmation link they send to the email you first entered. You can submit multiple removal requests with multiple unique alias emails. They will send you an email once your information has been opted out successfully. How To Opt Out: https://www.intelius.com/opt-out/submit/ #8 ThatsThem They make hundreds of thousands of personal records searchable by name, email, phone number, residential address, vehicle id number, and ip address. They post this information for free and do not offer any paid subscriptions. In addition to contact information, they’ve created wealth, travel, tech, shopping, and green scores. Why: They offer an opt out form, but it’s easiest if you go to , search for your information, copy the links to the pages about you, and send an email to listing the page links you want removed. Once again, send the email from an alias if possible. How To Opt Out: https://thatsthem.com/people-search optout@thatsthem.com The Right To Be Forgotten Blocking these sites from selling and sharing your information and limiting the information you share to begin with can have both personal and societal impacts. On the personal level, it can reduce the amount of spam you get, your risk of harassment or stalking, the specificity of a targeted phishing attempt or hack. It can help you keep personal information private (even if it’s technically public), like marital status, sexual preference, religion, or divorce. It can also protect your family members from being targeted by someone using your information. On the larger scale, it can impact the progression and acceptance of surveillance across our society. We can accept the terms and conditions offered by governments and corporations in exchange for ultimate convenience. Or we can actively demand rights to be forgotten, rights to privacy, and rights to control our information. To learn more about Kanary and try it for free, check out our . website I’d love to hear from you if you have questions, suggestions, or feedback. Send me a note - rachel@thekanary.com.

You’ve Never Heard Of These Sites, But They Know A Lot About You

Programming is one of the most demanded skills in today's world.  In the future, it'll play an even bigger role since digitalization is in full swing. Software is an integral part of our lives and even children in the modern-day learn how to create it at a young age. So why shouldn't you too? To outsiders, programming might look like some magic that only the smartest wizards on earth are capable of. But that's certainly not true. Learning it takes a lot of time, hard work, and dedication. But in the end, everybody with the right attitude can learn it. While learning to program, you can aim for many different skill levels. One might just want to get a brief overview, do it as a hobby, or master it and find his profession in it. Nevertheless, there are many reasons why one should learn how to code and even more ways to accomplish it. In this article, I'd like to show you my view of these things -- you should start and to go about it. Why how Why So, here are my top 3 reasons why you should learn how to code right now! Mind Stretching Bill Gates once said: "Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains." Programming is a skill that teaches you a new way of thinking and problem-solving. It improves your problem-solving skills and enhances logical thinking. You learn abstraction, to focus on the important things. Even if you don't become an expert in programming, you'll profit from knowing the basics. Logical thinking and problem solving are key skills in almost every domain and are required for many different kinds of jobs. Furthermore, there's also a lot of joy while writing software: solving a problem you were working on for days, fixing that nasty bug and seeing your compiler run successfully, presenting your final work to family, friends and co-workers, developing tools that make the world a better place. Simply letting the imagination run wild. And last but not least, being able to understand the memes on of course. r/ProgrammerHumor Digital Transformation How could one not be amazed by today's technology? For me, it's is as breathtaking as scary what technology is capable of and what we achieved with it in the last years. Just take a moment and think about it. Digital transformation is changing the world dramatically fast. Almost every day your hear buzzwords like "Cloud Computing", "Artificial Intelligence", "Blockchain" or "Big Data" in the news. There are autonomous vehicles on the streets, some of which drive better than we humans do. Doctors diagnose diseases like cancer with the help of . Machine Learning Computers beat the best chess players with ease. Your Amazon, Netflix and YouTube recommendations know your preferences better than you do. Your habits are all tracked by companies like Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google), whether on smartphones, wearables, voice assistants or any other technical device. You're online nearly every waking hour, feeding personal data to the algorithms of major tech companies so they can create a digital version of you. No wonder their power exceeds that of most states. It's ridiculous. In today's world, , thanks to the rising number of Internet users, less expensive storage and the increasing CPU power as written in . data is the new oil Moore's law The digital transformation is inevitable and collecting data is already a given. All this progress is primarily accomplished by software (and hardware) developed by us humans. Software / Hardware / ML engineers, data scientists, mathematicians, physicists and many more write the code that will run our future and provide the models to predict it. Having at least a small understanding of how this kind of software, models or algorithms in general work, is in my opinion one of the main reasons for learning programming. It's about building a digital awareness, knowing how your environment works and what technology is capable of nowadays. Job Market Mostly caused by the digital transformation, the worldwide job market is for talented software engineers, and companies offer great benefits to attract new employees: flexible working hours, home office, high salaries and much more. seeking Tech jobs can be found in almost all industries like: automotive, banking, environment, fashion, health, insurance and public sector. Furthermore, your job is safe. It's very unlikely that you'll be replaced by someone else in future, be it another employee or an AI. Coding skills are in high demand but not very common, at least not yet. There are too few of us to meet the economy's needs. That is why it's not uncommon for companies to apply to developers these days. You have the free choice. Although a high salary shouldn't be the only reason for you to learn how to code (because it doesn’t necessarily guarantee dialy satisfaction). Have fun in what you do, especially in your job, because you spend most of your life doing it. How Now that we have discussed the reasons for learning to code, let's have a look at how to go about it. As I said at the beginning of this post, there are many ways to learn programming: university, school, bootcamps, online courses, self-taught. They all have their pros and cons. The following way is the one I would recommend to a beginner. Here we go. What is Programming? First of all, take a moment and think about what programming is at its core, regardless of any programming language. What is it really about and what is a computer's purpose? The concept of programming is largely the same for most of the languages out there, whether you're learning Python, C, Kotlin, Java or JavaScript: you write a set of instructions (code) that are read and executed sequentially by your machine. You, the instructor, tell the computer what to do and how to behave. Doing so, each written line of code has a certain purpose and effect, whether you're working on web / desktop apps, microcontrollers or anything else. The pool of instructions you can choose from and how they are written depends on your programming language. Nevertheless, the key idea remains the same. Source code, especially algorithms, can be visually represented using flowcharts, what makes it much easier for us humans to understand them in many cases. An algorithm is just a collection of instructions with the goal of accomplishing a specific task. Let's have an example. The following algorithm, written in JavaScript, calculates the sum of all numbers from 1 to 10, which is 55, and then prints it. let sum = 0
for (let i = 1; i <= 10; i = i + 1) {
  sum = sum + i
}
console.log(sum) The according to flowchart looks as follows: As you can see, the program can be split into smaller parts that even a non-programmer can understand. In total, there are five instructions , , , and to execute and one condition to check . sum=0 i=1 sum=sum+i i=i+1 print sum i<=10 This is obviously a fairly simple algorithm. Others can contain hundreds or even thousands of instructions, making them much more complicated. You may have noticed that the flowchart and the algorithm it represents work independently of any programming language. You can take the chart and implement its sequence of commands in Python, C or any other language. That's the key idea that all languages have in common. Focus on getting used to this kind of workflow. Now that you have an idea about what programming is, it's time to introduce you to Karel. He teaches you how to code by following your commands. Karel the Robot Since there are so many similarities between the languages, I don't recommend you to start with one of the common ones I just mentioned above, even though this might be the conventional way to go. You'd be better off sticking with . Karel is an educational programming language developed by the American professor , that teaches you the core concepts of imperative programming. Karel The Robot Richard E. Pattis It does so by allowing you to write instructions to control a robot's movement on a 2-dimensional map, mostly a maze. In fact, this is what programming is all about: writing clear and precise instructions to let the computer perform a certain action. Using Karel, you don't have to learn complicated syntax first. Its command set is manageable and very easy to understand, even for a beginner, but the functionality is still similar to those of other languages. To quote [p. 1]: Eric Roberts In sophisticated languages like Java, there are so many details that learning these details often becomes the focus of the course. When that happens, the much more critical issues of problem solving tend to get lost in the shuffle. By starting with Karel, you can concentrate on solving problems from the very beginning. And because Karel encourages imagination and creativity, you can have quite a lot of fun along the way. Here's an example of Karel The Robot. The challenge: move forward to the right beeper (green diamond), pick it up, go back to the starting point and do the same thing for the other one. Step by step. A solution might look as follows: void defuseTwoBombs()
{
    defuseBomb();
    turnRight();
    defuseBomb();
    turnAround();
}

void defuseBomb()
{
    moveForwardWhileClear();
    pickBeeper();
    turnAround();
    moveForwardWhileClear();
}

void moveForwardWhileClear() {
    while(frontIsClear()) {
        moveForward();
    }
} The robot moves forward as long as its front is clear ( ). It picks the beeper up ( ), turns 180° ( ) and goes back ( ). These are the instructions listed inside the function . moveForwardWhileClear pickBeeper turnAround moveForwardWhileClear defuseBomb Afterwards, the robot turns 90° to the right ( ) and does the exact same thing again ( ). Pretty cool. turnRight defuseBomb Obviously, Karel teaches you only the rudimentary basics of programming and problem solving in general. Sooner or later you have to switch to a "real" and more popular programming language. There are multiple versions of Karel The Robot out there. I would recommend to check out the one by GitHub user which is written in Java. fredoverflow This one includes multiple exercises the user has to solve, like the one from above (defuseTwoBombs). Alternatively, have a look at the web version developed by Stanford Assistant Professor which has some bugs, unfortunately. Chris Piech Pick a Language Now it's time to learn a "real" programming language. There are dozens of articles on the Internet about whether you should start with Python, JavaScript or language xyz. Don't waste your valuable time so much when making a decision. Pick one and stick with it. In the end, it's not that important which one you choose. The fastest one you can start with is JavaScript. Just press F12 in your browser to open the DevTools and start typing "Hello World" in it. It takes only one keypress. There are also great you can make use of, although I would rather recommend using a local setup on your machine. online editors Learn the Fundamentals Start with the fundamentals and repeat them everyday: data types, variables, arithmetic, if-conditions, loops, functions and so on. Some of them should look familiar to you from Karel The Robot. Learn the syntax and semantic of your programming language. In the beginning, it's not about knowing every feature, method or API that it offers. Start easy, learn the basics and take it slow. Future knowledge will build on this. Moreover, don't get stuck in tutorial hell and waste your time watching endless tutorials on YouTube, Udemy or whatsoever where everyone is coding but you. You have to write your own code to learn to program. Try and fail. Make mistakes. If you get stuck on a problem, take a break. I don't know how many times I was lying in bed, sitting in the train or at the dinner table and the solution just came out of nowhere to my mind. It's amazing how our brain can solve problems in the background without actively paying attention to them. Most important: build a daily habit. Code every day, even if it's just for a short period of time like 10 or 15 minutes. Repetition is the key to success. Learn the Algorithms and Data Structures Next, learn the algorithms and get used to what I call "computational" or logical thinking. This might be not easy. Take a problem, break it down into smaller ones and solve them step by step. Get used to a sequential workflow. Just as you did for Karel The Robot. Before writing the code, take a sheet of paper, make some sketches, draw a flowchart and try different approaches. When you're done, pick the next one and include solutions from problems you've solved before. Your first solution might not be the most efficient one. That's okay. Get your code working and improve it afterwards. But please don't copy solutions that you don't understand and take them for granted. It's not about learning every algorithm out there for sorting an array, traversing a binary tree, or finding the shortest path. Have a look at some existing algorithms and try to implement or even slightly modify them. Give a try. It's a great website for doing coding challenges. LeetCode Moreover, get in touch with the most common data structures: Arrays, Lists, Queues, Stacks, Maps, HashTables, Trees. Try to use some of them when working on different problems. I could bet you will not use more than two or three of them in your future workday. Especially trees are rather uncommon. In this step, you may also want to take a look at some concepts such as OOP or functional programming, depending on your language. Get Back to the Roots Get back to the roots. Code without using a heavyweight IDE like IntelliJ or Visual Studio. Get rid of tools like Linters and Prettiers which highlight your code smells and autoformat your code. Get rid of fancy frameworks and libs that act like magical black boxes. Get rid of build tools that take more time building the project than the coding itself. They are unnecessary ballast. Don't get me wrong, all these tools are amazing and I highly encourage you to use them in your later career. But in the beginning, they just distract you from your main goal: learning programming. Add them to your repertoire later on after you've learned the fundamentals. Keep in mind that you don't need much to get started. What you really need is a simple text editor and a compiler/interpreter for your programming language of choice. Above all, you don't need a +1000€ MacBook with fancy stickers on it, beside you want to fit the clichés. If you want to learn programming by creating the next Crysis, you might need one too. Teach Others In my opinion, sharing knowledge is one of the greatest things you can do with it. Schwarzenegger already said: "Help others and give something back". So share your expertise and new discoveries with others. Both, you and your learning partner, will highly benefit from it. Maybe start your own blog too? The programming community is huge, take advantage of that and get into conversations. You can participate in discussions on platforms like DEV or , join multiple subs on or attend local meetups in your area. In times of the Internet there are endless possibilities. Stackoverflow Reddit Learn the Tools Once you know the fundamentals and some advanced concepts, go ahead and get familiar with tools like: GIT, Linters, IDEAs, Maven / Gradle / Webpack. Be amazed by IntelliJ's autocompletion and it's code analyzing capacity. Learn some commonly used libraries and frameworks for your programming language, but please don't end up coding dozens of similar CRUD REST-APIs. Include these tools into your daily workflow and start working on your first "bigger" project. Make it open source and share it on so other people can contribute and give feedback. GitHub Land an Internship Finally, after you have learned the basics, some advanced concepts and tools, go ahead and apply for a software engineering internship near your location and surround yourself with people that are more experienced than you. Especially when you're a student. The hands-on experience you gain may be worth much more than any course you'll ever take. With that being said gain as much experience as possible: get in touch with production code, work in an interdisciplinary team, join discussions and code reviews, deploy applications, drop the live database (joke). And one of the most important things: ask questions, lots of questions! Landing an internship can be hard, I know. You might have to run through multiple assessment centers, coding interviews/challenges and so on. Don't be discouraged when you fail your first ones. . Coding interviews are broken Last Words That's it. Sounds complicated? Yeah, it is. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's no reason why you shouldn't start right now. Take your time, follow a plan and you'll make it. I promise. Go for it, you won't regret it. Let me know if this article helped you or not. Co-pubished here.

You Can Be a Coding Hero Too: Do Not Fear Trying

We are going to create an android UI for our UserProfile backend API we are creating for our demo E-commerce tutorial We are building an e-commerce platform from scratch. In the last tutorial, we build the backend for the . User Profile In this article, we will build the android UI for the User Profile backend, which can be a base for many other applications. Not long before was the time when the user profile consisted of a hard copy form. From the advent of digital technology and sophisticated software, profiles have been becoming more intuitive. Backend API description Here we describe the most important component of our user profile application: the REST API. A REST API is an application that uses the existing protocol stack for data communication between different applications on the web. Here, we are using a web API to communicate between our android application and a remote database for user data storage. Our API handles the GET and POST request which basically allows the android application to create and fetch data from the database. The API used here is created using Java and Spring Boot framework. Spring is a popular application development framework, developed for the enterprise edition of the Java programming language. You can find detailed project files for the REST API over . here Android Studio is the official Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android app development, based on . On top of IntelliJ’s powerful code editor and developer tools, Android Studio offers even more features that enhance your productivity when building Android apps, such as: IntelliJ IDEA A flexible Gradle-based build system.A fast and feature-rich emulator. A unified environment where you can develop for all Android devices. Apply Changes to push code and resource changes to your running app without restarting your app. Code templates and GitHub integration to help you build common app features and import sample code. Extensive testing tools and frameworks. Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility, and other problems. C++ and NDK support. Built-in support for , making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine. Google Cloud Platform The benefit of using Android Studio over any other IDE is we get a rich set of features built-in which enable us to focus more on the development aspect while the back-end of this IDE handles the requirements and dependencies. For this project, an existing API endpoint has been used for database connectivity. Prerequisite: Before we start developing, we need to check off a few requirements: You will need to have a Java JDK installed on your system. You can find the instructions for installing the JDK . here You will need to install on your system. Android Studio Lastly, we can use our Android smartphone with USB debugging enabled for testing the android app or we can use the built-in Android emulator from Android Studio (I have used my smartphone for testing and debugging). Project Setup and Structure: Once you install Android Studio on your system, you can start with creating a new project. Android Studio Welcome Screen To create your new Android project, follow these steps: In the window, click . Welcome to Android Studio Start a new Android Studio project In the window, select and click . Select a Project Template Empty Activity Next In the window, complete the following:Enter “User Authentication” in the field. Configure your project Name Enter “com.example.userprofile” in the field. Package name If you’d like to place the project in a different folder, change its location. Save Select from the drop-down menu. Java Language Select the lowest version of Android your app will support in the field. Minimum SDK I have selected API level 22 (Android Lollipop). Leave the other options as they are. 4. Click . Finish After some processing time, the Android Studio main window appears. Now take a moment to review the most important files. First, be sure the window is open (select ) and the Android view is selected from the drop-down list at the top of that window. You can then see the following files: Project View > Tool Windows > Project app > java > com.example.userprofile > MainActivity This is the main activity. It’s the entry point for your app. When you build and run your app, the system launches an instance of this Activity and loads its layout. app > res > layout > activity_main.xml This XML file defines the layout for the activity’s user interface (UI). It contains a TextView element with the text “Hello, World!” app > manifests > AndroidManifest.xml The manifest file describes the fundamental characteristics of the app and defines each of its components. Gradle Scripts > build.gradle There are two files with this name: one for the project, “Project: User Authentication” and one for the app module, “Module: app.” Each module has its own file, but this project currently has just one module. Use each module’s file to control how the builds your app. For more information about this file, see . build.gradle build.gradle Gradle plugin Configure your build Before you run your first app, get your smartphone, and enable USB debugging by following the instructions over . After, enabling USB debugging, connect your smartphone to your PC and you are ready to go. here In Android Studio, select or click the icon in the toolbar. Run > Run ‘app’ Run on creating your very first app. But you are far from what we have to achieve. Next, we need to create the rest of the application. Congratulations Setting up the files: Let’s start with . This is the directory where we will be storing all the graphical elements for our application. We are going to store three different categories of graphic elements. app > res > drawables Image. (filename: background.jpg)Icon elements. (filenames: account.xml, email.xml, pencil.xml)Custom graphic file. (round_button.xml) The image used here is for the background of the UI. You can use any image you like but be sure to use the same file name for the next part where we will be coding the back-end and creating activity layouts. Icon elements are XML files for vector graphic icons used in our application. You can find and download these files from . here The custom graphic file here is used for creating a rich look for our buttons in the application. It’s an XML file containing various tags and attributes specifying the properties that the button will have for its appearance. Moving on, we have two layout files for our two pages: create user and fetch user data page. These files are contained in having names activity_main.xml, user.xml. To create these files, right-click on the layout directory and select new > layout resource file. A pop-up with several fields should appear. In the field, we’ll insert the required file names. app > res > layout New Resource File File name In the field of this same pop-up, make sure to type in . The remaining two fields can remain the same. Click . This will create a new layout for us. However, Android Studio will likely default to the visual editor we saw our Constraint Layout in earlier. To edit our layout’s XML directly, we’ll need to navigate of the visual editor and the XML editor. Near the top-right of the editor screen, you should see three tabs: . Select the tab to toggle into the XML editor. Root element RelativeLayout OK out into code, split, design code If you can notice then all these files contain some common tags having some attributes. These tags are View elements that are going to be displayed in the application. Let’s review them one by one for a general idea. : RelativeLayout is a view group that displays child views in relative positions. The position of each view can be specified as relative to sibling elements (such as to the left-of or below another view) or in positions relative to the parent RelativeLayout area (such as aligned to the bottom, left, or center). RelativeLayout : A TextView displays text to the user and optionally allows them to edit it. A TextView is a complete text editor, however, the basic class is configured to not allow editing. TextView : EditText is a standard entry widget in android apps. It is an overlay over TextView that configures itself to be editable. EditText is a subclass of TextView with text editing operations. EditText We often use EditText in our applications to provide an input or text field, especially in forms. : In Android, Button represents a push button. Push buttons can be clicked, or pressed by the user to perform an action. Button On a button, we can perform different actions or events like click event, pressed event, touch event, etc. : A layout that arranges its children into rows and columns. A TableLayout consists of several objects, each defining a row. TableLayout containers do not display border lines for their rows, columns, or cells. Each row has zero or more cells; each cell can hold one object. The table has as many columns as the row with the most cells. A table can leave cells empty. Cells can span columns, as they can in HTML. TableLayout TableRow View : For building a row in a table we use the element. Table row objects are the child's views of a table layout. Each row of the table has zero or more cells and each cell can hold only one view object like , , or any other view. TableRow TableRow ImageView TextView Rows and Columns in Android TableLayout There are many more tags and have many different attributes for creating various intuitive design elements and UI for an android application. Next up, we will create the files necessary for the back-end of our applications: Java files. We will be creating two more java class files which are Config.java and User.java. To create them, right-click on directory and click . Enter the file name and press enter. app > java > com.example.userprofile New > Java Class Before moving ahead, we must configure our AndroidManifest.xml file for the file additions and requirements that we want. Adding in the code To save the hassle, each class for a given activity contains a default piece of code that is essential for the behavior of the application. As a user navigates through, out of, and back to your app, the Activity instances in your app transition through different stages in their life-cycle. The Activity class provides several callbacks that allow the activity to know that a state has changed: that the system is creating, stopping, or resuming an activity, or destroying the process in which the activity resides. Within the lifecycle callback methods, you can declare how your activity behaves when the user leaves and re-enters the activity. For example, if you’re building a streaming video player, you might pause the video and terminate the network connection when the user switches to another app. When the user returns, you can reconnect to the network and allow the user to resume the video from the same spot. In other words, each callback allows you to perform specific work that’s appropriate to a given change of state. Doing the right work at the right time and handling transitions properly make your app more robust and performant. For example, good implementation of the lifecycle callbacks can help ensure that your app avoids: Crashing if the user receives a phone call or switches to another app while using your app. Consuming valuable system resources when the user is not actively using it. Losing the user’s progress if they leave your app and return to it at a later time. Crashing or losing the user’s progress when the screen rotates between landscape and portrait orientation. Activity Life Cycle We have extensively use the activity method which defines the behavior of the application on start-up. onCreate() For the first file, MainActivity.java: Let’s go through the methods defined in this code snippet- : This method is at the heart of profile creation where the magic happens. Right from getting the input to processing it; is managed by this method. The most important job of this method is to create an HTTP client tunnel connection to the server hosting the database and send the HTTP POST request. Here, we have provided the existing API endpoint. Also, this method will be handling failed requests and other errors while successfully creating a user profile. : This method starts a new activity called user. There we can view the existing user profiles in the database. create() user() Next, we have the User.java file: Let’s go through the methods defined in this code snippet- : This method performs the operation of fetching user data from a remote database. It performs this operation by sending an HTTP GET request. After fetching the data, the method dynamically creates the required number of rows for the number of users that will be displayed on the UI. The received data is in the form of a JSON string, which is parsed into a JSON object. From here, we extract the necessary data for display purposes. fetch() : This method creates a TextView object while setting the required parameters to this object and finally attaching it as a child to the TableRow object. createTextView() Finally, we have the Config.java file: This file is a java interface file that stores the API endpoint. Now we will run our program as previously stated by connecting our android device via USB. Results Read behind a paywall at https://medium.com/technology-hits/android-ui-for-e-commerce-user-profile-backend-4053ab122a13

How To Create User Profile Page for E-Commerce Android App

When we first started thinking about starting Intelis, we found capital was readily available in the locations we wanted to focus. However, it was from angel investors who’d achieved massive success in other industries and most did not want the role of the investor of conviction. To us, being an investor of conviction goes beyond the capital, it means working alongside founders to hopefully increase the velocity and probability of scale. We strive to win deals based on founders believing we’re the best partner for them because they’ve found during the process our passion for what we do comes through. diligence Pre-closing and during diligence we work with founders to set proper “market” legal and financial structures to ensure incentive alignment for all parties. Often, this means touching on delicate, first-time subjects for them like founder vesting or setting up employee option pools. However, we approach these matters with the sobriety they deserve and work diligently to make it clear we empathize with the founder’s experience. We encourage them to talk to other founders, investors, lawyers, and accountants to ensure them we have the success of future rounds in mind and aren’t setting expectations outside the norm. Once we make an in a team, we’re all in and make them our first priority. Our job is to support them to the fullest in any and all ways. That can range from meeting with consultants, closing potential employees, sitting in on product planning, or working on engaging partners. The goal is to help our companies grow and learn as quickly as possible which means their problems are our problems too. investment Post-closing we’ll provide a massive amount of operational, hiring, product and/or business development support. There are many informal ways in which we engage with founders: text, Slack, Telegram, and calls at any time. However, we believe the first institutional capital should go beyond the informal and create habits that engage the executive team with investors on a regular basis. This means we schedule regular stand-ups, something we greatly benefited from as operators, where we check in on progress and ask which part of the business we can be most helpful. We understand this isn’t for everyone, so we tailor it to the founder in terms of structure, frequency (no-less than every 2 weeks), and length. We’re also big believers of the board meeting even in the cases where we are the first outside capital involved. They are typically very informal at the beginning and evolve over time. However, we think this habit accomplishes two major goals: it allows founders the time to step away from the day-to-day and think more strategically at least once a quarter and it sets a foundation for recording progress and process that signals accountability to the next institutional investor. 1) 2) We understand that this kind of focus on process and involvement at the early-stage is different and often unexpected (if not tedious). This is especially true during the diligence process, when it’s likely we dig deeper into a business than the founder has experienced up to that point and after when we try to set Series A expecations for internal processes. However, we think the data suggests this kind of approach works and it’s important to know that our founders are always in control of the agendas and structure. Time will tell if we are right, but we think founders crave a high-level of engagement from their investors and the results are better because of it. Originally published at kevindstevens.com on March 3, 2018.

Why Diligence Is a Signal of Post-Investment Partnership

One of the biggest challenges of building a firm is putting together a from scratch. When we first started Intelis, I naively believed that building a reputation would be as easy as blogging regularly and pointing people to the values statement we spent weeks crafting. As with everything, it’s more about actions than words. venture capital reputation Reputation to Founders Being in a second or third tier ecosystem is a double-edged sword. Investors have a chance to be a real agent of change by acting in the best interest of a company and its future investors by constructing term sheets and cap tables that preserve the long-term incentive structure for founders to pursue maximum upside. However, it’s common (often rightfully so) to have to clear additional trust hurdles with founders, as they may be used to dealing with investors less accustomed to partnering with high-growth startups At Intelis, we strive to be value-added investors. Admittedly, almost all VC’s claim to be value added in one form or another so the phrase carries little to no value at this point. To add another layer of complexity to the conversation, not all additional value is equal. Jonathan touched on this subject recently on our blog. But the truth is that, when building a business, not all categories of added value are created equally and it’s important for you to know what you’re getting as a founder and why it matters. Jonathan Crowder The question then becomes how to prove our team adds beneficial and relevant value to a fast-growing startup even before we invest. We’ve attempted various ways to solve this problem by creating a pipeline of both talent and customers as well as joining team meetings during the diligence process to ensure both sides feel good about the potential fit. Reputation to Other Venture Firms The universal answer to the amount of capital needed to scale a startup rapidly is “more.” Given this requirement, we connect as often as possible with Series A investors to learn more about the metrics and processes that make investments attractive to them. We attempt to play a small part in the trajectory of our portfolio companies not only through the value adds discussed above but also by setting up regular board meetings for strategic planning and bi-weekly “standups” for tactical discussions. Setting up these processes early on helps founders become accustomed to the accountability larger institutional investors expect. Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” I’m hoping the processes we’re putting in place today help us build a reputation that allows us to work with the founders and investors we admire. reputation Originally published at kevindstevens.com on February 8, 2018.

Stories, News & Mentions about INTELIJUS

Intelijus’s Stories on HackerNoon