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Imagine you want to go for a bike ride. It could be a social ride with friends, a workout to maintain your fitness, or perhaps you’re an elite cyclist aiming to compete with the world’s best. Unfortunately, poor weather, bad road conditions, or time constraints hold you back. So, you take your bike, put it on a specialized equipment known as a smart trainer, connect it to your PC, Apple TV, or smartphone, and launch an application. In just a few seconds, you’re pedaling through a beautiful virtual world alongside friends, experiencing routes you’d never find on real roads. While this might sound like science fiction or even magic to some, it’s a daily routine for millions, and I would like to give you a glimpse of the technology behind it. As a PC/Console game developer and a passionate cyclist, I spent the last two years working on several experimental projects at the intersection of gaming and indoor cycling within the specialized cycling industry. For example, we released a mobile game for cyclists called Hustle City. If any readers have had a chance to play it, I’d be happy to read about your experience in the comments. I’m writing this post to remind myself of how incredible this industry is and to help others discover its magic. Now, let’s dive into the world of gamified cycling! The Journey of Indoor Cycling The Pioneers The first attempt to create gamified indoor cycling came from the video game pioneer Atari. The 80s witnessed the boom of aerobics and video workouts, and video game companies didn’t want to stay behind. So, in 1982, Atari created a prototype of Project Puffer. Here is how Puffer was going to work: a player pedaled the exercise bike, controlling the speed of a character on the screen. The handlebar of the bike had buttons for navigation so that the player could turn and avoid obstacles. The speed control technique was very straightforward: the faster you pedal, the faster your character goes. Games for Puffer didn’t only include bikes but also car racing and even ship navigation. The project had very high hopes and was anticipated by the public. However, Atari was on the verge of bankruptcy due to the game industry’s global crisis and was eventually passed to a new owner. The ambitious project was abandoned, but it remains in the hearts of vintage Atari enthusiasts. The New Beginning The actual rise of gamified indoor cycling occurred only 30 years later, thanks to advances in cycling technology and rising interest in gamified fitness. The pivotal invention that allowed this to happen was the smart trainer. It finally allowed millions of cycling enthusiasts to bring their workouts indoors at a reasonable price. Now, what makes it smart? Basically, it is a stationary indoor bicycle trainer that can also measure the power you produce and dynamically adjust the pedaling difficulty. The first smart trainers with rich user experiences and third-party device compatibility hit the market in the late 2000s. They were created by the hardware companies like Wahoo, Tacx, and Elite. Since then, about 10 million units have been sold. This invention nurtured a niche but large enough market of cycling enthusiasts hungry for more effective and engaging riding experiences. Cycling hardware companies have paved the way for software companies to enter the gamified cycling experience market. Zwift was the pioneer that introduced its open-world MMO in 2014, and it was a great success. Zwift remains the industry leader today, with around 2 million paying users, but many platforms have followed, including MyWhoosh, Virtupro, and Rouvy. Fun fact: now, indoor cycling platforms even become major sponsors of real-world professional cycling events and teams. Challenges on the Road With the growing popularity of gamified workouts, some unsolved problems still keep the industry within the niche of enthusiasts. “Games Are Not for Efficient Workouts” Most cyclists are reluctant to invest in entertainment and don’t want to sacrifice workout efficiency for the sake of fun. At the same time, they often watch Netflix or YouTube while training because they get bored of pedaling in the same spot with the unchanging scenery. It is both a marketing and game design challenge to help gamified cycling overcome the “leisure activity” stigma and develop robust experiences that encourage users to explore an interactive game during their workout. Lack of Interactivity The most significant limitation of current gamified indoor cycling is the lack of interactivity. With the smart trainer as the primary controller, the interactive aspects are mainly limited to physically based movement calculations and the visual representation of avatars. Control in such games is often done by turning the steering wheel to which the phone is attached or using a piece of special steering equipment. This approach has the following downsides: Players have to mount a phone holder on their bike and put something under the front wheel to turn the wheel more comfortably
The handlebar turn control does not feel natural, as in reality, steering only starts by turning the handlebars and continues by tilting the body, and this handlebar turn is only done by a few degrees
Only the turn movement is available because it is too inconvenient to press any buttons on the phone during the game Although new controllers like Zwift Play offer some improvements, they are product-specific and don’t solve the issue universally. Game Availability and Reliability Maintenance announcements in video games are not uncommon, but they are unacceptable in training software. Having to reschedule your workout due to maintenance can be highly annoying. Imagine an athlete who has already put on their cycling kit, filled a water bottle, and set their mind on a training session. Needless to say, the churn rate spikes dramatically whenever the system is unavailable, and it’s even higher if there’s a crash during a workout. Hardware Communication Many companies produce smart trainers and other equipment for indoor cycling, and it’s not uncommon for users to combine different brands in their setup. The problem is that companies sometimes utilize various communication protocols. Even when they claim to follow standard protocols, their implementations may vary. When users may own so many possible combinations of sports equipment, it isn’t easy to ensure reliable communication and seamless compatibility. The Next Big Move After spending some time on the projects in this area, it became evident that additional specialized equipment is required for a truly engaging indoor cycling experience. Ideally, it should be a third-party solution compatible with different equipment, providing different interaction methods. It turned out that such a platform already exists—it’s a VR headset that is almost a perfect fit for indoor cycling. It’s always astonishing when an emerging technology matures so that new applications adopt it. A VR headset not only enables the use of natural movements as input while cycling, but it also comes equipped with all the necessary hardware features for an optimal indoor cycling platform, including: An all-in-one hardware unit, eliminating the need for a separate TV or PC setup


High-quality audio input and output


Engaging visual capabilities


Robust Bluetooth connectivity for external hardware support Of course, some challenges exist, such as reduced ventilation, sweating, and limited battery life. However, based on my experience, these issues are manageable and don’t affect my enthusiasm for the notion that the future of gamified indoor cycling lies in VR. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Imagine you want to go for a bike ride. It could be a social ride with friends, a workout to maintain your fitness, or perhaps you’re an elite cyclist aiming to compete with the world’s best. Unfortunately, poor weather, bad road conditions, or time constraints hold you back. So, you take your bike, put it on a specialized equipment known as a smart trainer, connect it to your PC, Apple TV, or smartphone, and launch an application. In just a few seconds, you’re pedaling through a beautiful virtual world alongside friends, experiencing routes you’d never find on real roads. While this might sound like science fiction or even magic to some, it’s a daily routine for millions, and I would like to give you a glimpse of the technology behind it. As a PC/Console game developer and a passionate cyclist, I spent the last two years working on several experimental projects at the intersection of gaming and indoor cycling within the specialized cycling industry. For example, we released a mobile game for cyclists called Hustle City. If any readers have had a chance to play it, I’d be happy to read about your experience in the comments. I’m writing this post to remind myself of how incredible this industry is and to help others discover its magic. Now, let’s dive into the world of gamified cycling! The Journey of Indoor Cycling The Pioneers The first attempt to create gamified indoor cycling came from the video game pioneer Atari. The 80s witnessed the boom of aerobics and video workouts, and video game companies didn’t want to stay behind. So, in 1982, Atari created a prototype of Project Puffer. Here is how Puffer was going to work: a player pedaled the exercise bike, controlling the speed of a character on the screen. The handlebar of the bike had buttons for navigation so that the player could turn and avoid obstacles. The speed control technique was very straightforward: the faster you pedal, the faster your character goes. Games for Puffer didn’t only include bikes but also car racing and even ship navigation. The project had very high hopes and was anticipated by the public. However, Atari was on the verge of bankruptcy due to the game industry’s global crisis and was eventually passed to a new owner. The ambitious project was abandoned, but it remains in the hearts of vintage Atari enthusiasts. The New Beginning The New Beginning The actual rise of gamified indoor cycling occurred only 30 years later, thanks to advances in cycling technology and rising interest in gamified fitness. The pivotal invention that allowed this to happen was the smart trainer. It finally allowed millions of cycling enthusiasts to bring their workouts indoors at a reasonable price. Now, what makes it smart? Basically, it is a stationary indoor bicycle trainer that can also measure the power you produce and dynamically adjust the pedaling difficulty. The first smart trainers with rich user experiences and third-party device compatibility hit the market in the late 2000s. They were created by the hardware companies like Wahoo, Tacx, and Elite. Since then, about 10 million units have been sold. This invention nurtured a niche but large enough market of cycling enthusiasts hungry for more effective and engaging riding experiences. Cycling hardware companies have paved the way for software companies to enter the gamified cycling experience market. Zwift was the pioneer that introduced its open-world MMO in 2014, and it was a great success. Zwift remains the industry leader today, with around 2 million paying users, but many platforms have followed, including MyWhoosh, Virtupro, and Rouvy. Fun fact: now, indoor cycling platforms even become major sponsors of real-world professional cycling events and teams. Challenges on the Road With the growing popularity of gamified workouts, some unsolved problems still keep the industry within the niche of enthusiasts. “Games Are Not for Efficient Workouts” Most cyclists are reluctant to invest in entertainment and don’t want to sacrifice workout efficiency for the sake of fun. At the same time, they often watch Netflix or YouTube while training because they get bored of pedaling in the same spot with the unchanging scenery. Netflix YouTube It is both a marketing and game design challenge to help gamified cycling overcome the “leisure activity” stigma and develop robust experiences that encourage users to explore an interactive game during their workout. Lack of Interactivity The most significant limitation of current gamified indoor cycling is the lack of interactivity. With the smart trainer as the primary controller, the interactive aspects are mainly limited to physically based movement calculations and the visual representation of avatars. Control in such games is often done by turning the steering wheel to which the phone is attached or using a piece of special steering equipment. This approach has the following downsides: This approach has the following downsides: Players have to mount a phone holder on their bike and put something under the front wheel to turn the wheel more comfortably The handlebar turn control does not feel natural, as in reality, steering only starts by turning the handlebars and continues by tilting the body, and this handlebar turn is only done by a few degrees Only the turn movement is available because it is too inconvenient to press any buttons on the phone during the game Players have to mount a phone holder on their bike and put something under the front wheel to turn the wheel more comfortably The handlebar turn control does not feel natural, as in reality, steering only starts by turning the handlebars and continues by tilting the body, and this handlebar turn is only done by a few degrees Only the turn movement is available because it is too inconvenient to press any buttons on the phone during the game Although new controllers like Zwift Play offer some improvements, they are product-specific and don’t solve the issue universally. Game Availability and Reliability Maintenance announcements in video games are not uncommon, but they are unacceptable in training software. Having to reschedule your workout due to maintenance can be highly annoying. Imagine an athlete who has already put on their cycling kit, filled a water bottle, and set their mind on a training session. Needless to say, the churn rate spikes dramatically whenever the system is unavailable, and it’s even higher if there’s a crash during a workout. Hardware Communication Many companies produce smart trainers and other equipment for indoor cycling, and it’s not uncommon for users to combine different brands in their setup. The problem is that companies sometimes utilize various communication protocols. Even when they claim to follow standard protocols, their implementations may vary. When users may own so many possible combinations of sports equipment, it isn’t easy to ensure reliable communication and seamless compatibility. The Next Big Move After spending some time on the projects in this area, it became evident that additional specialized equipment is required for a truly engaging indoor cycling experience. Ideally, it should be a third-party solution compatible with different equipment, providing different interaction methods. It turned out that such a platform already exists—it’s a VR headset that is almost a perfect fit for indoor cycling. It’s always astonishing when an emerging technology matures so that new applications adopt it. A VR headset not only enables the use of natural movements as input while cycling, but it also comes equipped with all the necessary hardware features for an optimal indoor cycling platform, including: An all-in-one hardware unit, eliminating the need for a separate TV or PC setup High-quality audio input and output Engaging visual capabilities Robust Bluetooth connectivity for external hardware support An all-in-one hardware unit, eliminating the need for a separate TV or PC setup An all-in-one hardware unit, eliminating the need for a separate TV or PC setup High-quality audio input and output High-quality audio input and output Engaging visual capabilities Engaging visual capabilities Robust Bluetooth connectivity for external hardware support Robust Bluetooth connectivity for external hardware support Of course, some challenges exist, such as reduced ventilation, sweating, and limited battery life. However, based on my experience, these issues are manageable and don’t affect my enthusiasm for the notion that the future of gamified indoor cycling lies in VR. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

Pedaling Towards the Future: The Gamified Indoor Cycling Landscape

Fitness trackers first surfaced in 1965 with the Manpo-Kei which translated to the ‘ invented by Dr. Yoshiro Hatano. Dr. Hatano built it at the Kyushu University of Health and Welfare whilst researching how to combat obesity and posited that 10,000 steps provide the proper balance of caloric intake and activity-based calorie expenditure to maintain a healthy body. 10,000 steps meter’ Since then, fitness trackers have entered mainstream markets with global spending on wearable devices exceeding 80 billion US dollars in 2021 and over 500 million units being shipped worldwide. Wearables today track a huge range of key indicators from your heart rate to your sleep, and even your blood oxygen levels. Each indicator can be extremely useful to a user when understood properly. There is a huge range of apps today built using the data tracked on these devices. Below is a list of the data that different providers give access to through their API today: Full list here Provider data accessible through APIs today: Heart rate Most wearables today use a method called photoplethysmography (PPG) to measure heart rate. PPG works by reflecting light onto skin and measuring the amount of light that is scattered by blood flow. When light enters the body, it scatters in a predictable manner as the blood flow dynamics change through changes in blood pulse rates (heart rate) or changes in blood volume. By analysing the way in which the light scatters, heart rate is calculated by the PPG sensors in your watch. The providers that give access to detailed heart rate data through their API today are: Fitbit, Oura, Trainingpeaks, Withings, Cronometer, Suunto, Zwift, Garmin, Eight Sleep, Wahoo, Google, Polar, Apple, Samsung Heart rate variability Heart rate variability is the variation of RR intervals (length of time between ‘peaks’ for each heartbeat). Some wearables using PPG to measure heart rate are also able to calculate RR intervals and deduce heart rate variability for a user by looking at the difference between each interval. HRV data available through following APIs: Oura, Withings, Garmin, Eight Sleep, Polar, Apple, Samsung Blood oxygen measurement (Pulse OX) Pulse OX is a measurement of how saturated the blood is with oxygen and is derived from the Sp02 or peripheral oxygen saturation. It’s measured using a form of PPG in which the wearables reflect infrared and red light onto the skin. The light is then reflected back to the smartwatch and the difference between the light emitted and reflected is used to determine blood oxygen level. Pulse OX data available through following APIs: Oura, Withings, Garmin, Google, Apple, Samsung Respiration rate Respiration rate describes how often you inhale and exhale in a minute. It is derived from HRV — when you inhale the length of time between heartbeats shortens slightly and when you exhale it lengthens (respiratory sinus arrhythmia). Respiration data available through following APIs: Withings, Garmin, Eight Sleep, Polar, Apple, Samsung Sleep Wearables measure a range of important data related to your sleep including sleep duration, sleep quality, time spent in each sleep stage (light, deep, REM, non-REM), and potential problems whilst sleeping. Older and cheaper wearable devices rely on accelerometers to auto-detect sleep whilst newer models detect your sleep from your heart rate and breathing, providing more accurate estimates. Sleep data available through following APIs: Fitbit, Oura, Trainingpeaks, Withings, Cronometer, Suunto, Zwift, Garmin, Eight, Wahoo, Google, Polar, Apple, Samsung Body temperature Some wearables today measure body temperature using outward-facing sensors to gauge your temperature based on the external environment or based on your heart rate. Some devices use other methods. For example, the Fitbit Sense uses an Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Sensor to detect temperature changes on your body based on the variation in electrical potential between various parts of the skin. The Oura ring measures temperature every minute taken directly from the underside of your finger to give users a continuous estimate. Body temperature data available through following APIs: Oura, Withings, Cronometer, Eight Sleep, Google, Apple, Samsung GPS Many wearables today also have built in GPS locational information. GPS data available through following APIs: Fitbit, Trainingpeaks, Suunto, Peloton, Zwift, Garmin, Wahoo, Google, Apple, Samsung Accelerometer Accelerometers are sensors which measure the accelerations of objects in motion along reference axes. Accelerometry data can be used to derive velocity and displacement information. In wearables, accelerometers are often used with a number of other sensors to determine many factors including step count, calories burned, etc. Accelerometer data available through following APIs: Fitbit, Withings, Garmin, Wahoo, Google, Polar, Apple, Samsung Glucose A continuous glucose monitor is a small device that you wear under your skin that measures your glucose (sugar) levels continuously throughout the day and night, letting you see trends in your levels and alerts you to highs and lows. Through the , we provide connections to all of these wearables and their APIs. Terra API As always, please let me know if I’m missing any important data fields in the comments. Also published here.

A Detailed List of Wearable Data Accessible Through APIs Today 

In this article, we'll talk about how to use mdx-bundler with Next.js. MDX is the extension of markdown that allows us to write React Components inside markdown files. It helps us to make our content very interactive and dynamic. I got to know the mdx-bundler package from Josh's blog . post created this package. In my opinion, mdx-bundler gives Superpowers to mdx. Kent C Dodds Let's take a deeper look into mdx-bundler, and I'll guide you through all the features of this package. Let's get started with mdx-bundler mdx-bundler is an asynchronous function to compile and bundle our MDX files with their dependency. To compile mdx files, it uses XDM, a powerful MDX compiler with lots of features. mdx-bundler is best suited for the framework. In this article, I'll be using NextJS. SSR To create a new NextJS project, run this command. npx create-next-app@latest appname

or

yarn create next-app appname Now run the following command to install mdx-bundler npm install --save mdx-bundler esbuild

or

yarn add mdx-bundler esbuild To compile and bundle our MDX files, we need to use the function in this package. It takes two parameters, the first parameter is our MDX code in a string format, and the second parameter accepts an options object. bundleMDX import {bundleMDX} from 'mdx-bundler'

const mdxSource = `

title: Example Post published: 2021-02-13 description: This is some description

* * *

# Wahoo

import Demo from './demo'

Here's a **neat** demo:

<Demo /> `.trim()

const result = await bundleMDX(mdxSource, { files: { './demo.tsx': ` import \* as React from 'react'

function Demo() { return <div>Neat demo!</div> }

export default Demo `, }, })

const {code, frontmatter} = result To render the bundled MDX code, we need to import in the client getMDXComponent import * as React from 'react'

import {getMDXComponent} from 'mdx-bundler/client'

function Post({code, frontmatter}) {

const Component = React.useMemo(() => getMDXComponent(code), [code])

return ( 
<>
 <header>
  <h1>{frontmatter.title}</h1>
    <p>{frontmatter.description}</p>
 </header>
 <main>
 <Component />
 </main> 
</> ) } Check out this to find all available options. link Most of the mdx blogs are using local mdx files to store their blog contents. In my case, I'm using GraphCMS to store the mdx data. If you don't know what GraphCMS is, where I explain how to get started with it. Check out my blog post Now we have a basic understanding of how to use mdx-bundler. Let's breakdown down the code, and I'll guide you on how I used mdx-bundler in this blog. export const getStaticProps = async (context) => {

if (process.platform === 'win32') { process.env.ESBUILD_BINARY_PATH = path.join(process.cwd(), 'node_modules', 'esbuild', 'esbuild.exe'); } else { process.env.ESBUILD_BINARY_PATH = path.join(process.cwd(), 'node_modules', 'esbuild', 'bin', 'esbuild'); }

const { slug } = context.params;

const post = await getSinglePost(slug);

const result = await bundleMDX(post.content, { 
  xdmOptions(options) {
   options.rehypePlugins = [...(options.rehypePlugins ?? []), rehypeMdxCodeMeta];
   options.remarkPlugins = [...(options.remarkPlugins ?? []), gfm, emoji];
 return options;
  },
 ...(post.files ? { files: post.files } : {}),
 });

return { props: { ...result, }, }; }; Sometimes Nextjs doesn't find the exact path of esbuild. Due to this reason, we might get this error. To resolve this issue, we are manually adding the executable path. ENOENT(Error No Entry) if (process.platform === 'win32') {
    process.env.ESBUILD_BINARY_PATH = path.join(process.cwd(), 'node_modules', 'esbuild', 'esbuild.exe');
  } else {
    process.env.ESBUILD_BINARY_PATH = path.join(process.cwd(), 'node_modules', 'esbuild', 'bin', 'esbuild');
  } Reference https://www.alaycock.co.uk/2021/03/mdx-bundler#esbuild-executable To add the custom remark and rehype plugins to our bundler, use the xdmOptions object to achieve this behavior. xdmOptions(options) {
      options.rehypePlugins = [...(options.rehypePlugins ?? []), rehypeMdxCodeMeta];
      options.remarkPlugins = [...(options.remarkPlugins ?? []), gfm, emoji];
      return options;
 } Want to create a custom plugin? Check this post where explained everything in detail. Pedro Duarte Reference https://github.com/rehypejs/rehype/blob/main/doc/plugins.md https://github.com/remarkjs/remark/blob/main/doc/plugins.md The main difference between mdx-bundler and other libraries is that most of the libraries do not bundle mdx code. They also don't have the option to add the dependency to our mdx code. We can achieve this dependency import feature using both files and the CWD option. In this blog, I used files to add the dependency code. ...(post.files ? { files: post.files } : {}), I hope that you have learned how to use mdx-bundler with Nextjs. Thanks for reading ✌️ and if you enjoyed this article, share it with your friends and colleagues.

How to Use mdx-bundler with Next.js

Chrome extensions that make your working life easy It's 2021 and I am brought here some fresh new chrome extensions. And no, I will not be covering popular ones like Grammarly, uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, etc. 1. Link to Text Fragment Now you might have seen a few changes with Google search recently. If I head over to Google and type iPhone 12 charger what the search engine shows 20 watts. If I click on the article link below, I see the information on the website is highlighted. Google is now making it easier for you to read the information within the article. The extension lets you share articles in the same way so suppose I want someone to read only this paragraph instead of the entire article. I can just select it to right-click and select a link to text fragment and it will create a unique link just share this link to the people and when they click on the link it will open the article with the particular paragraph highlighted how good is that. 2. Insist Instagram Client We all know that Instagram doesn’t let you upload photos or stories from the Instagram web app. you can somehow manage to upload photos but videos are still painful a good way to get past that is the insist Instagram client. It’s a Chrome app rather than an extension but it lets you upload multiple photos and most importantly videos from pc to Instagram. You can even upload stories from pc using the insist Chrome extension it comes super handy and it just requires you to log in to the Instagram web app so it’s even secure. 3. Fready How To Use The Fready Chrome Extension You might have already known reading extensions like mercury reader or clean reader but here’s one that I recommend Fready. Fready cleans up the entire web page with no ads so that you can easily read the entire article plus this is interesting it shows this highlighter over the text which you have to follow to read the article trust me it makes a huge difference in concentration if you read this way you can set the speed of the tracker I keep it around 450 to 500 words per minute on a side note just an advice if you want to read a book or article faster just stop reading loudly in your mind and let your eyes do the job it will seriously double your reading speed. 4. WAToolkit WA toolkit is another handy extension that I use see I don’t like using WhatsApp web on my laptop but you know there are important messages or documents at times which you need on the pc so instead of opening the WhatsApp web tab I just log into WhatsApp web and close the tab entirely and nowhere the WA toolkit extension is pinned so whenever I receive a message it shows an unread message counter over here I just have to hover over the WA toolkit icon and it shows me the text message quickly so if an urgent I open the WhatsApp web app and reply or else ignore the family group messages good morning and all, sorry mommy. 5. I don’t care about cookies I don’t care about cookies well seriously that’s the name now have you visited web pages that constantly ask for cookie permission it’s annoying it’s all because GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) websites have to inform you that they are storing cookies and collecting your personal information but because of that you open any site and boom cookie cookie cookie cookie so this extension removes all those cooking notifications so you can read or browse peacefully it just denies them works great but you know what use this extension for a week and then remove it to realize how much you miss it I did it and it’s crazy. 6. Buster — automatically solve google captchas When you open web pages in incognito or just simply use a VPN Google will throw this capture challenge which you can sit and solve or use buster. It’ll just solve it for you it uses Google’s own API and uses the voice accessibility option to quickly solve the capture for you in just seconds. 7. Custom Right-click Menu Create your own entries in the right-click menu. Add custom JavasScript scripts, links, sub-menus, and custom CSS stylesheets that activate when you click them in your right-click menu and do anything you want all from your right-click menu. Featuring full GreaseMonkey compatibility for user scripts and Stylish compatibility for user styles. For more information check out the source code over at https://github.com/SanderRonde/CustomRightClickMenu 8. Screenity This one would be useful to everyone who’s studying or working from home see at times you need to explain to your colleagues or even friends on how to do things on your pc, for example, I had to explain to someone at the office how to start a backup on the NAS from the web. so I have to create a quick tutorial on how to do that all of it with annotations so I used an extension called Screenity you can have your webcam footage overlay over the video footage and most importantly you can do cursor highlighter and hang on it. also lets you do annotations with arrows and on and all of that in real-time while you’re recording the video. How cool is that? I would use editors to do this stuff but Screenity makes screen recording and illustrations. The app is open source so no watermark on the videos and free download as well it will be really useful to everyone who is working from home or even studying. 9. tabExtend Tabextend which is a quick one. if you use bookmarks it’s pretty boring and you can’t have more than 10 to 20 bookmarks at once. so use tab extend it lets you organize open tabs much better than bookmarks. You can also add your custom node. It helps me when I am studying or researching a topic. You can have different categories according to the web pages. I used Tobi earlier but tab extend is much better. These were some little-known chrome extensions you should be using in 2021. Follow me on medium: sameerbairwa

9 Chrome Extensions To Make Your Life Easier

Free as in Freedom, by Sam Williams, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A BRIEF JOURNEY THROUGH HACKER HELL The lead image of this article was generated via HackerNoon's AI Stable Diffusion model using the prompt 'a fiery hell filled with computers'. A BRIEF JOURNEY THROUGH HACKER HELL Richard Stallman stares, unblinking, through the windshield of a rental car, waiting for the light to change as we make our way through downtown Kihei. The two of us are headed to the nearby town of Pa'ia, where we are scheduled to meet up with some software programmers and their wives for dinner in about an hour or so. It's about two hours after Stallman's speech at the Maui High Performance Center, and Kihei, a town that seemed so inviting before the speech, now seems profoundly uncooperative. Like most beach cities, Kihei is a one-dimensional exercise in suburban sprawl. Driving down its main drag, with its endless succession of burger stands, realty agencies, and bikini shops, it's hard not to feel like a steel-coated morsel passing through the alimentary canal of a giant commercial tapeworm. The feeling is exacerbated by the lack of side roads. With nowhere to go but forward, traffic moves in spring-like lurches. 200 yards ahead, a light turns green. By the time we are moving, the light is yellow again. For Stallman, a lifetime resident of the east coast, the prospect of spending the better part of a sunny Hawaiian afternoon trapped in slow traffic is enough to trigger an embolism. Even worse is the knowledge that, with just a few quick right turns a quarter mile back, this whole situation easily could have been avoided. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of the driver ahead of us, a programmer from the lab who knows the way and who has decided to take us to Pa'ia via the scenic route instead of via the nearby Pilani Highway. "This is terrible," says Stallman between frustrated sighs. "Why didn't we take the other route?" Again, the light a quarter mile ahead of us turns green. Again, we creep forward a few more car lengths. This process continues for another 10 minutes, until we finally reach a major crossroad promising access to the adjacent highway. The driver ahead of us ignores it and continues through the intersection. "Why isn't he turning?" moans Stallman, throwing up his hands in frustration. "Can you believe this?" I decide not to answer either. I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Stallman in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough. Until two hours ago, I didn't even know Stallman knew how to drive. Now, listening to Yo-Yo Ma's cello playing the mournful bass notes of "Appalachian Journey" on the car stereo and watching the sunset pass by on our left, I do my best to fade into the upholstery. When the next opportunity to turn finally comes up, Stallman hits his right turn signal in an attempt to cue the driver ahead of us. No such luck. Once again, we creep slowly through the intersection, coming to a stop a good 200 yards before the next light. By now, Stallman is livid. "It's like he's deliberately ignoring us," he says, gesturing and pantomiming like an air craft carrier landing-signals officer in a futile attempt to catch our guide's eye. The guide appears unfazed, and for the next five minutes all we see is a small portion of his head in the rearview mirror. I look out Stallman's window. Nearby Kahoolawe and Lanai Islands provide an ideal frame for the setting sun. It's a breathtaking view, the kind that makes moments like this a bit more bearable if you're a Hawaiian native, I suppose. I try to direct Stallman's attention to it, but Stallman, by now obsessed by the inattentiveness of the driver ahead of us, blows me off. When the driver passes through another green light, completely ignoring a "Pilani Highway Next Right," I grit my teeth. I remember an early warning relayed to me by BSD programmer Keith Bostic. "Stallman does not suffer fools gladly," Bostic warned me. "If somebody says or does something stupid, he'll look them in the eye and say, `That's stupid.'" Looking at the oblivious driver ahead of us, I realize that it's the stupidity, not the inconvenience, that's killing Stallman right now. "It's as if he picked this route with absolutely no thought on how to get there efficiently," Stallman says. The word "efficiently" hangs in the air like a bad odor. Few things irritate the hacker mind more than inefficiency. It was the inefficiency of checking the Xerox laser printer two or three times a day that triggered Stallman's initial inquiry into the printer source code. It was the inefficiency of rewriting software tools hijacked by commercial software vendors that led Stallman to battle Symbolics and to launch the GNU Project. If, as Jean Paul Sartre once opined, hell is other people, hacker hell is duplicating other people's stupid mistakes, and it's no exaggeration to say that Stallman's entire life has been an attempt to save mankind from these fiery depths. This hell metaphor becomes all the more apparent as we take in the slowly passing scenery. With its multitude of shops, parking lots, and poorly timed street lights, Kihei seems less like a city and more like a poorly designed software program writ large. Instead of rerouting traffic and distributing vehicles through side streets and expressways, city planners have elected to run everything through a single main drag. From a hacker perspective, sitting in a car amidst all this mess is like listening to a CD rendition of nails on a chalkboard at full volume. "Imperfect systems infuriate hackers," observes Steven Levy, another warning I should have listened to before climbing into the car with Stallman. "This is one reason why hackers generally hate driving cars-the system of randomly programmed red lights and oddly laid out one-way streets causes delays which are so goddamn unnecessary [Levy's emphasis] that the impulse is to rearrange signs, open up traffic-light control boxes . . . redesign the entire system."See Steven Levy, Hackers (Penguin USA [paperback], 1984): 40. More frustrating, however, is the duplicity of our trusted guide. Instead of searching out a clever shortcut-as any true hacker would do on instinct-the driver ahead of us has instead chosen to play along with the city planners' game. Like Virgil in Dante's Inferno, our guide is determined to give us the full guided tour of this hacker hell whether we want it or not. Before I can make this observation to Stallman, the driver finally hits his right turn signal. Stallman's hunched shoulders relax slightly, and for a moment the air of tension within the car dissipates. The tension comes back, however, as the driver in front of us slows down. "Construction Ahead" signs line both sides of the street, and even though the Pilani Highway lies less than a quarter mile off in the distance, the two-lane road between us and the highway is blocked by a dormant bulldozer and two large mounds of dirt. It takes Stallman a few seconds to register what's going on as our guide begins executing a clumsy five-point U-turn in front of us. When he catches a glimpse of the bulldozer and the "No Through Access" signs just beyond, Stallman finally boils over. "Why, why, why?" he whines, throwing his head back. "You should have known the road was blocked. You should have known this way wouldn't work. You did this deliberately." The driver finishes the turn and passes us on the way back toward the main drag. As he does so, he shakes his head and gives us an apologetic shrug. Coupled with a toothy grin, the driver's gesture reveals a touch of mainlander frustration but is tempered with a protective dose of islander fatalism. Coming through the sealed windows of our rental car, it spells out a succinct message: "Hey, it's Maui; what are you gonna do?" Stallman can take it no longer. "Don't you fucking smile!" he shouts, fogging up the glass as he does so. "It's your fucking fault. This all could have been so much easier if we had just done it my way." Stallman accents the words "my way" by gripping the steering wheel and pulling himself towards it twice. The image of Stallman's lurching frame is like that of a child throwing a temper tantrum in a car seat, an image further underlined by the tone of Stallman's voice. Halfway between anger and anguish, Stallman seems to be on the verge of tears. Fortunately, the tears do not arrive. Like a summer cloudburst, the tantrum ends almost as soon as it begins. After a few whiny gasps, Stallman shifts the car into reverse and begins executing his own U-turn. By the time we are back on the main drag, his face is as impassive as it was when we left the hotel 30 minutes earlier. It takes less than five minutes to reach the next cross-street. This one offers easy highway access, and within seconds, we are soon speeding off toward Pa'ia at a relaxing rate of speed. The sun that once loomed bright and yellow over Stallman's left shoulder is now burning a cool orange-red in our rearview mirror. It lends its color to the gauntlet wili wili trees flying past us on both sides of the highway. For the next 20 minutes, the only sound in our vehicle, aside from the ambient hum of the car's engine and tires, is the sound of a cello and a violin trio playing the mournful strains of an Appalachian folk tune. Endnote About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Sam Williams (2004). Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5768/pg5768.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

A Brief Journey Through Hacker Hell

Un breve viaje por el infierno de los hackers

Un bref voyage à travers l'enfer des hackers

हैकर नर्क के माध्यम से एक संक्षिप्त यात्रा

ハッカー地獄の短い旅

Uma breve jornada pelo inferno dos hackers

Hành trình ngắn qua Hacker Hell

黑客地狱之旅

13 different things that you can learn today if you want to be a tech entrepreneur or a better engineer to make an application and ship it to your customers! Target audience Read this if you are: A tech entrepreneur or want to become one An Engineer who wants to learn more about packaging and shipping an application end to end Someone having some tech background and little bit of exposure about how tech works If you are a beginner, this blog is the right thing to follow to get a direction to go into. Its 2020! 🤯 You should be knowing these 13 things, no matter what position you are working on. Even if you are a fresher or a VP of Engineering in some company or looking forward to start your own company, these 13 things should form a part of your skill-set, especially, if you are looking to launch something on the web and expecting some income out of it. This post will give you a direction to move into when making a product and delivering it. I will upload detailed blogs individually for all 13 topics where you can learn more in-depth. Till then, keep hustling and follow me for more insights! Some background: I learnt all these things from my personal experience while developing 😎 intervue.io is an easier way to take tech interviews remotely with collaborative code editor and audio/video calling integrated in the browser itself. It supports 25+ programming languages and gives a curated question bank/home assignments that can be given to the candidate to test his knowledge in a practical way. intervue.io Ok! Enough of my marketing 😛 Let’s see “The Thirteen”! 1. Developing Frontend using React, Redux, Typescript & Node What you will learn: React, redux, node and typescript for writing frontend codeMaking a responsive UI Tech Stack Used Use React for renderingRedux for storing the Todos and managing a store to store data on the UITypescript for strict typing (optional)Node for server side rendering (will help in SEO as well) What you should do: Make the classic Todo application in Frontend using React, Redux, Node & Typescript. Follow this starter kit or find a starter kit that supports typescript as well https://github.com/kriasoft/react-starter-kit Make a User Interface that looks something like this The app should be able to: Add todos List added todos Use a background image and a small logo in the appSearch from the added todos using the search bar Fit in all sizes (make it responsive) Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used React, Redux, Typescript and Node to make intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 2. Front-end performance What you will learn LCP, TBT, TTI, SI and other Lighthouse v6 scoring parameters and how a browser renders a webpage Content delivery network and Static storage for Frontend applications Browser caching Optimizing images (using webp for chrome) Minimizing your javascript using code splitting and chunking via Webpack Tech Stack Used AWS Cloudfront (CDN) for serving assets (JS, CSS, Images) Browser caching with Cache-control headers (to cache assets on the browser only) AWS simple storage service (S3) for storing assets (JS, CSS, Images) Webpack, it’s various plugins and loaders What you should do now runs on Lighthouse V6: Google page speed insights Lighthousev6 scoring calculator According to the updated calculator, you should: First, host your Todo application developed above on some environment Then, calculate your website score and see the recommendations given by page speed insights Work on above scoring matrix and recommendations given by page speed insights to improve your score. Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used AWS Cloudfront and S3 for optimizing Frontend performance for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 3. Develop backend using Node, Sequelize and Postgresdb (Use Redis as cache) What you will learn Node and Express to make APIs Middlewares Models (to make database table schema) Controllers Postman tool Curl request Tech Stack Used Node Express Sequelize Postgres Postman Curl CORs What you should do Clone the following repo https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-starter Install sequelize and connect to Postgres instance Make GET API to get todos Make POST API to add new todos Make GET API for todos search basis query parameters Store Todos in Redis Cache and add Cache eviction policy Use Postman to hit the APIs and request data from them Use Curl to do the above thing again Integrate the APIs with React frontend that you did in the first step (you might get issues), we will solve it via our next step. CORs Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used Node Express to make backend microservice for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 4. Setting up nginx & integrate with other services What you will learn Setting up Nginx and its configuration (nginx.conf) Setup domain routing in /etc/hosts Integrate Frontend to Backend and the database Routing via Nginx Tech Stack Used Nginx Resolving the CORs issue Sample nginx routing via nginx.conf What you should do Get rid of the CORs error from the last step while integrating frontend with backendSetup nginx and make nginx.conf file in your machineSetup routing for frontend and backend services Frontend and backend should now be on the same domain but different locationsFirst slash (/) call should go to nginx and it should decide where to route (Frontend or backend) Once nginx is integrated, complete your API setupYour Todos should now be directly coming from the postgresdb via APIs to the Frontend and rendered via React Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used Nginx to do routing of Frontend, Backend and other micro-services for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 5. Dockerize your application: frontend, nginx, backend, postgres and redis Now your application is running on local. Time to bundle it so it can be shipped What you will learn Docker and Yaml syntax Making an image for all 4 services for your Todo application Running all four images as containers on your local to run the application Tech Stack Used Docker Images & Containers Networking, container port and host port Sample docker compose file What you should do Use Docker to containerise your Frontend application for consistent behaviour across environments Use Docker to containerise Nginx Use Docker to containerise Redis Use Docker to containerise your backend application Use Docker to containerise Postgres For the above three make docker-compose.yml and make images for nginx, frontend, backend and postgresdb Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used Docker to package intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 6. Jenkins CI/CD in groovy Now we are done with packaging our Todo application as well, let us now make a CI/CD pipeline to deploy our project to AWS. What you will learn Jenkins CI/CD Setting up AWS EC2 instances and Security Groups Deploying docker containers on AWS Tech Stack Used Jenkins AWS EC2 Security Groups in AWS Groovy to make a pipeline in Jenkins Deploying Docker containers on AWS EC2 instances to run your application Jenkins pipelines What you should do This one is a little tricky but do not give up and get it done! Signup to AWS (Amazon web services) Make an EC2 instance (take a micro instance which comes as free on AWS sign-up). You will have to increase the instance size going ahead, as images and parallel CI/CD pipelines will not fit in micro sized instance Install Jenkins on it After Jenkins is setup, expose it to an IP via Security groups Login to Jenkins and make 4 pipelines (Frontend, backend, nginx, postgres) Pipelines should clone the project, build it, dockerize it and deploy it on AWS instances (For this setup, you will have to deploy more machines to deploy your docker containers) We will later comeback and integrate Kubernetes with it to make our deployment more seamless Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used Jenkins CI/CD and Kubernetes to automate deployments for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 7. Kubernetes on AWS Let us bring in Kubernetes and understand pods, services and deployments and how docker images can be used for deployments here. What you will learn Kubernetes on AWS to make a cluster (master is managed by AWS K8s services only. Hence it comes at a cost) Pods Services Deployments Cluster Tech Stack Used Kubernetes eksctl to deploy a cluster kubectl to make a service and do deployments apiVersion : apps/v1 kind : Deployment metadata : name : nginx-deployment labels : app : nginx spec : replicas : 3 selector : matchLabels : app : nginx template : metadata : labels : app : nginx spec : containers : - name : nginx image : nginx:1.14.2 ports : - containerPort : 80 < = = = = > span id "1324" class "cs ka kb bi sn b ca so sp r sq" data-selectable-paragraph "" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 400; display: block; font-style: normal; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(41, 41, 41); line-height: 1.18; letter-spacing: -0.022em; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace; margin-top: -0.09em; margin-bottom: -0.09em; white-space: pre-wrap;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; 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font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong < = > br style "box-sizing: inherit;" < = = > strong class "sn mg" style "box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, &quot;Courier New&quot;, Courier, monospace;" </ > strong </ > span What you should do Make a cluster on & use to bring that up Kubernetes eksctl Your cluster will add some AWS instances on the go (and it comes at a cost). Please verify the same before proceeding with it Make kubernetes_frontend, kubernetes_backend, kubernetes_redis, kubernetes_postgres yml files Update nginx and other environment variables to point to Kubernetes deployment names which are much more reliable and you will not have to point to IPs or do a Route53 entry for each service. Update your CI/CD to run kubectl and deploy images for the above pods Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used Jenkins CI/CD and Kubernetes to automate deployments for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 8. Setting up cloudfront with S3 What you will learn AWS Cloudfront to be used as CDN AWS S3 to be used as storage for assetsaws-cli or Webpack plugin to upload assets to S3 Tech Stack Used AWS Cloudfront AWS S3 AWS CLI Webpack Plugin to upload assets to S3Browser Caching headers What you should do Setup S3 and integrate aws-cli in your Jenkins CI/CD to upload the build folder to S3. Alternatively use Webpack plugin to upload assets to S3 Setup CDN (AWS Cloudfront) to pick data from S3 Pass cache-control headers for efficient browser caching of assets Your final pipeline will then look like this. The “install dependencies and make build” step will make build and also upload it to S3 when the above instructions are followed CI/CD pipeline for Jenkins Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I used Jenkins CI/CD and Kubernetes to automate deployments for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 9. Route53 on AWS What you will learn Your Todo Application will now open on a domain, fetch assets from CDN and hit backend via nginx to get data from postgres Tech Stack Used Route53 Domain and Hosting What you should do Buy a domain from AWS or any other domain provider Install SSL for that domain using certbot (in your nginx service in kubernetes) Setup nameservers for that domain in your Route53 Configure Route53 on AWS to add CNAME (this will be nginx service) Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I setup Route53 for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 10. Integrating Sentry for end-to-end frontend monitoring is used to track run-time performance and tracking if your users encounter Javascript errors. He can open your application in different browsers/devices and may encounter errors that you might not have encountered. Sentry What you will learn Logging of runtime javascript error and debugging it Tech Stack Used Sentry SDK integration End to End runtime performance monitoring What you should do Integrate Sentry SDK in your React frontend Throw an exception and see if it gets recorded in the sentry dashboard Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I sentry for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 11. Integrating centralized logging with Kibana, fluentd & Kubernetes on AWS What you will learn Bunyan and morgan logging in node Fluentd with Kubernetes to setup centralized logging Kibana to view logs and trends Tech Stack Used Bunyan Morgan Fluentd Kibana logging dashboard What you should do Use bunyan and morgan to do logging in Node Server, Node Express Backend Use fluentd to setup centralized logging Use Kibana to view the logsSetup alerts in Kibana for any errors in backend services Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I setup logging with Kibana for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 12. GTM/GA integration to closely monitor how customers are using your application What you will learn GTM to manage events and see how your customers are using your application and where they are clicking GA dashboard to view trends Tech Stack Used Google tag manager Google analytics What you should do Integrate google tag manager and make a container inside it Use the GTM script with that container id in your frontend code Integrate basic Page view events recommended by GTM Integrate GA with GTM Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: How I setup GA/GTM with Kibana for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! 13. Focused emailing with mixmax and mass emailing with sendy What you will learn Sendy for sending out newsletters Newsletter management AWS Simple Email Service Tech Stack Used Sendy: Newsletter management AWS Simple email service What you should do Make an EC2 instance and setup sendy on it (This will come at a one-time payment) Active AWS Simple Email Service Setup Sendy with AWS SES to send newletters to your subscribers Setup mixmax with your gmail account (A particular plan of mixmax allows you to schedule follow-ups) Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛: Setting up newsletter service and automated follow-ups for intervue.io Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates! Conclusion 🤓 In this article I have discussed 13 things that you should know, each focusing on a different aspect of product development. Now the choice is all yours: Do you want to focus on something you already know and go a little bit here and there to get your product out in the market? Or, do you want to strengthen your skills by doing a project for a technology you already have some knowledge in? Or, will you rely on your favourite framework/library and do all the projects in 2020 with it? Feel free to leave a comment and don’t forget to follow me for more upcoming posts!

13 Things You Should Know If You Are A Software Developer/Entrepreneur In 2020 

Why everyone should stop using Skype, Google Docs etc. for taking tech interviews! The things mentioned in this article are my personal opinion and true to the best of my knowledge and experience :P I take a lot of interviews at work and it was hampering my productivity. Specially remote interviews where you have to download tools like skype and connect with the candidate. This all makes need of strong internet connection a must have at both the sides while taking interviews. I have tried to come up with this article to explain how using latest tools can help you overcome those challenges and improve productivity at work as well. :D Few things coming in the way of taking remote interviews correctly! Skype Collab-edit Google-docs Telephonic interview Other random code sandboxes Screensharing Combination of any of the above This guy is not happy with the tools listed. Are you that guy? or may be your are about to know by the end of this article. All of the above mentioned have the following drawbacks: Complicated with no real programming environment Too many downloads/tools for one interview Not made to take interviews Bulky Learning curve Promotes theory or Rote learning Uninspiring & Uncoordinated Image describing loop-holes in the current process of taking remote-interviews and calling anyone on-site with no proper judgement To further explain the gravity of the situation Google Doc: It is a collaborative word doc. It was not made to take interviews Collaborative: YES Audio/Video Calling: NO Code Editor: NO Code Compilation/Output: NO Any programming language supported: NO Skype: Video calling tool not meant to take tech interviews. Screen-sharing via skype and typing on a code editor is a heavy operation and candidates can take advantage of it in a slow network for sure. Audio/Video Calling: YES Collaborative: NO Code Editor: NO Works without download: NO Code compilation/output: NO Telephone/Mobile calling: Only meant to talk to the person for introduction and initial impression. Not meant to take coding rounds. Also, it is not very comfortable for both interviewer and candidate to talk on the phone while giving a coding round Audio Calling: YES Video Calling: NO Code Editor/Compilation: NO Tests practical knowledge: NO Collab-edit and other random sandboxes: Meant for code playground to test small chunks of code. Does not serve the purpose of taking a complete remote round Collaborative: YES Audio/Video Call: NO Code Editor: YES Code compilation/output: NO Programmer friendly or Intuitive: NO Random tools cannot bring out the best in candidates. Candidates end up trying to give their best on tools that give them a hard time. They end up downloading additional softwares and co-ordinating between the softwares becomes a task as well at the time of interview Candidates hate them: Interviewers expect the candidates to type on tools that will never be used in real time Interviewers do not care enough: HRs cannot standardize the process and end up losing quality talent most of the times HRs give up: Here are some tools that can help you save your time, increase your productivity, and help you assess the candidate the right way without downloading any additional software Intervue.io, Coderpad.io, CodeInterview.io: Latest tools that can be used to take remote tech interviews Lets go over them one by one: I have used all of them, hence, I am giving my opinion for each tool. Intervue.io This is by far the best tool I found in terms of User Experience. Lots of languages are supported. My opinion: : URL https://www.intervue.io/ : C, C++, Python2, Python3, Javascript, Node, Typescript, CoffeeScript, Java, Bash, Swift, R, Rust, HTML/CSS/JS, Ruby, Erlang, Elixir, PHP, Plain Text Languages supported Collaborative: YES Code compilation and output: YES Code editor: YES Audio/Video calling: YES Tests practical knowledge: YES Candidate friendly editor: YES Schedule Interviews: YES Organisation support to add teams or multiple interviewers: YES Organisation branding: YES Interview feedback can be written: YES Comes as a free trial of one month after which user can upgrade to different plans which are not very expensive. Free/Paid: Intervue.io: An easier and efficient ways to take remote programming interviews Coderpad.io This is also good. Has more languages supported as compared to intervue.io. Intervue gives slightly better usability experience in my opinion. My opinion: : URL https://www.coderpad.io/ : Haskel, Go, C, C++, Python2, Python3, Javascript, Node, Typescript, CoffeeScript, Java, Bash, Swift, R, Rust, HTML/CSS/JS, Ruby, Erlang, Elixir, PHP, Plain Text, SQL Languages supported Collaborative: YES Code compilation and output: YES Code editor: YES Audio/Video calling: YES Tests practical knowledge: YES Candidate friendly editor: YES Schedule Interviews: YES Organisation support to add teams or multiple interviewers: YES Organisation branding: YES Comes as a free trial of one month after which user can upgrade to different plans which are not very expensive. Pricing is slightly on the higher side at the time of writing this article as compared to Intervue Free/Paid: CodeInterview.io : This is not very rich in user experience. Looks a little bulky as well while using as the look and feel is on the heavier side, but it serves the purpose of taking a remote round. My opinion : URL https://www.codeinterview.io/ : Haskel, Go, C, C++, Python2, Python3, Javascript, Node, Typescript, CoffeeScript, Java, Bash, Swift, R, Rust, HTML/CSS/JS, Ruby, Erlang, Elixir, PHP, Plain Text, SQL, React, Angular, Vue (Beta mode) Languages supported Collaborative: YES Code compilation and output: YES Code editor: YES Audio/Video calling: YES Tests practical knowledge: YES Candidate friendly editor: YES Schedule Interviews: YES Organisation support to add teams or multiple interviewers: YES Organisation branding: YES Demo pad can be created free of cost. Post the demo pad it is paid. Free/Paid: Conclusion There are some more tools that I have not mentioned but you can take a look. These tools did not make it to the best tools available list as they have their own pit-falls Codebunk https://www.hackerrank.com/products/codepair https://codeshare.io/ Hope this article helps you to be more productive at work if you are taking interviews! This article is my opinion on the tools that I have used as I take a lot of interviews at work and I was losing productivity. These tools came to the rescue. I will also write about more such tools and articles for different things to increase productivity at work but that is a scope for another medium article. Stay tuned!!

Stop Using Skype and Google Docs for Remote Interviews

Share code using these lightning fast sandboxes available in almost all popular languages In my last article I mentioned about Intervue to take remote interviews effectively. I also wrote about how Intervue has integrated everything needed to take an interview under a URL. Today I bumped into one of their new functionalities which I found was pretty cool!! The GIF below shows how easy it is to open a sandbox All you have to remember is intervue.io/<language_name> Image showing sandbox environment of intervue.io Few quick access sandboxes for your reference Compiled -https://www.intervue.io/chttps://www.intervue.io/c++https://www.intervue.io/darthttps://www.intervue.io/phphttps://www.intervue.io/scalahttps://www.intervue.io/javahttps://www.intervue.io/swifthttps://www.intervue.io/erlanghttps://www.intervue.io/gohttps://www.intervue.io/kotlinhttps://www.intervue.io/rust Interpretated https://www.intervue.io/bashhttps://www.intervue.io/coffeescripthttps://www.intervue.io/elixirhttps://www.intervue.io/python3https://www.intervue.io/python2https://www.intervue.io/typescripthttps://www.intervue.io/javascripthttps://www.intervue.io/rhttps://www.intervue.io/ruby Databases https://www.intervue.io/postgres Others https://www.intervue.io/htmlcssjshttps://www.intervue.io/text I can even fork these sandboxes to share particular piece of code with my colleagues or share a proof of concept with my manager. The only drawback that I found was that the forked sandboxes expire after 24 hours. I hope Intervue team will bring some mechanism to store these sandboxes as I could not find any. Before I end this article here is a sample code to make polyfill for Array.prototype.filter function: My First Intervue sandbox showing polyfill for Array.prototype.filter Although this might expire after 24 hours as they say. Another great part is that it Auto Saves. No need to click the save button Conclusion I really liked the sandbox functionality as it is pretty light weight, easy to use and so accessible. Happy coding! Share code using these lightning fast sandboxes available in almost all popular languages Share code using these lightning fast sandboxes available in almost all popular languages In my last article I mentioned about Intervue to take remote interviews effectively. In my last article last article I mentioned about Intervue to take remote interviews effectively. I also wrote about how Intervue has integrated everything needed to take an interview under a URL. I also wrote about how Intervue has integrated everything needed to take an interview under a URL. Today I bumped into one of their new functionalities which I found was pretty cool!! The GIF below shows how easy it is to open a sandbox The GIF below shows how easy it is to open a sandbox All you have to remember is intervue.io/<language_name> intervue.io/<language_name> Image showing sandbox environment of intervue.io Image showing sandbox environment of intervue.io Few quick access sandboxes for your reference Compiled -https://www.intervue.io/c https://www.intervue.io/c++ https://www.intervue.io/dart https://www.intervue.io/php https://www.intervue.io/scala https://www.intervue.io/java https://www.intervue.io/swift https://www.intervue.io/erlang https://www.intervue.io/go https://www.intervue.io/kotlin https://www.intervue.io/rust - https://www.intervue.io/ c https://www.intervue.io/ https://www.intervue.io/c++ https://www.intervue.io/c++ https://www.intervue.io/dart https://www.intervue.io/dart https://www.intervue.io/php https://www.intervue.io/php https://www.intervue.io/scala https://www.intervue.io/scala https://www.intervue.io/java https://www.intervue.io/java https://www.intervue.io/swift https://www.intervue.io/swift https://www.intervue.io/erlang https://www.intervue.io/erlang https://www.intervue.io/go https://www.intervue.io/go https://www.intervue.io/kotlin https://www.intervue.io/kotlin https://www.intervue.io/rust https://www.intervue.io/rust Interpretated https://www.intervue.io/bash https://www.intervue.io/coffeescript https://www.intervue.io/elixir https://www.intervue.io/python3 https://www.intervue.io/python2 https://www.intervue.io/typescript https://www.intervue.io/javascript https://www.intervue.io/r https://www.intervue.io/ruby https://www.intervue.io/bash https://www.intervue.io/bash https://www.intervue.io/coffeescript https://www.intervue.io/coffeescript https://www.intervue.io/elixir https://www.intervue.io/elixir https://www.intervue.io/python3 https://www.intervue.io/python3 https://www.intervue.io/python 2 https://www.intervue.io/python https://www.intervue.io/typescript https://www.intervue.io/typescript https://www.intervue.io/javascript https://www.intervue.io/javascript https://www.intervue.io/r https://www.intervue.io/r https://www.intervue.io/ruby https://www.intervue.io/ruby Databases https://www.intervue.io/postgres https://www.intervue.io/postgres https://www.intervue.io/postgres Others Others https://www.intervue.io/htmlcssjs https://www.intervue.io/text https://www.intervue.io/htmlcssjs https://www.intervue.io/htmlcssjs https://www.intervue.io/text https://www.intervue.io/text I can even fork these sandboxes to share particular piece of code with my colleagues or share a proof of concept with my manager. The only drawback that I found was that the forked sandboxes expire after 24 hours . 24 hours I hope Intervue team will bring some mechanism to store these sandboxes as I could not find any. Before I end this article here is a sample code to make polyfill for Array.prototype.filter function: Array.prototype.filter My First Intervue sandbox showing polyfill for Array.prototype.filter My First Intervue sandbox My First Intervue sandbox showing polyfill for Array.prototype.filter Although this might expire after 24 hours as they say. Another great part is that it Auto Saves. No need to click the save button Conclusion Conclusion I really liked the sandbox functionality as it is pretty light weight, easy to use and so accessible. Happy coding!

Fastest Way to Create and Share Code in Any Language

I was a Software Engineer for 7 years before becoming a Founder of a SaaS company. I worked at product based organisations in India and saw amazing growth as the my tech teams grew pretty quickly in number. I was taking a lot of tech interviews over Zoom/Teams and other tools. I have made a list of things that I learned over a period of 7 years. Hope this will come in handy! An engineer with product sense is 10x better than the one without it! Follow this rule religiously if you are building a lean team. Network like your hiring depends on it. Because it does. Your network and great cold emails are the key to hiring great people. Sourcing candidates for the job is like sales. If you reach out to the wrong candidate profile, you will end up rejecting the candidate during the interview or candidate will reject the company after getting selected. Reduce the no. of people you interview before selecting one. Note every granular detail about why you rejected someone. Make a checklist of the above things as a part of your pre-screening. This will filter people & save 90% of your interview time. Many tech folks collect offer letters to get a pay raise. Save yourself from them. People rarely lie to someone that they connect with on an emotional front. Tell the person you interview: Your startup story + how important the position is + gravity of the loss if they do not join. Save your interview time. Do the below before starting interviews: Cultural check + expectation check Tech rounds are a waste if this goes wrong in the end. People fear joining startups because of financial risk. Show how pay might be 1% lower next year, but more in the long-term. "If it doesn't work out, I will find you a job at a great company. " Reframe the risk, remove the fear. Good companies with Bad interviewers/Bad interview process often lose Great people. Nominate the right people for interviews. Structure your rounds. Wrap up "not so good" interviews in < 30 min with the below structure. For 1-3 years of experience, test: Logical ability (5-10 minutes) Programming concepts specific to the role (15-20 minutes) Product sense (10-15 minutes) Each step should be a knockout. Keep a hook question. Ex for web developers: "How would you optimise the performance of a web page with many images & an infinite scroll." The answer has N directions & helps you understand the horizontal knowledge of the person. Deep-dive on a concept if needed. Many tech folks come to interview for practice. Introduce yourself & tell about your work in detail. Talk about your experience/tech stack. Your brand might be unknown but the work can always be sold. Treat this as the moment to acquire talent. Avoid tricky or bookish questions in a tech interview. "That is like asking a person giving a driving test about drifting a car." Avoid it to screen people better. Negative expressions during an interview can totally make the candidate lose confidence. Candidate experience goes a long way. Even on Glassdoor or geeksforgeeks. You will lose the right talent to say the least. Collaborative f2fs >>> Screen-sharing ones. Collaboration has more impact on the candidate over screen-sharing as the latter by design does not involve pro-activeness. Interviews are a two way process. Dictating a question on a zoom call does not tell much about you. A candidate gives you N days to join. Keep them engaged by keeping them posted about your plans. This combined with: Your startup story + how important the position is + gravity of the loss if they do not join will psychologically make them a part of your team. For more insights follow me on twitter , Founder Rahul Arora intervue.io

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