Summon The JSON

Three years ago, one cold evening, I began to think that just programming and occasionally writing about it was not enough for me. I wanted to find an idea for a new project that would combine my two main passions: programming and writing about programming. I've been working as a programmer on a daily basis for sixteen years. So I wanted something new. But it's hard to find anything new to do. Lots of people run programming blogs, write articles, create courses, write books. I only knew one thing. If I'm going to do something, it has to be unique and give a new perspective on writing applications. Something that builds fascination for programming and attracts people who don't necessarily think about it, but have features that are able to introduce new value to a very square industry. Something like flashcards. I know what you thought. It is better to write applications on a piece of whitespace in a jute sweatshirt than to use flashcards. This is how I came up with the craziest idea in my life and decided to commercialize it. This is the story of how I managed the product and optimized the customer experience to occupy the niche of post-apocalyptic sci-fi flashcards for developers that are also a game. A niche that I have occupied before everyone else! Growth Marketing Tip 1: Find a niche Don't get me wrong, it's great that there are so many ways to learn programming. However, many people get lost in all this. Should I learn through a course, go to a bootcamp or buy a book? What language to learn? Everyone responds differently. If you add to this the authors of texts and courses who pour water instead of writing specifically and clearly, entering the world of programming seems very chaotic and difficult. That's why I found flashcards attractive, as opposed to the trend that discourages programming. You can fit very little information on a flashcard. However, this is still not interesting enough to reach for the flashcards. That's why I enriched them with sci-fi fantasy illustrations. In this way, they are beautiful and evoke Stoneheart or Magic The Gathering. Just look at this beautiful card: I also enriched the cards with a game mode. The game mode is tricky because anyone can play Summon The JSON. Up to four players can play with one deck. So you can play with people and trick them into programming. Which, you have to admit, is a great career path. This is how the idea for Summon The JSON was born, which I have been implementing for four years. I have flashcards for C#, C++, Python, Java, JavaScript, Git, React, PHP, TypeScript and HTML. Take a look at this mashup, aren’t they lovely? You can of course buy them now on my Shopify store available here: . Programming Flashcards However, I encourage you to read on because I'm here to tell you how I analyze project data and make decisions. Because you probably also have a cool idea for a project and need help with growth hacking. Growth Marketing Tip 2: Gather feedback Gathering information about your prospects is probably the most important thing if you want to sell stuff and make money. Over these three years I have learned that . I don’t know anything about my customers often But I think that's great, because that's what this community listening thing is all about. At every stage, starting from the idea, I ask the community of developers for their opinions and ideas. Very often what I think in my head differs from what others think. Let me give you an example: Growth Marketing Tip 3: Share and improve Each deck contains five cards that are blank. I wanted customers to be able to supplement them with their own functions and even points and superpowers. However, it turned out that customers did not understand this. Once a customer even wanted to return the cards because she thought there had been an error in the printing house. I often observe programmers and designers that they treat such cases with pity. Which is completely wrong, because it is the user who knows best how he perceives and experiences the application. Same as flashcards and anything else. That's why I added a clear description to the cards that explains their meaning. What we imagine about people in our heads has nothing to do with reality. Only feedback verifies it. That's why I love asking for opinions. This is not only a way to improve the product, but also growth marketing. Because people can see that you really care about their opinion. Here is an example of such a card: Growth Marketing Tip 4: Use Technology To Assist You Now I'm going to write something controversial. This may prevent me from winning the competition for an article on growth marketing, for which I submitted this article. But I want to be honest with you. I don't think it's a good idea to use stats from the start. My shop on Shopify gives me information about how many people visited the website, how many added the product to the cart, how many people bought the product.  Google Analytics will tell you where your customers come from in aggregate, whether they come back. The service, which sponsors this competition, combines data from various sources and, thanks to AI, extracts information from the data that will allow you to improve the customer experience. However, I believe that you should base your decisions on direct input from users in the beginning. mParticle This is especially important when you have a lot of work ahead of you and little motivation. Setting up Shopify, preparing the products took three years in my case. Feedback from live users was something that allowed me to continue working on this project. I started using statistics and analytics only on the way to verify my hypotheses and check whether the sales process was going well. For example, thanks to this I know that it is better to offer free shipping instead of having to pay for it directly. Or that it's good to have a lot of payment methods and delivery and production. What I like about mParticle is that it can tell you what promotion or coupon to create. He can also estimate how much it will increase profits. An open secret that I discovered not so long ago is that people love promotions and coupons. Professional stores offer them non-stop. Thanks to this, their offer looks fresh, even if they offer the same thing all the time. Growth Marketing Tip 5: Allocate Time Wisely For years, I loved looking at all kinds of statistics. I still like it. However, it seems to me that the most important thing in selling is the product. It is worth improving it, adding new products. Campaigns, analytics, store optimization are the things that draw me in as a programmer. However, sometimes it is worth going back to the products and improving them as well. If you develop the product yourself after hours, I can tell you right away that you will not be able to deal with everything at once. For example, I spent the last 3 years developing products, learning Blender to create product renders, and creating a shop on Shopify. While supporting sales. I've only recently started working on analytics, ad campaigns and experience optimization. This is a separate job that will consume my time for the next few months. In such a situation, you want to choose solutions that will save you problems and time. That's why, for example, I chose Shopify, Google Analytics, and other apps. I don't write everything from scratch, although I could. Summary For growth marketing I recommend you to: find a niche gather feedback share and improve your offering use technology allocate time wisely The final tip is to share your story. I just gave this advice by example, because the beginning of the article shows just that. If you've read this far, it means it worked :) If you like the article please vote for it, share and like. Cheers!

How I Made Programming Flashcards A Thing

Cómo hice que las tarjetas didácticas de programación fueran una cosa

Comment j'ai fait des flashcards de programmation une chose

मैंने कैसे प्रोग्रामिंग फ्लैशकार्ड को एक चीज बना दिया

私がフラッシュカードをプログラミングするようになった方法

Como transformei os flashcards de programação em algo

Tôi đã biến Flashcards lập trình thành một thứ như thế nào

我是如何让编程抽认卡成为一件事的

310 Stories To Learn About Software Testing

Is It Hard to Develop a MMORPG?

I spent a long time researching, trying and tweaking text editors. As a cross-platform developer and technical writer (mostly writer these days) I work with different programming languages, document formats and want an editor with particular features, but that is also easy on the eye. Ideally I wanted all the functionality I was looking for in one application, not split between 5. Here’s what I was looking for: Good Markdown support. The ability to export markdown to different formats (at least PDF and HTML). A project manager. Spelling and grammar checking. The ability to edit code inline (in markdown) as well as in separate files and for it to be formatted and highlighted correctly. An extension / plugin architecture for features I don’t even know I want yet. Open Source would be a bonus, but it wasn’t essential. I am happy to pay for software, but cost isn’t always an indication of quality. I tried for a while but got bored with it and can’t even remember why. I tried (and TextWrangler), I liked that it was Mac-native but it lacked a lot of the features I required for the money it cost. I tried some time ago, and again I can’t remember what I didn’t like about it, but I moved on quickly. was nearly there, but again it wasn’t worth the money, I would still need other tools. Sublime BBEdit Brackets TextMate Then I found from GitHub. I wasn’t immediately convinced, versions prior to version 1 were unreliable and certain features necessary to me didn’t work well (HTML and PDF export), but something about Atom made me want to stick with it. Atom Atom is a text editor, so of course will work with anything text-related. However they are often primarily aimed at coders and setting things up for a more writing focused workflow takes a few steps and after months of tinkering I have arrived at a near perfect (I will regret saying that) setup for me and I wanted to share what I use, how I’ve configured it, and what it helps me do. I’m considering making an Atom fork or special package file that bundles these writer specific plugins and setting together, but that’s still an idea. Making Atom Look Nice(r) I like light themes, and use in and variants. one-o-eight-syntax light bright It looks like this (plus other additions which I will cover next). I used to have a couple of customisation in my file, but I have removed all of them now, so this is default. styles.less I use the , as I like my Mac software to look like Mac software. Unity UI theme is great for previewing HTML files. Atom HTML Preview I have increasingly poor eyesight, and I find helpful for identifying where I am in a document. It’s also customisable to suit your needs. Highlight Line is a comprehensive package that formats your code (and text), and lets you configure what ‘beautifier’ to use for what supported language. Atom Beautify And then triggering the command will tidy your code/text for you. In conjunction with Atom Beautify I use the package that I find does a better job than the inbuilt package. Tidy Markdown Personally I am not a big fan of the 80 character per line limit, as you can achieve this with layout and flow accordingly. But if you work with projects who insist on it, you can use to force line breaks at a defined length before submitting your work. Break Line Length lets you set wrap guides at configurable positions, it should also work with the package above to break text at these positions. Multi wrap guide shows colour values inline, simple but nice 😀. Pigments Language Formatters, Linters and Snippets Many of these will be self-explanatory (and I wont include screenshots), they add language highlighting, formatting and snippets (Snippets are one of the Atom features I’ve just started using) to Atom, in varying degrees: atom-syntax-highlighting-for-sass language-liquid atom-liquid-snippets — I work a lot with Jekyll, and its templates are liquid, which are based on django templates. django-templates language-swift language-restructuredtext language-latex language-gradle language-docker linter-swiftc linter-scss-lint linter-jsonlint linter-htmlhint linter-javac linter-js-yaml linter-csslint linter-jshint linter-clang linter-chktex linter-less linter-markdown linter-package-json-validator linter-shellcheck Automate yourself Why waste time repeating yourself when packages can help! The package adds closing tags to HTML elements you add into your code or code snippets. autoclose-html adds Atom support for , the ever so helpful offline documentation browser. Atom Dash Dash I use occasionally use for presentations and for running let’s me start presentations from inside Atom. RevealJS Grunt Runner Grunt tasks The package is a comprehensive package that adds Jekyll snippets, shortcut methods, grammars, server management and is configuration aware (of the contents of your Jekyll file). I should use this package more, but it frequently doesn’t work and isn’t very verbose 🤔. Jekyll config.yml Using you can summon a pop-up colour picker inline in your files. Color Picker Project Management allows you to set folders as projects and then open and switch between them. Project Manager If you can’t remember the name of a file or the correct path to it, will help. Sometimes it can be too keen, requiring judicious use of the key to stop inserting file names all over your document. autocomplete-paths esc Make your project view look nicer with colourful file type icons from . The Unity UI theme hides these, so make sure you show them by checking the setting in the package settings. file-icons Force Show Collaboration is a great package that lets you browse and compare git history for a file in Atom. git-time-machine The package is super cool, allowing you to view comments on pull requests inline in your file. It occasionally times out on network connections and I had issues with private / business repositories, but it usually catches up. Pull requests Write Better OK, this is what you’re really interested in 😉. I have been using for some time and have found it useful. It offers suggestions to make your writing better based on the . It wont always be right or relevant, but it has helped me a lot. linter-write-good NPM write-good module I am still undecided on , it uses to catch inconsiderate writing. I have found it overly sensitive, highlighting words like Australian and American as ‘potentially profane’, which is odd. It will also highlight words with double meanings, such as ‘shoot a photo’. I’m still assessing how useful it is to me. Alex Linter AlexJS The linter highlights ‘ ’. It’s functionality crosses over slightly with the Write Good linter, but I still find it useful. Just Say No hedge words I replaced the inbuilt spell checker in Atom, because the allows you to select dictionaries (You can switch between UK and US English 😄), add custom words (great for tech jargon), and it has a nicer interface. You will need a lspell compatible dictionary installed (I installed with Homebrew) and the package which adds a nice pop-up over issues that I wish other packages would use. Spell Linter Aspell intentions “improves your writing experience” by centring the layout removing scroll-bars (unless you scroll) and other tweaks. I’m not 100% on this package, as sometimes (and this may be package conflicts) it creates unnecessary horizontal scrolling and I end up with a lot of white space, which I know is kind of the point of the package, but I’m not a big fan of it 😬. Typewriter The package counts words and characters. Simple. Wordcount provides a set of shortcuts and functions for making working with Markdown easier. It also works well with static site generators that use Markdown for posts. Markdown Writer I love , and with the and packages I can utilise Pandoc for previewing and exporting documents in the vast amount of options it offers. Pandoc Pandoc convert Pandoc previewer It can be jumpy, but keeps your source and preview markdown in sync with each other. Markdown scroll sync Packages from Me If you like writing in Markdown, but also use Medium, then my lets you export straight to your Medium drafts. It needs work, but functions fine. Medium Export I am also working (slowly) on the ‘Editors friend’ package that sets configurable lists of search/replace strings to help reduce the amount of repetitive editing you do. What’s in your Atom? And that’s me! I love the extensibility of Atom and would welcome your comments on how you’ve set it up for your needs. is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

Making Atom (even more) awesome — My Setup

The Terror of Air-Level Six

People are afraid of AI: there’s scaremongering from the media; any movie which depicts AI ends in disaster; Elon Musk keeps banging the drum about the risks of AI. I’d love to tell you that everything’s going to be ok, but there’s real cause for concern. It’s not that machines will wake up one day and decide that they’d be more efficient without pesky humans getting in the way. The risk is that we won’t be able to tell the machines what we want them to do. It’s important to understand, at least superficially, how artificial intelligence works before we dig into the risks. Let’s use face detection as an example. We show the software lots of images and tell it which ones contain faces. It then finds generalisations between all the images. It might decide it should look for a group of pixels which look a bit like an eye, and then look for another group of eye pixels in close proximity. It might also look for some pixels which look like a mouth underneath the eyes. Every time we show it a new image, the AI will guess whether it sees a face. We train it by rewarding it for getting it right and correcting it when it gets it wrong. Because we’ve programmed the machine to try to get the most rewards, it adjusts its model (what it thinks faces look like) when we give it feedback. This is where the danger lies. Remember King Midas, the ancient Greek, who wished everything he touched would turn to gold? “Fantastic!” he thought as he created unimaginable riches in his wake. He soon grew peckish though, as you would skipping gleefully, thinking that you’d never want for money again. Eating soon proved to be tricky, as all of the food he reached for turned to gold and became inedible. It’s this similar inability to convey our wishes to machines which will haunt us. I want to create a robot to make coffee. In training, I rewarded it every time it made coffee and I told it to try to get as many rewards as much as possible. I’ve accidentally taught it to single-mindedly make coffee until there’s no more coffee to make! We need to tell it to pause from time to time, to let us drink the coffee at the same rate as it’s made. Maybe Midas could have said “I wish everything I touched would turn to gold, unless I want to eat”. That’s closer to what he actually wanted, but what would have happened if his daughter fell over and needed comforting? That’s another exception. And there’d be another, and another, and another. It’s not possible to wrangle this immense power by describing the desired outcome. There are too many exceptions. Facial recognition software or coffee-making robots are unlikely to present a material threat to human life. The scenarios highlighted do show some potential problems though. In the near future, we’ll have robot doctors. Let’s hope whoever creates one doesn’t give it a goal of having the fewest number of clinical complaints. Easiest way to reduce complaints? Refuse to treat anyone. We’ll soon have self-driving cars. Let’s hope whoever creates them doesn’t give them a goal of having the fewest crashes. Easiest way to reduce crashes? Don’t drive anywhere. Even something as simple as an AI personal assistant could go wrong. Let’s hope whoever creates them doesn’t give them a goal of reducing the number of email interruptions. Easiest way to reduce email interruptions? Direct all mail to the trash. Always thinking. Of course, these examples assume that creators only give the AI naïve goals. In reality they’re likely to give them a number of goals to achieve. Reduce the number of clinical complaints and increase the number of patients treated successfully. There’s still hidden dangers though. However hard we try to understand the logical cause and effects of a combination of goals, they will always be difficult to fully understand. Automatic computer systems have been trading equities for more than a decade now. They work great, mostly, but there’s are instances where their actions defy reason. On May 6 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 9% of it’s value in only a few minutes. It then recovered within half an hour. It’s still unexplained. It wasn’t a single malicious act that caused this change but a complex network of systems that all worked together in unexpected ways to lower the value of the entire index. This is what keeps Elon Musk awake at night. It’s not an evil robot uprising that scares him, it’s lots of benign artificial intelligences with their own goals behaving in unexpected ways. There’s no need to pull the plug on AI research just yet though. We’re able to train dogs — often very effectively — without being able to tell them exactly what we want. They respond to our actions, words and tone to try to figure out what we want them to do. With enough care, we can train AI safely. Don’t just build something, connect it to the internet and see how it behaves. That’s a surefire way to . summon the demon I’m a software developer based in Birmingham, UK, solving big data and machine learning problems. I work for a health tech startup, finding creative ways to extract value from our customer data. I don’t have all the answers but I’m learning on the job. Find me on Twitter .

Be Careful What You Wish For

The Law of the Jungle

We had the pleasure to interview , Co-Founder & CEO of , who is turning public spaces into accessible environments for the blind and visually impaired. Idan Meir RightHear Which of the following topics are you most excited by? I'm most excited about the potential for creating accessible public spaces. What I mean by that is that there's so much opportunity to leverage technology to solve some of the world's most pressing challenges. There are at least people in the world - yes billion - who have a visual impairment. Think about what that's like to try and negotiate sidewalks, offices, hotels, airports, restaurants, public transport, and so on. You know, only 10% of the blind and visually impaired community can read braille. And that's assuming they know where to find the sign in the first place. 2.2 billion So, there has to be another way, right? That's what we're doing at RightHear. We're turning public spaces into accessible environments through Talking Signage. Any venue can install our discreet beacons, which can be customized to provide audio descriptions of their unique space. For example, if you're a restaurant, you might want to specify where the line starts for the order counter or provide the menu in an audio format. The descriptions are automatically detected by a free smartphone app, so the user doesn't even have to take the phone out of their pocket or bag to benefit. This means any space can be made accessible for even less than a fraction of the cost of remodeling or renovating a venue to make mobility and orientation accommodations. Why does it excite you? Right now, when you think of accessibility, you probably picture a wheelchair user because that's the international icon for accessibility. But it's only part of the story. This symbol is not inclusive of blind and low-vision people's needs, nor does it recognize unseen disabilities such as anxiety, Dyslexia, or even orientation challenges. At RightHear, our mission is to make the world accessible for everyone, and that requires us to reassess how we interpret the term "accessibility" so that it's far more inclusive. It's also great to see how businesses are embracing accessibility, and not just for compliance reasons. Corporations really do care, and they're using solutions like RightHear to show it. What are the trends in this area or products in this area that you are the fondest of? Why? Right now, I'm really enjoying (from Forbes) 's series about VC investment in the Disability Economy. There's an unfortunate misconception that the disability ecosystem is a niche market. But the truth is that accessibility is for everyone, and everyone is a HUGE market. So it's very interesting to see how this is starting to gain momentum. We've been advocating for this for a long time, so it's great to see it being recognized as a solid investment. I think it's more than just a trend, though. I think this merging of accessibility and inclusivity is definitely here to stay. Jonathan Kaufman It's also interesting to follow the advancements in assistive and connected devices such as Be My Eyes, Envision, and SeeingAI. They're great partners of ours, and it's wonderful to see how they're also helping the blind and visually impaired lead more independent lives. The final trend that excites me is accessible autonomous vehicles. We won the VW Konnect Startup Challenge 2021 with our vision for inclusive self-driving cars. We're honored to partner with Volkswagen Group to develop this proof of concept further. I can't say much more than that at this stage, but definitely stay tuned for updates! What are the positive impacts they can have on society? Well, investing in the Disability Market benefits everyone. Many common products and solutions started out as assistive technology before they went mainstream. One example is curb ramps along sidewalks. These were originally designed to benefit wheelchair users, but they benefit delivery people, those with strollers or carts, plus bike, scooter, or skateboard riders, to name just a few. It's the same with text-to-speech technology. It started as an adaptive solution, but now we see it in use with smart home devices, closed captioning, and many other common scenarios. As for accessible autonomous vehicles, these will allow anyone with mobility or orientation challenges to more confidently and independently explore the world. Public transportation is not always accessible, so having vehicles that you can summon yourself at the touch of a button and have a customized journey just for you. Well, that's going to be transformative! What are the negative impacts they can have on society? I don't foresee any downside to creating a more accessible, inclusive, and equitable society. It benefits everyone, including the businesses investing in the solutions. What are your predictions on how these technologies will evolve? I predict that more and more businesses will embrace assistive technologies to help marginalized and vulnerable people. Society is becoming more aware of what it means to be inclusive, and this acceptance of diversity will only increase. From an evolutionary perspective, I think we're heading towards bionic solutions, where technology and human features become more entwined than ever before, whether that's to enhance a human function such as eyesight or to facilitate immersive experiences such as an accessible metaverse. What are your predictions on the ethics of future societies in relation to these technologies? Ethically, I think it's more about making sure that the laws, regulations, and policies can match pace with technological advancements. That's what will protect customers and businesses from risks such as cybersecurity, data privacy, or inclusion-bias situations.

Importance of Accessibility Tech and the Tech Trends Helping Millions of People 

Summon The JSON

summonthejson.com

1-10 employees

Since n.d.

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Summon The JSON

summonthejson.com

1-10 employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

SUMMON THE JSON

EVERGREEN INDEX #10865

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Summon The JSON WIKI

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