MyBea

If building products is hard, positioning your product is harder. No matter what you build and sell, how you position your product dictates what you do. How you prioritize, marketing campaigns, sales strategy, it all changes based on how your product is positioned. So where do you start? How do you position your product? Step 1: Understand why Your Customers use Your Product to discover if you’ve hit product/market fit is a great way to understand your customers. If you dig deep enough, you’ll notice it isn’t just a framework to see how many people love your product, but also to understand what they’d do if you did not exist, who your competitors are, and what value they derive from you. Sean Ellis’ survey Put simply, you should ask your customers these three questions to understand more about them: If {Your Product Name} did not exist tomorrow, will you be unhappy, somewhat unhappy, or not disappointed? Why? What primary benefit do you receive from {Your Product Name}? What product will you start using as an alternative? The second survey question is my favourite, especially when it enables you to map the benefit directly to a feature. It tells you the value your customers get from your product and which aspect of your product is key to them. It means you can then get your team to fix broken flows around it and double down to ensure more users see its value. Step 2: Identify the Market You’re in and the Persona You’re Going After You probably already had an idea of your market as you built the product. If you are building a CRM tool, you’re playing in the CRM space. Obvious and easy. But it doesn’t end there. You’ll still have to answer questions such as whether the person you sell to is a manager or somebody involved in daily execution. Will you be selling to salespeople at tech companies or to retail businesses? The data you get from your first step should ideally help you determine which market you’re in. You should start to see clusters of users with similar profiles, who all say they’d be disappointed without your product, and describe a benefit around a common theme. Step 3: Determine the Market’s Maturity The maturity of your market plays a huge role in determining your product’s messaging. In a relatively new market, you have to first establish the problem before talking about what you offer. In an established market, simply stating you are in the specific market will be sufficient, but you’ll have to convince people why you exist. Not with features, but with benefits. For companies in a hyper-competitive market, like CRM, product features and benefits usually match those of competitors. Differentiation becomes all the more important when products and services are indistinguishable — this is a process that begins with a story. My favourite example is Unilever personal care subsidiary, . How do you differentiate a soap’s messaging? What feature could it have that other soaps don’t have? Or can’t copy from them? Dove While other soaps in the market say their soap would make people’s skin fresh and clean, Dove has taken a different approach. It runs to reinforce its female empowerment story. #MyBeautyMySay campaigns Step 4: Determine People’s State of Mind A lot goes through someone’s mind when deciding if they should use your product. This can be summarized as four forces: Push Pull Anxiety Habit When people switch from their current tool to yours, they are usually unhappy with their current way of working (push) and/or are attracted by what you have to offer (pull). Before people make the switch, you must address their concerns (anxiety), get them to trust you, and ensure they don’t have to go through a tedious process like learning a new flow to switch (habit). For most products, it is usually a combination of push and pull that makes people consider your product. And once that is established, a combination of their anxiety levels and habits will determine if they will make the switch. Image credit: Jobs-to-be-Done forces diagram by Margaret Wilkins Step 5: Tying it Together Using all the above data points, you should now pick a market frame of reference that makes your value obvious to the segments who care the most about that value. This is harder than you might think. In the context of this step, a “market” needs to be something that already exists in the minds of your customers and triggers a set of expectations: How your competitors can’t do certain things. How the lack of these capabilities bring pain to your users Features you have How these features give your customers the benefit Positioning yourself as something that already exists in your customers’ minds will help you focus on communicating why they should choose you – the differentiator – and not the features. The tone and the angle you use to position your product will depend on the market and the buyer’s state of mind you’ve surmised from steps 3 and 4. A great way to bring it all together in words is to use the Before and After grid below. By using all the data points you’ve already collected, you can put into words how each customer segment thinks and feels before they use your product and after they use your product. To explain the above table: – This should talk about their biggest pain point. For a manager, it could be a disorganized team. What do they have? – It is easy to simply stick to surface-level feelings like frustrated or unhappy. But when you dig deeper, and unearth feelings like being overwhelmed and insecure, you’ll hit a pot of gold that will help your positioning and messaging. How do they feel? – The average day for a manager who has a disorganized team is constantly to coach the team. What is their average day like? – Your product could help a sales rep hit their targets consistently and get promoted to a managerial post. What is their status? When our early prospective customers started to ask how we were different from the others in the market, we knew it wasn’t enough to just tell them we were building a faster, easier project management tool. We took this approach at Zepel , a JIRA alternative we’re building. So we took a step back, looked into our data, and noticed the current tools catered to simple task and issue tracking when in reality, teams were trying to go beyond it. Teams didn’t want to just jot down a list of user stories for their developers to work on, they wanted to be able to plan and conceptualize an entire feature before handing it over. They didn’t want to get different sets of updates from developers, designers, and their QA team on each individual tasks. They wanted to know the progress of an entire feature across every discipline. And when they were on a deadline to not just ship the feature, but a quality one at that, they didn’t want to be overwhelmed with all the task level updates. They wanted to know how far away they were from shipping the feature and see if they needed to course-correct. Once we had boiled this down, it helped us realize we weren’t just building a faster, easier to use agile project management tool. We were building a project management tool to go beyond simple issue tracking, one that could bring members from every discipline together and adapt to the way modern software product teams really work. That way, everyone would get to do what they do best without having to babysit the tool. Of course, like everything in building products, your positioning will go through iterations, change, and evolve. But once you get it right, you can pass every product, marketing, and sales question through a simple filter by asking “by doing this, are we strengthening our positioning or are we watering it down?”. Conclusion Customers seeking new products don’t have a single-minded focus: brands need to stand out clearly and connect with their audience. Doing that requires companies to go beyond just stating features and benefits. Focusing on the market and its maturity will let you weave a story that stands out, focus on the customer, and differentiate yourself. Take Slack vs HipChat, for example. In a popular (and a must-read) , CEO of Slack, he says: “What we are selling is not the software product — the set of all the features, in their specific implementation — because there are just not many buyers for this software product.” He goes on to add: “That’s why what we’re selling is organizational transformation. The software just happens to be the part we’re able to build and ship.” article by Stewart Butterfield Had Slack positioned itself to go after the same enterprise market as HipChat, it would most certainly look and feel very different. And we certainly wouldn’t have the fun, friendly chat tool that many of us love and use today.

Five Steps to Positioning Your Product

Rethinking our commit messages structure. is the most used for projects based mainly on text files, like source code etc. Git Version Control System If you are working in a company, in a team or also alone, probably you are using also an issue/project tracker like JIRA or the ones included in GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket. The advantage of those pieces of software is that we can create “issues” or “tickets”, each of those tracking of a single feature or bug correction in our software. They work by creating and assigning an ID to the newly created ticket — that can be numeric or include a brief project identifier like — in the way you can keep each one easily referenceable in chats, groups, , etc. development ALX-1231 commits Commits, commits, commits If we have used Git at least one time, we would know that the standard commit message structure is: Commit summary description; corrected my horrible bug Long description (sometimes called "body"), with things like:* bulleted list of changes;* other change;* chirp chirp Notice the new line between the summary and the body: Git doesn’t enforce it, but we to insert it if we want to specify a body, else the commit will not be parsed in the correct way. have Many teams have a default way to reference tickets created with tracking software, putting the issue ID inside the commit message itself. The standard I saw more frequently is something like this: ALX-21313 Done that fancy change; now we have cats in the UI Seems good, probably you are using it in your dev workflow. But I want to talk about why I think this structure is not the best one to use. 1. Using the issue ID as first-class citizen into our commit message is not the best thing to do. We have Git, and then we have a separate system that manages issues. One day in the future the latter could stop working, be abandoned, its database could be deleted as a mistake, or everything else. In that moment, we will realise that our Git messages will have a consistent part that has no more meaning. Issue trackers are not part of the Git repo. 2. The issue ID is wasting precious space that instead could be used to explain what we’ve done in that commit. Commit summaries should have less than 50 characters. Appending 6/7 characters for the issue ID means that we’ll have 6/7 — but maybe more — less characters to use for describing what changes were made. Yes: we could write the full text into the description, but probably we could have used those 7 chars for fitting those in the summary write the issue ID in the description (spoiler to my solution at the end of the article). and then Apart from this, in my experience I found that developers that uses IDs before the “real” commit message, tend to be lazy about what to write in the summary, because they are psychologically prone to the fact that who’s going to read the message, will check the ticket itself for more details. This will take time from him; time otherwise used for being productive. This without quoting the possibility that the issue manager itself could be not accessible temporarily or indefinitely. 3. The linked issue’s nature and its state after the commit is not clear. An issue can have different types. It can be a bug, a new feature, etc. If we just put its ID in front of the message, who will check our project’s logs won’t know if that commit will fix, close or just reference that particular ticket. For more info, again, he has to go to the issue manager, breaking its workflow. 4. What about many issues? And no issues at all? Let’s say that our commit fixes three tickets, because those were very similar (sometimes is possible that QAs create different issues, without knowing that they are caused by the same bug in the code). We’ll have something like ALX-12323 ALX-12324 ALX-12325 Something fixed finally Isn’t that ugly? And what about the opposite? When we are making a subtle change like correcting a typo in a comment. We can’t create a ticket just for correcting a word in an insignificant comment (we could but I think it feels quite paranoid). So we’ll have a commit message without an initial commit, resulting quite incoherent respect to the other commit messages. The approach I suggest If I convinced you with the previous points that the most used format is not so useful and perfect, now I’m going to explain my favourite approach to Git messages. The first thing we are going to do is to . Don’t look at the issue/ticket! Just look at your changes and describe briefly what we changed in overall. explain the code changes in a summarily way Renamed MyUglyTweet to MyBeautifulTweet If we have made many changes in this commit, describe the main purpose of those changes, and then we’ll continue to explain it in the (if needed): commit body Added little birbs to the homescreen * Updated BIRDS_NUMBER constant;* created the interface Chirp and implemented in ChirpImpl; “Ok Alex, but when should we put our issue IDs?”Once we have finished to summarize every block of changes we made, let’s decide where to put our ticket identifiers. If our commit contains changes regarding just one ticket, I follow this path: if there’s enough space in the summary, I append the issue preceded by a verb that will describe how that’s related. For example: Added little birbs to the homescreen; closes ALX-1434 We can use closes, closed, close, as soon that verb identifies what we’ve done on that ticket. I use close for feature tickets, but in the case of a bug ticket, I usually use “fixes” or “fixed”. For these verbs, or , we can check here because specifying those in the commit helps some issue trackers (like the GitHub one) to close automatically our tickets when a feature branch is merged with our main development branch. keywords https://help.github.com/articles/closing-issues-using-keywords/, If there’s no space left in the summary, we can put the ticket on the description: Added little birbs to the homescreen, bla bla bla boring Closes ALX-1434. Or, if we have a list of things changed (but our commit closes only one ticket), we can put the issue in a separate list item: Added little birbs to the homescreen, bla bla bla boring * Created new classes;* injected cream in the blender;* closes ALX-1434 In case we have more issues closed by our commit, we’ll try to have one element of the list for each issue closed: Refactored code bla bla bla bla here's no space to write anything * Extracted interface from the Qwack class (closes ALX-1323);* cut wings to Para.kt 🐦 (fixes ALX-1324);* this other change doesn't close anything 😔 I think this approach is quite simple but very effective for including our tickets in the commits without sacrificing the importance to write a commit message that can be read without the issue tracker opened on our browser (and with a proper integration, we can leave our automations to move tickets as we do certain actions, but I’ll leave this to another article). If you enjoyed reading this article, feel free to click the 👏 button how many times you want! Extra chapter: do you know that you can use emoji in your commit messages? 😁 Maybe you’ve noticed that I used and in my last example commit message. That’s a word enclosed by two colons (the punctuation symbol, not the intestine part…) that will be converted from many Git services to real emoji! GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab all have support for this feature. :bird: :pensive: All the emoji with relative code are on websites like . https://emoji.muan.co/ Git commits don’t need to be boring, but remember: be responsible and use your emoji in your description, or in your summary only if you are sure that you have enough space, and more important , because who’s reading that commit message could be using the terminal! 😉 really don’t use emoji for explaining stuff Sorry for the long post, here’s a pic of a . Photo by via Pixabay. birb cornelinux

On Git commit messages and issue trackers

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As , we are always striving for high performance and efficiency in our code. Whether it’s optimizing algorithms or fine-tuning data structures, every decision we make can have a significant impact on the overall performance of our applications. One powerful way that can help us accurately measure the performance of our code is a process called benchmarking and we’ll look at how to use BenchmarkDotNet with our C# code. software engineers In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of using BenchmarkDotNet to benchmark C# code efficiently. We’ll be starting with the setup and I’ll guide you through examples of how to write benchmarks and run them as well. By the end, you’ll be able to write and run benchmarks on your C# code using BenchmarkDotNet effectively. Let’s jump into it! 1 – Installing and Setting Up BenchmarkDotNet The first step is to in your project. You can do this by opening the NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio and searching for “BenchmarkDotNet.” Select the latest version and click on the Install button to add it to your project. There are no other external dependencies or anything fancy that you need to do to get going. install the BenchmarkDotNet package As you’ll see in the following sections, it’s purely code configuration after the NuGet package is installed! It’s worth mentioning that BenchmarkDotNet automatically performs optimizations during benchmarking C# code, such as JIT warm-up and running benchmarks in a random order, to provide accurate and unbiased results. But this all happens without you having to do anything special. Keep in mind, that just like with writing tests, you’ll very likely want to have your benchmark code in a dedicated project. This will allow you to release your core code separately from your benchmarks. There are probably not a lot of great reasons to deploy your benchmark code with your service or ship your benchmark code to your customers. 2 – Getting Started With Benchmark Methods in BenchmarkDotNet When it comes to writing benchmark methods using the BenchmarkDotNet framework, there are a few things we need to configure properly. In this section, I’ll guide you on how to write effective benchmark methods that accurately measure the performance of your C# code. This video on getting started with BenchmarkDotNet is a helpful guide as well: https://youtu.be/Wa3sdKGp3wE?embedable=true Structure Your Benchmark Code It’s important to structure your benchmark code properly to ensure accurate and efficient benchmarks. Follow these guidelines: : Start by creating a dedicated class for your benchmarks. This keeps your benchmark code organized and separate from the rest of your application code. Create a separate class for benchmarks : Select the appropriate type of benchmark job you’d like to run by marking your benchmark class with one of the following attributes , , , or . Apply the correct [XXXRunJob] attribute [ShortRunJob] [MediumRunJob] [LongRunJob] [VeryLongRunJob] attribute: To enable memory measurements during the benchmark, apply the attribute to your benchmark class. This attribute allows you to gather memory-related information along with execution time. If you’re strictly concerned about runtime and not memory, you can omit this. Apply the [MemoryDiagnoser] [MemoryDiagnoser] Note that your class cannot be sealed. I’d recommend just sticking to a standard definition with the appropriate attributes from above. You can have your benchmark class inherit from something else though, so if you find there’s a benefit to using some inheritance here for reusability, that might be a viable option. public class Writing Benchmark Methods Benchmark methods are where you define the code that you want to measure. Here are some tips for writing benchmark methods using BenchmarkDotNet: Apply the attribute: Each benchmark method needs the attribute. This attribute tells BenchmarkDotNet that this method should be treated as a benchmark. [Benchmark] [Benchmark] Avoid setup costs in benchmark methods: Benchmark methods should focus on measuring the performance of the code itself, not the cost of initializing your benchmark scenario. Avoid allocations and overuse of memory: Benchmark methods should not be concerned with the overhead caused by memory allocations. Minimize allocations and reduce memory usage within your benchmark methods to get accurate performance measurements. Note that BenchmarkDotNet handles all of the warmup for you – You don’t need to go out of your way to manually code in doing iterations ahead of time to get things to a steady state before benchmarking C# code. Example Benchmark Method: Here’s an example of a benchmark method in BenchmarkDotNet: [Benchmark]
public void SimpleMethodBenchmark()
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
    {
        // Execute the code to be measured
        MyClass.SimpleMethod();
    }
} In this example, the attribute is applied to the method, indicating that it should be treated as a benchmark. Suppose we were using an instance method instead of a static method as illustrated. In that case, we’d want to instantiate the class OUTSIDE of the benchmark method — especially if we need to create, configure, and pass in dependencies. Minimize (read: eliminate) the amount of work done in the method that isn’t what you are trying to benchmark. [Benchmark] SimpleMethodBenchmark Remember, if you’re interested in memory in addition to the runtime characteristics, make sure to apply the attribute to the benchmark class — not the method that is the benchmark. [MemoryDiagnoser] 3 – Running Benchmarks with BenchmarkDotNet When it comes to running benchmarks using BenchmarkDotNet in C#, there are a few important considerations to keep in mind. In this section, I’ll explain how to run benchmarks, discuss different scenarios and options, and provide code examples to help you get started. You can follow along with this video on how to run your BenchmarkDotNet benchmarks as well: https://youtu.be/Hqeq9ycqteQ?embedable=true Running Benchmarks With BenchmarkRunner The BenchmarkRunner class provides a very simple mechanism for running all of the Benchmarks that you provide it from a type, list of types, or an assembly. The benefit of this is in the simplicity as you can just run the executable and it will go immediately run all of the benchmarks that you’ve configured the code to run. You can or below: check out some example code on GitHub using BenchmarkDotNet.Running;

var assembly = typeof(Benchmarking.BenchmarkDotNet.BenchmarkBaseClass.Benchmarks).Assembly;

BenchmarkRunner.Run(
    assembly,
    args: args); In the code above, we are simply specifying an assembly for one of our benchmarks. However, you could use or find other ways to list the types you’re interested in. Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly Running Benchmarks With BenchmarkSwitcher The BenchmarkSwitcher class is very similar – but the behavior is different in that you can filter which benchmarks you’d like to run. There are some slight API differences in that the BenchmarkRunner allows you to specify a collection of assemblies where the BenchmarkRunner (at the time of writing) does not. Here’s a code example, or you can : check out the GitHub page using BenchmarkDotNet.Running;

var assembly = typeof(Benchmarking.BenchmarkDotNet.BenchmarkBaseClass.Benchmarks).Assembly;


BenchmarkSwitcher
    // used to load all benchmarks from an assembly
    .FromAssembly(assembly)
    // OR... if there are multiple assemblies,
    // you can use this instead
    //.FromAssemblies
    // OR... if you'd rather specify the benchmark
    // types directly, you can use this
    ///.FromTypes(new[]
    ///{
    ///    typeof(MyBenchmark1),
    ///    typeof(MyBenchmark2),
    ///})
    .Run(args); As you will note in the code comments above, there are several ways that we can call the BenchmarkSwitcher. The primary difference between these two methods is that the switcher will allow you to provide user input or filter on the commandline. 4 – Customizing Benchmark Execution BenchmarkDotNet provides various options to customize the execution of your benchmarks, allowing you to fine-tune the benchmarking process according to your needs. Two important options to consider are the iteration count and warm-up iterations. Configuring Parameters for Benchmarks If we want to have variety in our benchmark runs, we can use the attribute on a public field. This is akin to using the xUnit Theory for parameterized tests, if you’re familiar with that. For each field you have marked with this attribute, you’ll essentially be building a matrix of benchmark scenarios to go run. [Params] Let’s check out some example code: [MemoryDiagnoser]
[ShortRunJob]
public class OurBenchmarks
{
    List<int>? _list;

    [Params(1_000, 10_000, 100_000, 1_000_000)]
    public int ListSize;

    [GlobalSetup]
    public void Setup()
    {
        _list = new List<int>();
        for (int i = 0; i < ListSize; i++)
        {
            _list.Add(i);
        }
    }

    [Benchmark]
    public void OurBenchmark()
    {
        _list!.Sort();
    }
} In the code above, we have a field which is marked with . This means that in our method, we’re able to get a new value for each variation of the benchmarking matrix we want to run. In this case, since there’s only one parameter, there will only be a benchmark for each value of ListSize — so 4 different benchmarks based on the 4 different values specified. ListSize [Params] [GlobalSetup] Adjusting Per Benchmark Iteration Count BenchmarkDotNet allows you to control the number of method. By default, each benchmark is executed a reasonable number of times to obtain reliable measurements. However, you can adjust the iteration count by applying the attribute to individual benchmark methods, specifying the desired number of iterations. iterations for each benchmark [IterationCount] [Benchmark]
[IterationCount(10)] // Custom iteration count
public void MyBenchmarkMethod()
{
    // Benchmark code here
} I should note that in practice, I have not personally had to configure the iteration count manually. Custom Per Benchmark Warm-up Iterations Warm-up iterations are executed before the actual benchmark starts, allowing the JIT compiler and CPU caches to warm up. This helps eliminate any performance inconsistencies caused by the initial compilation of the benchmark method. You can customize the number of warm-up iterations using the attribute. [WarmupCount] [Benchmark]
[WarmupCount(5)] // Custom warm-up count
public void MyBenchmarkMethod()
{
    // Benchmark code here
} Like the iteration count, I have also not had an issue with the default warmup. I’d advise that you leave these as defaults unless you know what you’re doing to tune these accordingly. 5: Analyzing and Interpreting Benchmark Results from BenchmarkDotNet Benchmarking is an important part of the software development process when it comes to optimizing performance. After running benchmarks using BenchmarkDotNet, it’s important to be able to accurately analyze and interpret the results. In this section, I’ll guide you through the process of analyzing benchmark results and identifying potential performance improvements. Establishing a Baseline Benchmark in BenchmarkDotNet When analyzing benchmark results, several key metrics can provide valuable insights into the performance of your code. But what can be challenging is understanding what you’re trying to compare against. If you simply have two implementations you are trying to compare against, it may not feel that challenging. However, when you’re comparing many you likely want to establish a baseline to see your improvements (or regressions). Here’s how we can make a benchmark method as a “baseline”: [Benchmark(Baseline = true)]
public void Baseline()
{
    // Code under benchmark
} Interpreting Benchmark Results Once you have the benchmark results and understand the key metrics, it’s important to interpret the findings to identify potential performance improvements. Here are a few examples of how to interpret the benchmark results: Identifying Bottlenecks: Look for outliers or significantly higher execution times in certain benchmarks. This could indicate potential bottlenecks in your code that need to be optimized. Comparing Performance: Compare the mean or median execution times of different benchmark methods or different versions of your code. This can help you identify which approach or version is more efficient. Spotting Variability: Pay attention to the standard deviation and percentiles to identify any significant variability in the benchmark results. This can help you identify areas where performance optimizations could make a difference. I find that I am spending most of my time looking at the median/mean to see what stands out as faster and slower. If you need to dive deeper into the statistical analysis and you just need a primer, I have found even . Wikipedia provided a reasonable starting point 6: Optimizing C# Code with BenchmarkDotNet As software engineers, we constantly strive to write code that is not only functional but also performs efficiently. BenchmarkDotNet is a powerful tool that helps us measure and compare the performance of our code. By analyzing the results provided by BenchmarkDotNet, we can identify areas where our code may be underperforming and optimize it to achieve better results. In this section, I’ll share some techniques for optimizing C# code based on the results we’d gather from running our benchmarks. You can check out this video on measuring and tuning iterator performance for a practical example: https://youtu.be/G2-d7kZFlRA?embedable=true Identifying Performance Bottlenecks One of the first steps in optimizing C# code is identifying the performance bottlenecks. BenchmarkDotNet allows us to measure the execution time of our code and compare different implementations. By analyzing the benchmark results, we can pinpoint the areas that are taking up the most time. Let’s consider an example where we have a loop that performs a computation on a large array. We can use BenchmarkDotNet to measure the execution time of different implementations of this loop and identify any potential bottlenecks. [ShortRunJob]
public class ArrayComputation
{
    private readonly int[] array = new int[1000000];

    [GlobalSetup]
    public void Setup()
    {
        // TODO: decide how you want to fill the array :)
    }

    [Benchmark]
    public void LoopWithMultipleOperations()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
        {
            array[i] += 1;
            array[i] *= 2;
            array[i] -= 1;
        }
    }

    [Benchmark]
    public void LoopWithSingleOperation()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
        {
            array[i] = (array[i] + 1) * 2 - 1;
        }
    }
} In this example, we have two benchmark methods and . The first method performs multiple operations on each element of the array, while the second method combines the operations into a single computation. By comparing the execution times of these two methods using BenchmarkDotNet, we can determine which implementation is more efficient. LoopWithMultipleOperations LoopWithSingleOperation Recall from the earlier sections to we could parameterize this for different sizes! Sometimes this is necessary to see if we have different behaviors under different scenarios, so it’s worth exploring beyond just the surface. Optimizing Loops and Reducing Memory Allocations Loops are often an area where we can optimize our code for better performance. Inefficient loops can result in unnecessary memory allocations or redundant computations. BenchmarkDotNet can help us identify such issues and guide us in optimizing our code. Consider the following example where we have a loop that concatenates strings, and we’re making sure to use a as well: [MemoryDiagnoser] [MemoryDiagnoser]
[ShortRunJob]
public class StringConcatenation
{
    private readonly string[] strings = new string[1000];

    [GlobalSetup]
    public void Setup()
    {
        // TODO: decide how you want to fill the array :)
    }

    [Benchmark]
    public string ConcatenateStrings()
    {
        string result = "";
        for (int i = 0; i < strings.Length; i++)
        {
            result += strings[i];
        }

        return result;
    }

    [Benchmark]
    public string StringBuilderConcatenation()
    {
        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < strings.Length; i++)
        {
            stringBuilder.Append(strings[i]);
        }

        return stringBuilder.ToString();
    }
} In this example, we have two benchmark methods: and . The first method uses string concatenation inside a loop, which can result in frequent memory allocations and poor performance. The second method uses a to efficiently concatenate the strings. By comparing the execution times of these two methods using BenchmarkDotNet, we can observe the performance difference and validate the effectiveness of using a for string concatenation. ConcatenateStrings StringBuilderConcatenation StringBuilder StringBuilder Now You Know How to Use BenchmarkDotNet! BenchmarkDotNet is a valuable tool for accurately and efficiently benchmarking C# code. Throughout this article, we explored tips for using BenchmarkDotNet effectively. By leveraging these, you can accurately measure and optimize the performance of your C# code. Improved performance can lead to more efficient applications, better user experiences, and overall enhanced software quality! Remember, benchmarking is an iterative process, and there are other resources and tools available that can further assist you in optimizing your C# code. Consider exploring profiling tools, performance counters, and other performance analysis techniques to gain deeper insights into your application’s performance. If you found this useful and you’re looking for more learning opportunities, consider and check out my ! subscribing to my free weekly software engineering newsletter free videos on YouTube Also published . here

6 Simple Performance-Boosting Tips to Get Started With BenchmarkDotNet

Debugging effectively requires a nuanced approach, similar to using tongs that tightly grip the problem from both sides. While low-level tools have their place in system-level service debugging, today's focus shifts towards a more sophisticated segment of the development stack: advanced management tools. Understanding these tools is crucial for developers, as it bridges the gap between code creation and operational deployment, enhancing both efficiency and effectiveness in managing applications across extensive infrastructures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQjHAMM3XfY&embedable=true As a side note, if you like the content of this and the other posts in this series, check out my that covers his subject. If you have friends who are learning to code, I'd appreciate a reference to my If you want to get back to Java after a while, check out my Debugging book t Java Basics book. Java 8 to 21 book . The Need for Advanced Management Tools in Development Development and DevOps teams utilize an array of tools, often perceived as complex or alien by developers. These tools, designed for scalability, enable the management of thousands of servers simultaneously. Such capabilities, although not always necessary for smaller scales, offer significant advantages in application management. Advanced management tools facilitate the navigation and control over multiple machines, making them indispensable for developers seeking to optimize application performance and reliability. Introduction to JMX (Java Management Extensions) One of the pivotal standards in application management is Java Management Extensions (JMX), which Java introduced to simplify the interaction with and management of applications. JMX allows both applications and the Java Development Kit (JDK) itself to expose critical information and functionalities, enabling external tools to manipulate these elements dynamically. Although activating JMX falls outside this discussion, its significance cannot be overstated, with ample resources available for those interested in its implementation. Setting up JMX JMX isn't enabled by default; to enable it, we need the following steps: : To enable JMX on a Java application, you must adjust the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) startup parameters. This involves adding specific flags to your application's startup command. The essential flags for enabling JMX are: Modify the JVM Startup Parameters : This flag activates the JMX remote management and monitoring. -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote : Replace with a specific port number where the JMX remote connection will listen. -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=<PORT> <PORT> : This flag disables SSL for JMX connections. For development environments, SSL might be disabled for simplicity, but for production environments, consider enabling SSL for security. -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false : This flag disables authentication. Similar to SSL, authentication may be disabled in development but should be enabled in production to ensure secure access. -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false : With the JVM parameters set, restart your application. This will apply the new startup parameters, activating JMX. Restart Your Application : After restarting your application, you can verify that JMX is enabled by connecting to it using a JMX client such as JConsole, VisualVM, or a custom management application. Use the port number specified in the startup parameters to establish the connection. Verify JMX Connectivity JMX Security Considerations While enabling JMX provides powerful management capabilities, it's crucial to consider security implications, especially when JMX is exposed over a network. When deploying applications in production, always enable SSL and authentication to protect against unauthorized access. Additionally, consider firewall rules and network policies to restrict JMX access to trusted clients. Understanding MBeans Central to JMX are Management Beans (MBeans), which serve as the control points within an application. These beans enable developers to publish specific functionalities for runtime monitoring and configuration. The ability to export application metrics to dashboards through MBeans is particularly valuable, facilitating real-time decision-making based on accurate, up-to-date information. Furthermore, operations such as user management can be exposed through MBeans, enhancing administrative capabilities. Spring and Management Beans Spring Framework's Actuator module exemplifies the integration of management capabilities within development, offering extensive metrics and operational details. This integration propels applications to "production-ready" status, allowing developers to monitor and manage applications with unprecedented depth and efficiency. Tooling for JMX Management While JMX can be accessed through various web interfaces and administrative tools, command-line tooling offers a direct, efficient method for interacting with JMX-enabled applications on production servers. Tools like JMXTerm complement visual tools by providing a streamlined interface for rapid insights, especially in environments unfamiliar to the developer. Getting Started with JMXTerm JMXTerm is a powerful utility for managing JMX without the need for graphical visualization, ideal for quick diagnostics or high-level server insights. After enabling JMX on the JVM and setting up the necessary configurations, developers can connect to servers, explore different JMX domains, and manipulate MBeans directly from the command line. We can accomplish all of the following via visual tools and sometimes using a web interface. Normally, that's the approach I use. However, as a learning tool I think JMXTerm is fantastic since it exposes things in a way that's consistent and verbose. If we can understand JMXTerm, the GUI version would be a walk in the park... We can launch JMXTerm using the command line. In my case, I used the following command: java -jar ~/Downloads/jmxterm-1.0.2-uber.jar --url localhost:30002 Once the connection is made, we can issue commands to JMX and retrieve information about the JVM or the application e.g., I can list the domains that you can think of as similar to "packages" or "modules," a way to organize the various beans: $>domains
#following domains are available
JMImplementation
com.sun.management
java.lang
java.nio
java.util.logging
javax.cache
jdk.management.jfr I can select a specific domain and thus perform future operations within said domain: $>domain java.util.logging
#domain is set to java.util.logging Once inside the domain, I can select a specific bean and perform operations on it. For this I need to first list the beans in the domain, in this case there's only the logging bean. I can then select that bean using the command: bean $>beans
#domain = java.util.logging:
java.util.logging:type=Logging
$>bean java.util.logging:type=Logging
#bean is set to java.util.logging:type=Logging I can perform many operations on beans. Perhaps the most useful is the command, which lets me query a bean. Notice that a bean can have attributes, think of them like object fields and operations which you can think of as methods. There are also notifications which you can think of as events: info $>info
#mbean = java.util.logging:type=Logging
#class name = sun.management.ManagementFactoryHelper$PlatformLoggingImpl
# attributes
  %0   - LoggerNames ([Ljava.lang.String;, r)
  %1   - ObjectName (javax.management.ObjectName, r)
# operations
  %0   - java.lang.String getLoggerLevel(java.lang.String p0)
  %1   - java.lang.String getParentLoggerName(java.lang.String p0)
  %2   - void setLoggerLevel(java.lang.String p0,java.lang.String p1)
#there's no notifications I can run operations and pass various commands e.g., I can get the logger level, set it, and then check that the logger level was indeed updated: $>run getLoggerLevel "org.apache.tomcat.websocket.WsWebSocketContainer"
#calling operation getLoggerLevel of mbean java.util.logging:type=Logging with params [org.apache.tomcat.websocket.WsWebSocketContainer]
#operation returns:
$>run setLoggerLevel org.apache.tomcat.websocket.WsWebSocketContainer INFO
#calling operation setLoggerLevel of mbean java.util.logging:type=Logging with params [org.apache.tomcat.websocket.WsWebSocketContainer, INFO]
#operation returns: 
null
$>run getLoggerLevel "org.apache.tomcat.websocket.WsWebSocketContainer"
#calling operation getLoggerLevel of mbean java.util.logging:type=Logging with params [org.apache.tomcat.websocket.WsWebSocketContainer]
#operation returns: 
INFO This is just the tip of the iceberg. We can get many things, such as spring settings, internal VM information, etc. In this example, I can query VM information directly from the console: $>domain com.sun.management
#domain is set to com.sun.management
$>beans
#domain = com.sun.management:
com.sun.management:type=DiagnosticCommand
com.sun.management:type=HotSpotDiagnostic
$>bean com.sun.management:type=HotSpotDiagnostic
#bean is set to com.sun.management:type=HotSpotDiagnostic
$>info
#mbean = com.sun.management:type=HotSpotDiagnostic
#class name = com.sun.management.internal.HotSpotDiagnostic
# attributes
  %0   - DiagnosticOptions ([Ljavax.management.openmbean.CompositeData;, r)
  %1   - ObjectName (javax.management.ObjectName, r)
# operations
  %0   - void dumpHeap(java.lang.String p0,boolean p1)
  %1   - javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData getVMOption(java.lang.String p0)
  %2   - void setVMOption(java.lang.String p0,java.lang.String p1)
#there's no notifications Leveraging JMX in Debugging and Management JMX stands out as a robust tool for wiring management consoles, allowing developers to expose critical settings and metrics for their projects. Beyond its conventional use, JMX can be leveraged as part of the debugging process, serving as a pseudo-interface for triggering debugging scenarios or observing debugging sessions within the management UI. This approach not only simplifies the management of server applications but also enhances the developer's ability to diagnose and resolve issues efficiently. Exposing MBeans in Spring Boot Up until now, we discussed the process of working with beans that are a part of the JVM or Spring. But what about our own application logic? We can expose our own application’s internal state so we (and our SREs) can review these in production and staging. Instead of building a custom control panel or logging , we can just expose the data. If a flag is problematic we can change it in production, if you want to query a specific state it too can be exposed. everything Spring Boot simplifies the management and monitoring of applications through its comprehensive support for JMX. By leveraging Spring's infrastructure, we can easily expose their application's beans as JMX Managed Beans (MBeans), making them accessible for monitoring and management via JMX clients. Understanding Spring Boot JMX Support Spring Boot automatically configures JMX for you and exposes any beans annotated with as JMX MBeans. This feature, combined with Spring Boot’s Actuator, provides a rich set of management endpoints, covering various aspects of the application, from metrics to thread dumps. @ManagedResource Expose an MBean in Spring Boot To expose a bean, we need to take the following steps: : Create an interface that defines the operations and attributes you wish to expose via JMX. This interface should be annotated with JMX annotations such as for methods and for fields or getter/setter methods. Define a Management Interface @ManagedOperation @ManagedAttribute : Implement the interface in a class that performs the actual logic for the operations and attributes defined. This class represents your MBean and can be a regular Spring-managed bean. Implement the MBean : Annotate your MBean implementation class with to indicate that it should be exposed as an MBean. You can specify the object name for the MBean in this annotation, which is how it will be identified in JMX clients. Annotate the Bean with @ManagedResource @ManagedResource : Ensure that JMX is enabled in your Spring Boot application. This is usually the default behavior, but you can explicitly enable it by setting in your or file. Enable JMX in Spring Boot spring.jmx.enabled=true application.properties application.yml : Once your application is running, you can access the exposed MBean through any standard JMX client, such as JConsole, VisualVM, or a custom client. Connect to the Spring Boot application's JMX domain, and you'll find the MBean you exposed, ready for interaction. Access the MBean via a JMX Client Example: Exposing a Simple Configuration MBean // Define a management interface
public interface ConfigurationMBean {
    @ManagedAttribute
    String getApplicationName();

    @ManagedOperation
    void updateApplicationName(String name);
}

// Implement the MBean
@Component
@ManagedResource(objectName = "com.example:type=Configuration")
public class Configuration implements ConfigurationMBean {
    private String applicationName = "MyApp";

    @Override
    public String getApplicationName() {
        return applicationName;
    }

    @Override
    public void updateApplicationName(String name) {
        this.applicationName = name;
    }
} In this example, the class is annotated with , making it available as an MBean with operations and attributes accessible via JMX clients. Configuration @ManagedResource Exposing MBeans in Spring Boot is a powerful feature that enhances the management and monitoring capabilities of applications. By following the steps outlined above, developers can provide external tools with dynamic access to application internals, offering a window into the runtime behavior and allowing for adjustments on the fly. This not only aids in debugging and performance tuning but also aligns with best practices for building manageable, robust applications. Final Word Advanced management tools, particularly JMX and its integration with frameworks like Spring, offer developers powerful capabilities for application monitoring, configuration, and debugging. By understanding and utilizing these tools, developers can achieve a deeper level of control over their applications, enhancing both performance and reliability. Whether through graphical interfaces or command-line utilities like JMXTerm, the dynamic manipulation and monitoring of applications in runtime environments open new avenues for effective software development and management. As the bridge between development and operations continues to narrow, mastering these advanced tools becomes essential for any developer looking to excel in today's fast-paced technological landscape. Also published . here

Leveraging JMX for Efficient Debugging, Revisited

What company is more valuable, Microsoft or Apple? That's the question Wall Street wants to answer entering into 2024 as both firms compete head to head in a race to be crowned victor. With a market capitalization of over $3 trillion, Apple has been the most valuable company in the world for quite some time now, but after the ultra sensationalized success of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT, the Windows maker has slowly gained ground and finally broke the $3 trillion threshold to appear as a formidable challenger to the creator of iPhone. In fact, at the time of writing, Microsoft already was the most valuable company in the world, but in the infamous words of Dr. Dre, "Anybody can get it; The hard part is keepin' it, motherf*cker." So now the question is, will Microsoft remain the most valuable company in the world? Well.. Say what you will of Microsoft's business, products, and business products, the company holds a commendable sway over the industries it operates in. We're talking OSs; Productivity tools; Cloud; the list goes on. As we understand it, there's no part of the technology world that doesn't rely on or use a Microsoft product in some shape, way, or form to function, and that's precisely why the company has been able to invent and reinvent itself while staying relevant since the time it was founded by Bill Gates. Instead of wanting to sell products directly to customers, a majority of Microsoft's business has to do with offering tools to the people that make the products that then customers want to buy. And that's a very important distinction to make because that's what makes Microsoft a little different from Apple, which is very, very reliant on customer trends. Apple's entire business model has to do with making products people want, and it is very, very good at what it does. Apple products are cleverly designed, often innovative, and come with the oomph consumers are looking for, but there's really not a lot the company can do if people just can't (or won't!) buy its iPhones, as was the case recently when the company reportedly saw a 30% decline in the smartphone's sales in China due to growing competition from the likes of Huawei. And THAT perhaps is the biggest reason why the company's stock price has been taking a dip, leaving Microsoft with the opportunity to zoom on past ahead. Microsoft's stock also did phenomenally well last year, rising 57% in 2023 as compared to the 48% rise Apple shares experienced last year. So it's safe to say, the future, as it stands, belongs to Apple and Microsoft, at least, in terms of who is the most valuable — regardless of who is #1. So with Microsoft and Apple so far ahead, where does that leave the likes of Google and Amazon? Unfortunately for Google parent Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai's prediction that the success of ChatGPT was a code red for the company may be coming true since the company hasn't even reached the $2 trillion mark! Meanwhile, Amazon is stuck in a range of legal issues involving its business practices and finds itself at an even lower valuation than Google. The one rising star amongst all of these companies continues to be Nvidia, which not only became worth $1 trillion last year, has already experienced such a surge in its share price that it's already halfway through to adding anothertrillion to its market share. For those that don't know, Nvidia sells the hardware that makes generative AI possible. Anyway, it's going to be a wiiiiiiiiiiild ride this year and we'd be excited to see who comes up on top. Microsoft was ranked #1 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankingsthis week, followed by Apple at #3, Google at #5 and Amazon at #6. 👋 You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. Reddit, Now Coming to a Stock Exchange Near You! 👽 Love it or hate it, Reddit is as much a part of the internet lexicon as Google or Facebook. Depending on what you fancy, there's almost always a community to be found, and some reddit threads are.. Well, classic. Reddit might not necessarily have the same corporate clout as traditional social media companies, or, atleast, the deep coffers that run in billions, but it does command sizable respect around the web, particularly as an outlet for some of the more niche communities. I mean, who hasn't turned to Reddit to find answers to burning questions about.. Ahem, bowel movements. Now, Reddit wants a seat at the big boys' table. Having been the platform where "meme stocks" originated, the social media company now wants to float its own stocks to the public market with a soon-to-be-coming initial public offering this year. According to media reports, the mecca of memes (4chan not counted because of Rule #1 😉) could file for an IPO as early as February, with plans to wrap up the entire process by the end of March. The IPO has been a long time coming, with the platform said to have sketched plans to go public as far back as 2021; for one reason or the other, the company held up on actually pulling the trigger, but the plan seems to be picking up steam. So how much is Reddit going to be worth? During its last funding round in 2021, the platform was said to be worth about $10 billion despite the fact that it has never come close to profitability. The valuation might sound like a lot until you realize that it's next to nothing when compared to the likes of Meta (close to a trillion dollars in valuation) and TikTok-owner Bytedance (hundreds of billions of dollars). Nonetheless, the public at large will have a chance to own a piece of the pie with the IPO which would see Reddit float 10% of its ownership in public markets. So keep your eyes peeled for when that happens! What's Up With Bitcoin? 🪙 To any crypto pundit who thought the world's largest currency was headed To the Moon™, what the heck is going on with Bitcoin?? Ever since the US Securities & Exchange Commission approved a bunch of spot bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETF), the price of the cryptocurrency keeps falling. In fact, as of the time of this writing, bitcoin has gone down to below $40,000 at least once! But don't worry, if you're just as confused as we are as to what's going on, we just might have the answer for you. The ETF approval was already pegged as a "sell-the-news" event by on-chain analysis firm CryptoQuant, one of the very few firms that warned bitcoin prices would go down following the SEC action. The firm continues to maintain that bitcoin will fall to around $32,000 as the market corrects itself, possibly spelling doom for Hodlers who got in the action when bitcoin was in the $40,000 range (unless said Hodlers have diamond hands). And if things continue the way they are, it's likely the firm's analysis will come true. But keeping aside what analysts say, part of the reason why bitcoin prices have gone down has to do with now defunct crypto exchange FTX, which apparently sold $1 billion worth of  Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. Whether bitcoin is going to go up or down is anyone's guess, but it should be interesting to see how the crypto landscape evolves with the SEC's oversight (the cryptocurrency is already up back to $42k levels!). Fun fact: HackerNoon is running a poll asking the community what THEY think about the whole bitcoin pricing scenario, so feel free to add your voice to the discussion. In Other News.. 📰 NFTs Outpaced Ether's Gains in January — via CoinDesk
Elon Musk’s $56B Tesla pay deal is unfair, judge rules — via TechCrunch
MrBeast tested Elon Musk’s theory and took home $250,000 — via CNN
Investors punish Microsoft, Alphabet as AI returns fall short of lofty expectations — via Reuters
Tech rivals hound Apple over EU App Store plans — via Axios
Lawmakers to grill CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media firms at hearing on child safety — via CNBC And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. What company is more valuable, Microsoft or Apple ? That's the question Wall Street wants to answer entering into 2024 as both firms compete head to head in a race to be crowned victor. Microsoft Microsoft Apple Apple With a market capitalization of over $3 trillion, Apple has been the most valuable company in the world for quite some time now, but after the ultra sensationalized success of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT, the Windows maker has slowly gained ground and finally broke the $3 trillion threshold to appear as a formidable challenger to the creator of iPhone. most valuable company most valuable company gained ground gained ground finally In fact, at the time of writing, Microsoft already was the most valuable company in the world, but in the infamous words of Dr. Dre, "Anybody can get it; The hard part is keepin' it, motherf*cker." was infamous words infamous words So now the question is, will Microsoft remain the most valuable company in the world? Well.. Say what you will of Microsoft's business, products, and business products, the company holds a commendable sway over the industries it operates in. We're talking OSs; Productivity tools; Cloud; the list goes on. As we understand it, there's no part of the technology world that doesn't rely on or use a Microsoft product in some shape, way, or form to function, and that's precisely why the company has been able to invent and reinvent itself while staying relevant since the time it was founded by Bill Gates. precisely Instead of wanting to sell products directly to customers, a majority of Microsoft's business has to do with offering tools to the people that make the products that then customers want to buy. And that's a very important distinction to make because that's what makes Microsoft a little different from Apple, which is very, very reliant on customer trends. Apple's entire business model has to do with making products people want, and it is very, very good at what it does. Apple products are cleverly designed, often innovative, and come with the oomph consumers are looking for, but there's really not a lot the company can do if people just can't (or won't!) buy its iPhones, as was the case recently when the company reportedly saw a 30% decline in the smartphone's sales in China due to growing competition from the likes of Huawei. And THAT perhaps is the biggest reason why the company's stock price has been taking a dip, leaving Microsoft with the opportunity to zoom on past ahead. Microsoft's stock also did phenomenally well last year, rising 57% in 2023 as compared to the 48% rise Apple shares experienced last year. So it's safe to say, the future, as it stands, belongs to Apple and Microsoft, at least, in terms of who is the most valuable — regardless of who is #1. rising rising So with Microsoft and Apple so far ahead, where does that leave the likes of Google and Amazon ? Unfortunately for Google parent Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai's prediction that the success of ChatGPT was a code red for the company may be coming true since the company hasn't even reached the $2 trillion mark! Meanwhile, Amazon is stuck in a range of legal issues involving its business practices and finds itself at an even lower valuation than Google. Google Google Amazon Amazon code red code red range of legal issues range of legal issues The one rising star amongst all of these companies continues to be Nvidia , which not only became worth $1 trillion last year, has already experienced such a surge in its share price that it's already halfway through to adding another trillion to its market share. For those that don't know, Nvidia sells the hardware that makes generative AI possible. Nvidia Nvidia $1 trillion $1 trillion surge surge another Anyway, it's going to be a wiiiiiiiiiiild ride this year and we'd be excited to see who comes up on top. wiiiiiiiiiiild wiiiiiiiiiiild Microsoft was ranked #1 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week, followed by Apple at #3, Google at #5 and Amazon at #6. Tech Company Rankings 👋 You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. 👋 You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief , a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. Tech Company News Brief Tech Company News Brief here complete Reddit, Now Coming to a Stock Exchange Near You! 👽 Reddit, Now Coming to a Stock Exchange Near You! 👽 Love it or hate it, Reddit is as much a part of the internet lexicon as Google or Facebook. Depending on what you fancy, there's almost always a community to be found, and some reddit threads are.. Well, classic . classic classic Reddit might not necessarily have the same corporate clout as traditional social media companies, or, atleast, the deep coffers that run in billions, but it does command sizable respect around the web, particularly as an outlet for some of the more niche communities. I mean, who hasn't turned to Reddit to find answers to burning questions about.. Ahem, bowel movements . bowel movements bowel movements Now, Reddit wants a seat at the big boys' table. Having been the platform where "meme stocks" originated, the social media company now wants to float its own stocks to the public market with a soon-to-be-coming initial public offering this year. According to media reports, the mecca of memes (4chan not counted because of Rule #1 😉) could file for an IPO as early as February, with plans to wrap up the entire process by the end of March. The IPO has been a long time coming, with the platform said to have sketched plans to go public as far back as 2021; for one reason or the other, the company held up on actually pulling the trigger, but the plan seems to be picking up steam. Rule #1 Rule #1 So how much is Reddit going to be worth? During its last funding round in 2021, the platform was said to be worth about $10 billion despite the fact that it has never come close to profitability. The valuation might sound like a lot until you realize that it's next to nothing when compared to the likes of Meta (close to a trillion dollars in valuation) and TikTok-owner Bytedance (hundreds of billions of dollars). is Nonetheless, the public at large will have a chance to own a piece of the pie with the IPO which would see Reddit float 10% of its ownership in public markets. So keep your eyes peeled for when that happens! What's Up With Bitcoin? 🪙 What's Up With Bitcoin? 🪙 To any crypto pundit who thought the world's largest currency was headed To the Moon™, what the heck is going on with Bitcoin?? what the heck Ever since the US Securities & Exchange Commission approved a bunch of spot bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETF), the price of the cryptocurrency keeps falling. In fact, as of the time of this writing, bitcoin has gone down to below $40,000 at least once! below But don't worry, if you're just as confused as we are as to what's going on, we just might have the answer for you. The ETF approval was already pegged as a "sell-the-news" event by on-chain analysis firm CryptoQuant, one of the very few firms that warned bitcoin prices would go down following the SEC action. The firm continues to maintain that bitcoin will fall to around $32,000 as the market corrects itself, possibly spelling doom for Hodlers who got in the action when bitcoin was in the $40,000 range (unless said Hodlers have diamond hands). And if things continue the way they are, it's likely the firm's analysis will come true. warned warned But keeping aside what analysts say, part of the reason why bitcoin prices have gone down has to do with now defunct crypto exchange FTX, which apparently sold $1 billion worth of  Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF as part of its bankruptcy proceedings . bankruptcy proceedings bankruptcy proceedings Whether bitcoin is going to go up or down is anyone's guess, but it should be interesting to see how the crypto landscape evolves with the SEC's oversight (the cryptocurrency is already up back to $42k levels!). Fun fact: HackerNoon is running a poll asking the community what THEY think about the whole bitcoin pricing scenario, so feel free to add your voice to the discussion . voice to the discussion voice to the discussion In Other News.. 📰 In Other News.. 📰 NFTs Outpaced Ether's Gains in January — via CoinDesk Elon Musk’s $56B Tesla pay deal is unfair, judge rules — via TechCrunch MrBeast tested Elon Musk’s theory and took home $250,000 — via CNN Investors punish Microsoft, Alphabet as AI returns fall short of lofty expectations — via Reuters Tech rivals hound Apple over EU App Store plans — via Axios Lawmakers to grill CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media firms at hearing on child safety — via CNBC NFTs Outpaced Ether's Gains in January — via CoinDesk CoinDesk CoinDesk Elon Musk’s $56B Tesla pay deal is unfair, judge rules — via TechCrunch TechCrunch TechCrunch MrBeast tested Elon Musk’s theory and took home $250,000 — via CNN CNN CNN Investors punish Microsoft, Alphabet as AI returns fall short of lofty expectations — via Reuters Reuters Reuters Tech rivals hound Apple over EU App Store plans — via Axios Axios Axios Lawmakers to grill CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media firms at hearing on child safety — via CNBC CNBC CNBC And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. Tech Company Rankings Tech Company Rankings

Microsoft, Apple Trade Blows For Top Spot

I write a newsletter called Above Average, where I talk about the second-order insights behind everything that is happening in the big tech. If you are into tech and don’t want to be average, . subscribe to it Inferring is essentially a way to extract insights, sentiments, and trends using clever prompts while interacting with LLMs. Previously, before LLMs, each of these tasks would require their own models, training, and deployment & maintenance. But with the explosion of OpenAI and other LLMs, inference allows you to improve your products by leveraging LLMs, and you don’t have to be a data scientist or a machine learning engineer to do so. Let’s say you run an e-commerce website and want to extract the sentiment of customer reviews. You can do this using the following prompt. In this case, I am providing the review text and the prompt you can use on it. You can use your favorite way to run it against Open AI’s API. I took a real review from Amazon for a light box that I purchased for this example. Example 1: from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()
client.api_key = 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY'

amazon_review = f"""
This softbox lighting system is a great value for the price. They were super easy to set and offer multiple types of lighting, with dimmer and remotes for each light. They are lightweight which means they can topple over if bumped. But that was an easy problem to solve. I just created some weights out of an old pair of socks and some dried beans. You could use rice or sand also. Or just buy sandbags. I like to DIY. Anywho, I highly recommend this lighting system.
"""

story = """
prompt = f"""
Identify the following items from the review text: 
- Sentiment (positive or negative)
- Is the reviewer expressing anger? (true or false)
- Item purchased by reviewer
- Company that made the item

The review is delimited with triple backticks. \
Format your response as a JSON object with \
"Sentiment", "Anger", "Item" and "Brand" as the keys.
If the information isn't present, use "unknown" \
as the value.
Make your response as short as possible.
Format the Anger value as a boolean.

Review text: '''{amazon_review}'''

"""

response = client.chat.completions.create(
  model="gpt-4",
  messages=[
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": prompt
    }
  ],
  temperature=0,
  #max_tokens=64,
  #top_p=1
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content) The output I got is as follows: {“Sentiment”: “positive”, “Anger”: false, “Item”: “softbox lighting system”, “Brand”: “unknown”} This is a cool example showing the power of inferring using Open AI’s API. Now, Amazon is a large company that already uses AI to ship features, and one of the recent updates to the page seems to be about summarizing all the reviews under the product. Here is how it looks for the same product. Do you think it can be re-created using inferring across a set of customer reviews? I think so. If you are able to figure this out, reach me on and let me know. Twitter let's say you run a news website, and you want to find the topics an article is about without actually reading it. Can you do it using a Prompt and infer it? Yes, you can. Here is an example article from which I am inferring topics mentioned in that article. Example 2: from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()
client.api_key = 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY'



article = """
It hasn't been the best start to 2024 for Elon Musk. The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, appealed to YouTube's biggest star MrBeast to post his videos on the platform, and was promptly rejected.

On Dec. 30, 2023, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, posted on X to announce his latest video release was available on YouTube: "I uploaded, go watch or I'll drop kick you."

Donaldson had uploaded a 20-minute long video to YouTube, in which he chronicled spending a week in solitary confinement. These types of videos, in which Donaldson challenges either himself or an individual with an extreme task, have earned him worldwide notoriety. The social media mastermind earned an estimated $82 million in 2023, and with more than 225 million subscribers on his main channel alone, is the platform's biggest name.

After Donaldson posted the appeal to head to YouTube on X, one fan replied: "Upload on this platform too," which is when Elon Musk chimed in with: "Yeah."

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X, has been trying to drum up interest from video viewers since taking over the social media platform in 2022.

Schemes have included launching a media partnership with heiress Paris Hilton—which has since been axed—as well as streaming shows from the likes of former Fox star Tucker Carlson.

Musk, now with the help of CEO Linda Yaccarino, has also attempted to drum up revenue by launching premium subscription services on the site, which—among other things—allow for users to appear as "verified" and send DMs to other accounts.

The moves have been necessary after droves of advertisers left the site over fears their branding would appear beside unregulated content.

Musk, a fierce proponent of free speech, has refused to cow to concern from advertisers about how X will prevent their messages from reportedly appearing beside Nazi propaganda, for example.

But Musk's attempt to get MrBeast's content on his site—not even exclusively—was rebuffed by the creator.

Donaldson replied to Musk directly: "My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it :/ I’m down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking!"

The polite rebuttal contrasts with the firm interest Donaldson had previously taken in Twitter. Indeed, Donaldson's bio still reads "X Super Official CEO," harking back to the times when speculation was rife about who would take over the day-to-day running of the platform from the ever-busy Musk.
"""

prompt = f"""
Determine five topics that are being discussed in the \
following text, which is delimited by triple backticks.

Make each item one or two words long. 

Format your response as a list of items separated by commas.

Text sample: '''{article}'''

"""

response = client.chat.completions.create(
  model="gpt-4",
  messages=[
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": prompt
    }
  ],
  temperature=0,
  #max_tokens=64,
  #top_p=1
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content) Output is: Elon Musk, Social Media Platforms, YouTube Content, Advertising Concerns, Monetization Strategies Pretty accurate, right? Shopify App to summarize & extract insights from customer reviews. This app should be launched in the Shopify app store. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shopify launched this natively. Just using prompt engineering with open AI API, this would be an app that can be launched in a couple of days. AI PRODUCT IDEA ALERT: That’s it for day 3. Follow me on for the latest updates on 100 days of AI, or . Twitter bookmark this page Also published . here

100 Days of AI Day 3: Leveraging AI for Prompt Engineering and Inference

AI দিনের 100 দিন 3: প্রম্পট ইঞ্জিনিয়ারিং এবং ইনফরেন্সের জন্য AI ব্যবহার করা

100 Tage KI Tag 3: Nutzung von KI für schnelles Engineering und Inferenz

100 días de IA Día 3: Aprovechamiento de la IA para ingeniería e inferencia rápidas

100 jours d'IA Jour 3 : Tirer parti de l'IA pour une ingénierie et une inférence rapides

एआई के 100 दिन, दिन 3: त्वरित इंजीनियरिंग और अनुमान के लिए एआई का लाभ उठाना

100 日間の AI 3 日目: AI を活用して迅速なエンジニアリングと推論を行う

AI 100일 3일차: 신속한 엔지니어링 및 추론을 위해 AI 활용

100 dias de IA, dia 3: aproveitando a IA para engenharia e inferência imediatas

100 дней ИИ. День 3. Использование ИИ для оперативного проектирования и вывода

100 Günlük Yapay Zeka 3. Gün: Hızlı Mühendislik ve Çıkarım için Yapay Zekadan Yararlanma

100 ngày AI Ngày 3: Tận dụng AI cho Kỹ thuật và suy luận nhanh chóng

人工智能 100 天第 3 天：利用人工智能进行快速工程和推理

What is the problem? Async await syntax gives us the most straightforward way to write asynchronous code. However, such construction cannot be used in certain scenarios. For instance, using async await keywords is prohibited in constructors. There are many reasons why it is not possible in the existing language version. Probably, one of the obvious ones is that async methods would return or to be able to properly handle exceptions without crashing the process, and trivially to be able to wait until the async operation is completed. Task Task<T> And if we simply take the following class, build the library containing it, and then look at disassembled code. public class MyObject
{
    public MyObject()
    {
        //diligently initializing
    }
} We will see the following line. instance void [System.Runtime]System.Object::.ctor() where the keyword indicates that the method is an instance method, meaning it is called on an instance of the class, not on the class itself (which would be indicated by the static keyword). instance So, technically, it calls some method (constructor) on the already existing object to initialize it. Could it be made asynchronous hypothetically? public class MyObject
{
    public async MyObject()
    {
        await InitializeAsync();
    }
} Of course, yes, everything is possible in our world; it only depends on the price and whether it will solve any real problem without introducing new complications and tradeoffs. I believe that developers have had discussions about it many times, and they clearly understand the feasibility and meaningfulness of incorporating this change. C# language However, even without language in-built such a feature, we can solve this problem. Ways to overcome There are plenty of approaches that could be used to achieve the asynchronous initialization. Async to sync If we are only allowed to have sync operation in constructors, we can intuitively apply the approach. async to sync public class MyBestObject
{
    public MyBestObject()
    {
        InitializeAsync().GetAwaiter().GetResult();
    }

    private async Task InitializeAsync()
    {
        //diligently initializing

        await Task.Delay(100);
    }
} This approach is not so bad if there is no synchronization context in place and the async operation is relatively fast, but in general, it is not a recommended practice since it is based on a lot of assumptions about the executing environment and details of the async operation. It leads to inefficient resource consumption, sudden deadlocks in UI applications, and a common violation of the async programming idea of “async all the way.“ Async factory A quite standard way for solving this problem is to use factories. public class MyBestService
{
    public async Task InitializeAsync() 
    {
        //diligently initializing

        await Task.Delay(100);
    }
}

public interface IMyBestServiceFactory
{
    Task<MyBestService> CreateAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken);
}

public sealed class MyBestServiceFactory : IMyBestServiceFactory
{
    public MyBestServiceFactory()
    {
    }

    public async Task<MyBestService> CreateAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var service = new MyBestService();
        await service.InitializeAsync(cancellationToken);
        return service;
    }
} We could either use the static method in class or even specify a dedicated factory for that purpose. The second option is a little bit more compatible with the pattern since you can request in any class and then just call the method. MyBestService Dependency Injection IMyBestServiceFactory CreateAsync The main drawback of this approach is additional coupling since you (any class uses ) need to control the lifetime of a newly created object. IMyBestServiceFactory Additionally, it requires adapting solutions that use reflection ( ) or expressions ( ) to create and initialize instances. Activate.CreateInstace Expression.New Async initialization We could do the following trick to avoid problems with the pattern. Async Factory public class MyBestService
{
    private readonly Task _initializeTask;

    public MyBestService()
    {
        _initializeTask = InitializeAsync();
    }

    public async Task DoSomethingAsync() 
    {
        await _initializeTask;

        // Do something async
    }

    private async Task InitializeAsync()
    {
        //diligently initializing

        await Task.Delay(100);
    }
} As you can see, we are beginning asynchronous initialization in the constructor and saving the reference to the started task. Then, before doing any meaningful operation, we check that is completed by simply awaiting it. _initializeTask The using of this approach is very usual both in cases with a self-instantiating way of objects and IoC container. var myBestService = new MyBestService();
await myBestService.DoSomethingAsync(); However, this approach has several drawbacks: Lack of control over the initialization process. For instance, we cannot simply pass . CancellationToken It gives the caller an incompletely instantiated object for a while. Although it does not seem a problem in general, it could lead to more complicated debugging if the initialization operation takes too long. Also, calling operation timeout might be less than the required amount of time for this particular object which apparently will lead to issues during the execution. Real example For applications to access Azure services like storage, key vault, or cognitive services, authenticating with Azure is mandatory, regardless of their deployment environment - on Azure, on-premises, or locally during development. There are several ways it could be achieved, and one of the most secure ones is utilising the approach with the class in .NET DefaultAzureCredential That’s what Microsoft says about it The class provided by the Azure SDK allows apps to use different authentication methods depending on the environment they're run in. This allows apps to be promoted from local development to test environments to production without code changes. You configure the appropriate authentication method for each environment and will automatically detect and use that authentication method. The use of should be preferred over manually coding conditional logic or feature flags to use different authentication methods in different environments. DefaultAzureCredential DefaultAzureCredential DefaultAzureCredential So, in order to securely store PII (Personally Identifiable Information) which can be either Full name, Phone Number, Credit card number, or Social security number, we would like to encrypt it before storing it somewhere and provide viewing original value with only limited access. One of the possible ways is to use AzureKeyVault API for encryption and decryption. Although there is no huge impact of creating every time, to reduce latency and improve efficiency, it is preferable to have a single instance of it for the whole application. DefaultAzureCredential So, to prepare for encryption and decryption API, we need to have the following lines CryptographyClient var tokenCredential = new DefaultAzureCredential();
var keyClient = new KeyClient(new Uri(_configuration.KeyVaultUri), tokenCredential);
KeyVaultKey key = await keyClient.GetKeyAsync(_configuration.KeyName);
_cryptographyClient = new CryptographyClient(key.Id, tokenCredential); To avoid running them on every request, we can utilise described above Async initialisation internal sealed class DefaultAzureVaultAdapter : IAzureVaultAdapter
{
    private readonly AzureVaultConfiguration _configuration;
    private EncryptionAlgorithm _encryptionAlgorithm = EncryptionAlgorithm.RsaOaep256;
    private CryptographyClient _cryptographyClient = null!;
    private Task _initializationTask = null!;

    public DefaultAzureVaultAdapter(AzureVaultConfiguration configuration)
    {
        _configuration = configuration;
        _initializationTask = InitializeAsync();
    }

    public async Task<string> EncryptAsync(string value, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        await _initializationTask;

        byte[] inputAsByteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(value);

        EncryptResult encryptResult = await _cryptographyClient.EncryptAsync(_encryptionAlgorithm, inputAsByteArray, cancellationToken);

        return Convert.ToBase64String(encryptResult.Ciphertext);
    }

    public async Task<string> DecryptAsync(string value, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        await _initializationTask;

        byte[] inputAsByteArray = Convert.FromBase64String(value);

        DecryptResult decryptResult = await _cryptographyClient.DecryptAsync(_encryptionAlgorithm, inputAsByteArray, cancellationToken);

        return Encoding.Default.GetString(decryptResult.Plaintext);
    }

    private async Task InitializeAsync()
    { 
        if (_cryptographyClient is not null)
            return;

        var tokenCredential = new DefaultAzureCredential();
        var keyClient = new KeyClient(new Uri(_configuration.KeyVaultUri), tokenCredential);
        KeyVaultKey key = await keyClient.GetKeyAsync(_configuration.KeyName);
        _cryptographyClient = new CryptographyClient(key.Id, tokenCredential);
    }
} And finally, register our with a singleton in IoC container. AzureVaultAdapter public static class ServiceCollectionExtensions
{
    public static IServiceCollection AddAzureVaultAdapter(this IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.TryAddSingleton<IAzureVaultAdapter, DefaultAzureVaultAdapter>();
        return services;
    }
} Conclusion In this article, I covered several approaches for asynchronous object initialisation. Understanding requirements is the key to choosing the right approach. You can find the source code used to describe these patterns in this repository. https://github.com/alex-popov-stenn/CSharpAsyncInitPatterns/tree/main Thank you for reading! See you next time!

Asynchronous Initialization in C#: Overcoming Constructor Limitations

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