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React Native developer toolkit: In-demand skills, learning resources, online courses, interview prep, books & more

Posted on October 3, 2022 by vallish

React Native is a JavaScript-based development framework created by Facebook to allow developers to use React to create Android and iOS app interfaces. Released in 2015, the framework is now one of the most popular cross-platform mobile frameworks, according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021. React Native has mass adoption for mobile application development because it allows JavaScript codebase to be compiled within the mobile application. This is similar to a native iOS app built using Objective-C or a native Android app built using Java.

As an open-source, cross-platform, and easy-to-learn framework, mobile development companies prefer React Native. Also, the development time is shorter when developers use React Native.

We created this React Native developer toolkit to give learners and aspiring developers a reference list to access the best resources to get started.

In-depth knowledge of JavaScript

React Native is entirely based on JavaScript. Excellent knowledge and understanding of JavaScript programming language and libraries are mandatory for React Native developers. As JavaScript is the inevitable part of cross-platform app development, your potential as a candidate will be evaluated based on your understanding of this programming language. You must understand how JavaScript components are built and how application logic and services are structured.

Familiarity with React assumptions

React allows several features to make it faster. Assumptions or React Reconciliation is one process that makes the code execute more quickly. The concepts like Virtual DOM, JSX, and component lifecycle are important for React Native developers to understand. Interview questions are often based on React assumptions.

Familiarity with frequently used tools

While you won’t be expected to know everything about mobile application development, as a React Native developer, there are some tools you must be familiar with. These tools are often used to accelerate the app development process. The most essential React Native development tools you must be familiar with include:

Redux: An open-source JavaScript library frequently used to manage the application’s global state.

Sentry error tracking: For real-time monitoring and efficiently fixing crashes.

ESLint: Frequently used JavaScript code linter to ensure code is written in a clear and standard format compliant with JavaScript patterns.

Jest: A zero-configuration framework for testing JS code used within a mobile application.

React Native Testing Library: React Native testing utilities are often used in mobile application development to encourage good testing practices.

React Native Developer Technical Interview Questions

Official resources

React Native website

Official documentation

React Native official blog

React Native on GitHub

React Native on Twitter

Online courses and tutorials for React Native developers

The Complete React Native and Hooks Course

An Udemy beginner’s course helps developers get familiar with the essential concepts of React Native and start building app interfaces quickly. Apart from the core concepts of the React Native framework, this course also teaches Hooks, Context, and React Navigation. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of React, including JSX, props, state, and event handling. Finally, you will build and deploy the prototypes of your applications and learn how to publish them to Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Complete React Native Developer in 2022: Zero to Mastery

ZTM Academy offers this quality course for learning React Native for beginners and developers. An updated course with the latest inclusions about new features and updates. The course material is based on the latest version of React Native and focuses on efficiency. You will not have to struggle to comb through outdated or incomplete tutorials. This one is a complete course to learn how to build professional and modern Android and iPhone (iOS) apps with React Native.

One of the benefits of this course is that it teaches practically by building a massive restaurant application using React, Firebase, React Hooks, Expo, React Navigation, Google Maps/Places API, Styled-Components, React Animations, and more.

CS50’s Mobile App Development with React Native

Another React Native online course is CS50’s Mobile App Development with React Native course made available by Harvard University on Edx. This course is a continuation of Harvard’s popular CS50 computer science course. It teaches accelerated mobile application development using React Native. It also explains the concept of cross-platform applications and how native apps can be built with JavaScript without Swift or Java.

React Native Express

This is the right resource if you are an experienced developer who wants to experiment with React Native for cross-platform mobile app development. React Native Express covers everything you want to know about the programming language to get started. Professional developers often use this guide and the official React Native documentation to build apps. It covers the fundamentals of JavaScript and essential React Native libraries that are not explained in the official documentation.

Communication: Developers work with engineers and stakeholders, so communication is integral to their job. Impeccable communication skills are required to share the progress of the projects, solve problems, and help teammates. Software developers need active listening, interpersonal communication, and public speaking skills.

Creativity: Mobile application interfaces are a communication medium. Creativity is vital for React Native developers to design interfaces that attract users and provide a satisfactory experience. If you are creative, you can build apps that stand out among competitors. Here are some tips to boost creativity as a front-end developer.

Problem-solving: This skill allows software developers to quickly identify and fix technical errors. Problem-solving skills will enable you to analyze your work and devise helpful solutions. The faster you can identify the issue, the sooner you can deploy the solution and keep the application’s performance high.

Learn more about essential software developer soft skills with these resources:

How soft skills transitioned to become the new power skills

6 soft skills that still impress employers in 2022

5 tips for presenting new ideas as a software developer

5 Time management tips for software developers

4 Productivity hacks for software developers

Conclusion

React Native is an excellent platform for developing cross-platform mobile application interfaces. As it uses native GUI components, it is also the fastest framework to work with for application development. This ultimate React Native developer toolkit is a complete reference guide for learning resources and interview preparation.

Talent500 is where Indian IT talent finds career re-defining opportunities at global companies. Sign up here and be job ready.

5 Things to keep in mind while building a mobile app

Posted on September 28, 2022 by vallish

The first smartphone was introduced 15 years ago, leading to the mobile app economy’s foundation. Since then, there has been a meteoric rise in the number of smartphone users and is continuing to grow manifold as per the numbers from Statista. It is thus not surprising that mobile apps have become the bedrock of businesses. If you are building a mobile app, you will be competing with hundreds of other apps on the market.

Here are the five most important things to remember during mobile app development.

1. Proper research

Your mobile app development efforts must be guided and based on solid market research. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel and pour in weeks and months of hard work into an app only to discover that an alternative app already exists that can do the things that your app can. Your app idea might not be as unique as you want it to be, so thorough market research is mandatory.

With millions of apps, chances are high that an app based on your idea already exists on Google Playstore or Apple App Store. It is vital to check out the competition to know what user features are available. The more research you put in, the easier it will be to find the gap between the solution and requirement. This will enable you to increase unique features in your app development project that will set your app apart from other apps.

2. Choose a platform based on skill set

Understanding your target audience and the platform they use will decide the success of your app. Which platform does most of your target audience use – Android or iOS?

You will need an answer to this query before you jump into mobile app development. If you have a relatively proportional audience distribution between these platforms, pick one based on the skill sets of your team. If the engineering team predominantly has android developers, you are well placed to work on the android version of the app.

Determining the right platform for mobile app development is essential to large-scale adoption. If your target users are from western countries like the United States, the iOS app will be preferable as most of the US population uses iPhones. In comparison, Asia and Africa have a large number of Android users. If you are developing an app for an enterprise-size business, a multi-platform app development strategy will serve you well.

3. Focus on app performance and UX experience

Performance is a crucial factor that creates brand value for your app. The users want the app to download, load and operate quickly. It must respond to user queries seamlessly. Animated elements in app development can keep the user experience high. For instance, using a progress bar to show task completion progress can help reduce the chances of users dropping the app by 50%.

If the task is complex and if the app takes a while to load pages, some best practices can help keep the users’ attention.

Use animations to acknowledge users’ actions. The animations give the users a sense of acknowledgement and are more likely to wait while the process is being executed. Something like this:

Motion animations for pages after refresh action: Whenever users refresh an app page, the moving symbols and elements inform the users that the action is underway and not stuck. Here is an example of how the Dribble app screen animates refresh action.

For errors screens such as app crashes or bugs, notify the user with a communicative image, animation, or text. Here is an example:

4. Scope for maintenance and updates

Building and publishing an app is just the beginning. You must keep updating your app’s features to stay afloat in the competition. App stores are biased towards the apps that are maintained and updated frequently. The mobile app development trends keep changing as technology advances. You have to keep updating your app for better performance and new features.

Create a scope for app updates in your project. It will ensure that you can introduce new features to keep users engaged.

5. Security measures

After performance and user experience, security is of importance in a mobile app. If your app handles sensitive user data such as social security, payment, biometrics, etc., it is essential to follow best security practices during app development.

Secure your app code with minification and obfuscation so it can’t be reverse-engineered. Data encryption is mandatory; never store any sensitive data in plain text. Be careful with the use of third-party libraries during mobile app development. The use of unsecured open source libraries is a potential security risk.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is more than just writing code to create a functioning application. Market research, audience study, best development practices, and continued maintenance are crucial aspects of app development.

Talent500 is a significant player in talent acquisition, helping clients build their remote mobile development teams. Join us and get ready to be part of global teams.

Top 6 mobile app development frameworks in 2022

Posted on September 28, 2022 by vallish

Mobile presence has become vital for businesses, playing an essential role in their business transformation. With the increased penetration of smartphones among the masses, the new focus is on becoming a mobile-first company for business success. Creating a mobile app won’t suffice to capture mobility’s edge. It takes in-depth research, planning, strategy building, and accessing the mobile ecosystem within the industry to develop mobile apps that translate into success for a business.

Native mobile apps offer outstanding aesthetics and functionality, but they are costly, given the diversity of the devices and platforms. Mobile app frameworks are available that allow the creation of web, hybrid, and cross-platform applications.

This article will list the best mobile app development frameworks that offer quick development processes, efficiency, and cross-platform compatibility.

1. Flutter

Google creates Flutter to allow developers to create native Android and iOS apps with a single codebase. It’s an open-source mobile app framework that has gained massive popularity among developers who create cross-platform apps. The unique feature of Flutter is its ability to allow developers to develop highly reliable UI interfaces utilizing the native platform features, whether it’s Android or iOS. Some prominent apps built using Flutter include Google, Alibaba, and Spotify.

Features:

A complete framework
Built-in material design
Strong widget support
Rich motion APIs
Includes a rendering engine
Built-in Cupertino (iOS-flavor) widgets
It supports both iOS & Android
High-performance application

2. Native Script

Another open-source mobile app framework, Native Script, is used when there is a requirement for creating blazing fast applications based on TypeScript, CSS, JavaScript, Vue, and Angular. It is a preferred framework to reduce the code and time of the app loads. If you are planning to build robust applications to be used on multiple platforms, you can rely on Native Script. It offers many benefits that include:

Native user interface without WebViews
Support and access to all Android and iOS APIs
Support for cross-platform app development
Robust backend support
Optimized for app development out-of-the-box

3. React Native

React Native is created by Facebook as an extension of the popular JavaScript library, React. Soon after its release, React Native became the preferred mobile app framework for cross-platform app interface development.

Using this open-source mobile app development framework, developers can create apps for both Android and iOS. Due to its highly accelerated and intuitive development flow, React Native has become a framework of choice despite being a newcomer in the industry. Instagram, Tesla, Amazon Prime Videos, and Skype are some popular apps built on React Native.

Features:

Reusable code across platforms
Support for third-party plugins
Reusable components for maximum efficiency
Rapid deployment ecosystem
Simple maintainability of code

4. Xamarin

A Microsoft product, Xamarin is another cross-platform mobile app framework. It is suitable for C# developers who want an efficient and faster mobile app framework for creating Android or iOS apps. As C# is a much more efficient programming language, Xamarin uses fewer lines of code to offer the same level of robustness and functionality as other mobile app frameworks on the list. Also, the app development is much faster without compromising on app design or performance. On top of that, Xamarin allows the swift transfer of scripts across multiple platforms, such as between Windows and macOS.

After Microsoft acquired Xamarin, it added a feature to connect Visual Studio with the framework, further improving its capacity in terms of quality and performance.

Features:

UI support and native API access
Regular updates and fixes from Microsoft
Targets all mobile platforms
Easier API integration
Faster app development with VS Code

5. Ionic

Ionic is one of the most efficient mobile app frameworks for building interactive hybrid and Progressive Web Applications and not just cross-platform applications. Also, an open-source framework, Ionic, is used by famous enterprises such as MarketWatch, Diesel, McLaren Automotive, and Honeyfi. Developers can build mobile, web, and cross-platform applications using the same framework. You can build apps with Ionic using HTML, CSS3, and JavaScript technologies. It is the reason why this mobile app framework is extensively used to create HTML5 hybrid applications and Progressive Web Applications. It offers consistent app designs, performance boost, and multiple device support, among other things.

Features:

Faster mobile app development
Supports Cordova plugins
UI components come pre-installed
Platform independent
Angular and React versions are available

6. Swiftic

Swiftic is a do-it-yourself mobile app framework that anyone can use to build unique apps. You do not have to be a developer, but if you are, you can exploit its features to create robust mobile applications. Of all the listed mobile app frameworks here, Swiftic is the most flexible option as it has a more straightforward interface and is beginner-friendly. It offers several mobile app development features out-of-the-box like push notifications, social network feeds, and app advertising.

Features:

Easy-to-use interface
Cross-platform compatible
Supports third-party integrations
In-built one-click feature deployment

Conclusion

Considering several factors like ease of development, cross-platform support, faster coding, and operating systems, these are the top 6 mobile app development frameworks of 2022.

Talent500 is the platform for mobile app developers to connect with global companies looking for the right talent. Sign up here and be ready to discover career-redefining options.

Top 7 blogs that every mobile developer should follow

Posted on September 27, 2022September 27, 2022 by vallish

Mobile applications now make up a substantial part of our lives. We use them for everything from setting alarms to booking cabs and ordering meals. Businesses rapidly adapt to this digital transformation creating a massive demand for mobile developers.

Mobile app development is a dynamic domain, and new technologies, tools, and practices keep spurring in the industry. Keeping track of every recent change or trend for a mobile developer can be challenging. An easy way to keep up to date with the trends in the industry is to follow some quality mobile developer blogs. To help you, we picked the top blogs that mobile developers should follow.

1. Android developers blog

It is no surprise that the first featured developer blog on our list is Google’s Android Developers blog. If you are an Android app developer, chances are you are already familiar with the blog; if not, you are missing some great resources. Being the official Android blog, it is where you will find the latest news on the OS, product updates, and developers’ tips and tricks shared by Google engineers. As the contributors on this blog are Google developers, you get to learn from their hands-on experience in building Android apps. Several more insightful resources are shared on the Android developer’s blog, and it’s worth bookmarking.

2. iOS Dev Weekly

For iOS app developers, this one is a great resource to stay in touch with the latest market trends and innovations. The iOS Dev Weekly curates articles every week, hand-picked by its editors, who are iOS engineers. You can expect to discover exciting and inspiring articles on iOS mobile app development. Most of the articles shared on this developer blog are focused on Swift, hacks for iOS developers, quick tips, and other iOS tech-related categories. The blog also offers premium membership to become an insider and access its strong community of iOS developers.

3. Game Analytics blog

An excellent blog for mobile gaming app developers, Game Analytics blog shares hundreds of articles on development, app marketing advice, and motivational success stories. Game app development is a sophisticated venture, and this blog helps you keep track of innovative tools and technologies that can simplify mobile app development.

Game Analytics is an analytic platform helping game developers dive deeper into any part of game development by providing insightful data. You must follow this developer blog because it enables you to understand how analytics can be used within game app development. The articles are pretty insightful and provide actual tech guidance rather than clickbait titles.

4. Android Authority

With millions of followers on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Android Authority remains one of the top tech blogs for android developers to follow. All the information you need to know about Android apps, games, phones, tablets, or laptops is available. The blog also features full review articles on mobile apps and devices and guides Android users about the best apps to install on their phones. This can be a great learning resource for Android app developers to understand the market trends and study popular apps. Android Authority is an excellent app developer blog for new and experienced developers.

5. Big Nerd Ranch

Big Nerd Ranch markets itself as a company that “teaches, designs & builds digital products.” What’s unique about this firm is that the founders were among the few engineers recruited by Steve Jobs back in 1997. One of the principal values of the company is its blog.

Big Nerd Ranch blog shares excellent practical app development tutorials for mobile developers. There are significant additional resources for designers and software engineers too. If you are interested in team building and mobile technology training, articles are available on the topic.

6. Ray Wenderlich’s blog

Technically, it is not an average mobile developer blog but rather a resource full of tutorials. Ray Wenderlich offers articles on complete mobile app development spanning several technologies and platforms. In this blog, you will find articles on Flutter, Android, Kotlin, Unity, Swift, iOS, Dart, server-side Swift, and more. The RW community has junior and senior app developers learning from over 3000 tutorials offered by the blog.

7. Yalantis blog

Yalantis is a software engineering and IT consulting firm that offers mobile app development services to enterprise clients. On the Yalantis blog, there are hundreds of inspiring app development blogs. The company also shares business stories about how they tackled a challenge and provided a solution to the client through their services. It provides a learning opportunity for mobile developers to understand the practical application of the app development approach.

Yalantis is another great developer blog to learn about the latest mobile app development trends and solutions. One particular section is the design articles sharing insights on how Yalantis’ design team creates impressive user experience.

Following these developer blogs will assist you in upskilling and staying afloat with the industry trends. For more insightful tips and articles on software development, website design, mobile apps, and more, you can follow the Talent500 blog.

Why should you develop mobile apps with React Native?

Posted on September 19, 2022 by vallish

Today’s digital arena is driven by rapid development and faster information delivery. Every mobile user expects to get a service or information at the swipe of a finger. That’s why almost every business tries hard to provide the best mobile experience to its target audience.

This unprecedented demand for quality mobile experience has facilitated the evolution and development of many mobile application frameworks.

Among these, React Native is one of the most popular mobile app development frameworks. It is open source and made by Facebook in 2013, today, React Native has control over 38% of the mobile app development market.

We can build mobile apps for both Android and iOS with this app development framework. This capability gives businesses the economic benefits of maintaining a single code base for both versions of their apps.

Here we explore why you should develop mobile apps with React Native, but first, let’s take an overview of this framework.

An overview of React Native

Reactive Native is an open-source framework based on JavaScript. The framework follows a set of declarative programming paradigms for building native mobile applications for Android and iOS platforms.

One of the contributing factors to the popularity of Reactive Native is that Facebook successfully merged the best parts of native development and React (the top-level JavaScript library they created) in this framework. As it uses JavaScript as the core programming language for building applications, it reduces development time and improves the application’s performance across platforms.

App developers are no longer restricted to Swift/Objective C for iOS development or Java for Android applications. React Native helps them overcome these requirements and create fully functional cross-platform applications.

From a business perspective, it is much more cost-efficient to develop applications with Reactive Native as a single code base needs to be created and maintained. There is no need to hire two teams of developers.

Reasons to use React Native for app development

1. Code reusability

Single code base results in code reusability to create applications for both Android and iOS platforms. As React Native uses JavaScript, the capability to reuse the same code increases. It results in efficiency and faster delivery of the product. It also results in significant cost reduction.

React Native also benefits from the availability of hundreds of open-source JavaScript libraries that can be used to create user interfaces for mobile applications. This considerably speeds up the development process. Companies can accelerate the app development process by creating reusable code modules that they can use between multiple mobile applications.

2. Easy availability of JavaScript resources

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages used in almost every web development project. React Native uses JavaScript, so you do not need additional developers to work on mobile applications. Furthermore, hundreds and thousands of open-source JavaScript libraries allow adding features to applications quickly without writing code from scratch.

Even if your team is unfamiliar with React Native framework, their prior knowledge of JavaScript or React is enough to get started. This platform is comparatively easier to learn and has several open-source libraries to import mobile components.

3. Hot and live reloading

React Native offers hot and live reloading features out of the box. In simple terms, these features allow app developers to work on core changes in real-time without restarting the application. You can make relevant fixes or add new features to the live application.

The live reloading feature of this framework reloads the entire application after any changes, while the hot reloading feature reloads the specific section to which the change occurred.

These React Native framework features significantly improve the testing and development process. When you don’t have to restart or reload the application every time a change is made, the app development process becomes much more efficient, faster, and intuitive.

4. High-performance applications

React Native employs a simplified binding strategy for its code. It implies that to change any particular object in the code base, the developer has to modify its state before applying updates. It helps ensure that the app is reliable and stable after updates. React Native produces the most durable and high-performing applications compared to any other cross-platform development framework.

This capability makes React Native suitable for small-scale and enterprise-level mobile applications.

Conclusion

React Native is one of the best frameworks for creating cross-platform apps due to its unique benefits for mobile application development. Its dependency on JavaScript allows developers to develop native app experience in their mobile applications without using platform-specific programming languages such as Java for Android or Objective C++ for iOS.

At Talent500, we welcome mobile app developers to join our platform. We are the leading and emerging engineering team-building platform that fast-growing start-ups and Fortune500 companies rely on to build their tech teams. To join the elite pool of talent, sign up here.

Why is Flutter better than React Native for developing cross-platform applications?

Posted on September 19, 2022September 28, 2022 by vallish

Cross-platform development has too many advocates now. With so many technologies available, creating platform-independent software with a single code base is possible.

Think about how straightforward it is to deploy and manage a single code for Android and iOS versions of the same app.

The popularity of cross-platform applications is on the rise, contributed by the ease of working on a single codebase, easy availability of hybrid app development tools, and consistent behavior of such applications.

Another reason to choose the cross-platform approach is that it’s faster and more economical from a business standpoint.

Several frameworks are available for cross-platform development, such as Flutter, React Native, Ionic, Xamarin, and Cordova. However, Flutter and React Native are the market leaders capturing 42% and 38% of the cross-platform development market, respectively.

Both frameworks offer freedom to create the best cross-platform applications, but Flutter still enjoys an edge over React Native.

Why?

That’s what we are exploring in this article.

Flutter and React Native: A background check

Flutter and React Native was developed as a solution to deploy Android and iOS apps based on a single codebase. Google created Flutter in 2017, while Facebook open-sourced its internal React Native project in 2015.

Flutter is a complete UI framework that allows fast development of user interfaces based on the Material Design and Apple Human interface guidelines. Some popular apps built with Flutter include Google Ads, Alibaba, and Birch Finance.

React Native is Facebook’s cross-platform app development framework based on React (also developed by Facebook). Since 2015, many enterprise-level companies have adopted this framework, including Instagram, SoundCloud Pulse, and Skype.

Let’s find out why developers favor Flutter over React Native.

Performance

Flutter apps are much faster than applications developed with React Native. It has its engine and programming language. Flutter apps are written in Dart; a Java-like programming language optimized explicitly for developing client applications for mobile, web, and server-side platforms. Flutter also has integrated native compilers that convert Dart code to native instructions for ARM processors, resulting in an impressive performance boost.

React Native is entirely based on JavaScript; as a result, the code is more difficult to debug and maintain. Also, in the absence of no native compilers, it’s slower.

Architecture

Flutter is created as a framework for developing UI, which is why it has a low-level Skia engine used in Chrome browsers and Android OS. The engine empowers Flutter to render its component at a higher speed of 60FPS, which results in high performance. Also, it uses its widget library to display Flutter UI seamlessly during UI operation. These architectural features allow Flutter apps to look consistent on Android and iOS. It also results in the unification of the UI appearance regardless of the version of the operating system.

React Native uses a JavaScript engine that acts as a bridge between the native OS components and the JavaScript code of the app. While this approach makes the apps closely resemble native apps, it creates performance issues due to the time taken to interpret JavaScript code.

Smaller app size

Another benefit of using Flutter for cross-platform application development is the smaller app size. The framework uses fewer additional components to compile the code to simple ARM instructions. Flutter does not store anything more than the bare minimum to run apps. On the contrary, React Native needs more storage to store JavaScript code and interpret the statements. It leads to a bigger app size. For instance, the React Native binary takes up twice as much space on a device’s storage compared to Flutter. As mobile storage is expensive, developers prefer Flutter for cross-platform development.

Development tools and documentation

The convenience of a development tool dramatically depends on the ease of learning and setup. A good framework is easy to learn and operate.

Flutter SDK provides a complete set of tools to help developers quickly learn how to create and debug applications. It also integrates with popular code editors like Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ IDEA. It also offers tools for debugging, test automation, and monitoring app performance. Flutter has a “hot reload” feature that allows developers to run a new code without restarting the whole application. It saves significant time when debugging an application. The Flutter documentation is also top-notch, with some excellent starter toolkit guides to help developers learn fast.

React Native also has a robust documentation and tutorials library supported by its vast developer community. However, it is not beginner friendly, as it can be challenging to set up, and getting started is quite complex if you are new to cross-platform development.

Conclusion

Although Flutter is relatively new compared to React Native, it is fast becoming the preferred framework for cross-platform development. Development with Flutter is faster, cheaper, and results in high-performance apps – some of the reasons it is better than React Native for cross-platform development.

At Talent500, we actively seek talented cross-platform developers to join our elite pool. Sign up here and get a chance to work with Fortune 500 companies and some of the best global startups.

3 DevOps implementation mistakes to avoid

Posted on September 19, 2022September 19, 2022 by vallish

DevOps is the modern software engineering culture that brings software development and IT business teams together. To deliver projects faster and maintain an efficient pipeline of future update releases, DevOps creates an ecosystem to accelerate and automate software development. It also enables more intensive software testing before releasing it.

A significant improvement seen in companies that adopt DevOps is that operation teams in such companies no longer work in isolation. DevOps engineers work at the intersection of software development and business operation infrastructures.

Given the rise in the adoption of DevOps (its market size exceeded $4 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow by 20% CAGR between 2020 and 2026), it is a promising market for software engineers. However, you have to tread carefully to maximize the benefits of DevOps; you have to avoid some implementation mistakes proactively.

Here are some common mistakes committed by DevOps engineers that you must avoid.

1. Choosing DevOps tools without thorough consideration

You will find many DevOps tools to help improve your team’s performance. But how do you decide what tools your team requires?

Common mistake companies make when implementing DevOps is to go with the trend. For instance, Docker and Kubernetes are pretty popular in the DevOps community. IBM reports that organizations that use containers experience benefits across industries. In its study, IBM found that 78% of companies noticed improved application quality and reduced defects, 73% reported reduced application downtime, and 74% higher customer satisfaction.

Does it imply that you must implement containers as soon as possible?

No.

Hasty decisions only result in overspending on DevOps tools that teams never use.

It would be best if you focused on creating a suitable DevOps tool kit for your organization. Ask some essential questions like:

Is your team ready to implement the tool?
Do you need the DevOps tool?
How impactful will it be on the way the DevOps teams work?

Remember, the more complex tool you introduce, the more changes will occur and the more time and effort needed to adopt it. Do not adopt tools that can severely complicate workflows and deployment. Look for more straightforward ways to solve the problem.

2. Oversimplification

DevOps is complex on all frontiers. Whether it’s creating DevOps teams, frameworks, or strategies, sophistication is involved. As a DevOps engineer, you must not try to make an isolated team to manage the DevOps strategy. Hiring new engineers and creating a segregated team will unnecessarily add new processes, which are often lengthy and complicated.

Your focus must be on optimizing the existing DevOps teams instead of creating new ones. To create an efficient DevOps environment, processes must be streamlined to leverage the right resources to develop operational products faster. It would help if you managed all aspects related to DevOps, such as resource management, goals, budgeting, and progress tracking.

Implementing DevOps is not easy and demands a cultural overhaul. It is why you must rush or oversimplify the process. The adoption of this methodology must be in a phased and measured transition.

3. Assuming DevOps can’t be measured

Improvements can only be made when they can be measured, and DevOps is no exception. You will fail by implementing DevOps without strategizing what crucial metrics must be calculated. Accurate analysis is mandatory to determine whether or not the DevOps strategy is working for your teams. Simply put, you cannot succeed with DevOps implementation until you pay enough attention to the metrics.

Some critical DevOps metrics to assess the success of the initiatives are change lead time, deployment frequency, and mean time to recovery (MTTR). The deployment frequency is the primary keyword here as it shows how fast the code completes its journey from the organization to the production. It is an indicator that shows how efficient your DevOps teams are. Change lead time measures the lead time for code changes from the start of the deployment cycle until it is released. MTTR is the recovery time measure that shows how much time DevOps teams take on average to restore service, components, or systems after an outage.

The goal of any DevOps team is to reduce the MTTR. By measuring crucial metrics, you are in a better position to evaluate and introduce adjustments that can further improve the efficiency of DevOps teams.

Conclusion

You will create an efficient production pipeline for frequent software deployment as a DevOps engineer. To deliver, you must overcome the challenges of implementing the DevOps methodology. Above listed common mistakes can be easily avoided as long as you are aware of their existence. Through DevOps, any organization can enjoy greater agility, improved employee morale, and better customer satisfaction.

Talent500 is where DevOps engineers can find challenging job opportunities with some of the largest companies. Sign up today to find your dream career with Fortune 500 companies.

6 key differences between DevOps & Agile Culture

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by vallish

As advanced software development practices become a norm in the modern world, software development methodologies’ evolution has become mandatory. Initially, the waterfall method focused on delivering software products based on a pre-defined timeline. Here the approach was to focus more on product delivery.

However, as the software products became more complex, there was a need for a methodology to optimize the software development life-cycle or SDLC. This gave rise to the agile software development methodology. But today, another methodology that unites the development and operations in a single team is the DevOps software development methodology.

Both Agile and DevOps are paving the way for modern software development. To determine which methodology best suits your software development requirements, it is essential to understand the differences between Agile and DevOps.

This article explains the critical differences between these two software development methodologies.

DevOps and Agile have their strengths and are reliable in their ways. Let’s understand both methodologies in detail.

What is DevOps?

DevOps software development methodology focuses on enhancing the communication, integration, and collaboration between developers and other IT professionals to accelerate the development of products.

The terminology derives its name from development and operations. The primary objective is to create a culture that promotes collaboration between development teams and operations management. The DevOps methods have proven to automate code deployment by making production faster. Organizations use this methodology to speed up the delivery of applications and services. At its core, DevOps culture creates an environment that leads to the alignment of the development and IT operations.

What is Agile?

Agile methodology is based on the continuous iteration of development and testing within the software development life-cycle process. This culture emphasizes iterative, incremental, and evolutionary improvement of the software development process. Instead of focusing on collaboration between development and operation, the goal is to break the product development into smaller pieces. Then during the development of these smaller tasks, test cases are integrated into the process to make final testing much more efficient.

There are several ways to implement Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, and XP.

Main differences between the DevOps and Agile software development methodologies

	DevOps	Agile Methodology
Guiding Principle	The DevOps culture is based on the collaboration between development and operations teams working as a single unit. The aim is to cultivate productivity and establish collaboration.	Agile culture is more focused on managing and continuously delivering smaller, incremental project changes. Iterative development and ongoing testing are an integral part of Agile software development.
Primary Goal	DevOps methodology emphasizes rapid deliveries and continuous testing. Here the deliveries are made every few hours or daily as the primary goal is to manage end-to-end engineering and business solutions and enable faster delivery of products.	Here the primary focus is on constant changes and incremental developments made to the software product after each sprint. Agile methodology is usually used for complicated projects that require frequent mid-project changes.
Delivery & Documentation	DevOps methodology is usually used for prebuilt software that is ready to release. It looks after deploying the software securely and faster. Documentation is another essential requirement of DevOps. Emphasis on documenting processes, communications, and product updates is much higher here.	Unlike DevOps, Agile methodology is used to build and create software and plays no role in the deployment of the software. In Agile methodology, more importance is put on well-working software over comprehensive documentation. This is why documentation in this culture is not as comprehensive as DevOps.
Team Size & Skills	As DevOps methodology functions on integrating different teams, here, the number of people involved is much larger. DevOps culture requires people with different specialization and functional skill sets to achieve better goals and product delivery success.	Agile works with a smaller team for faster execution of the end goals. When fewer people are involved in software development, they perform at different levels and become highly skilled all-rounder developers. This methodology creates highly experienced developers for an organization.
Feedback Structure	DevOps continuously works on bridging the gap between the developer and IT operations team. In DevOps culture, internal communication channels are established to address concerns and improve the speed and quality of product development.	Agile culture bridges the communication gap between a customer, and the development and testing teams. Here no operations team is involved. Feedback is directly received from customers, and adjustments to the product are made accordingly.
Communication Methodology	Design and specification documents are used for communication between teams.	Agile uses the Scrum framework for communication. Daily scrum meetings are scheduled to discuss briefs and the status of various tasks.

Using DevOps & Agile together

Most software development teams already use Agile methods like Scrum to guide product development. However, some proponents believe that DevOps is an extension of Agile. Typically, an Agile culture relies on cross-functional teams, including a developer, a tester, and a designer.

DevOps takes Agile a step further by adding an operations member. This eases the transition from software development to deployment. You can automate processes and enhance transparency across all teams with DevOps.

Takeaway

DevOps and Agile methodologies have well-defined differences, but their overall goal is to speed up the delivery of quality software. Fortunately, both can co-exist and significantly improve the product quality and SDLC when implemented.

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4 algorithms every developer should learn

Posted on August 8, 2022 by vallish

Ask any developer, and they will tell you they learned many algorithms as their career progressed. Some algorithms are more important than others. If you are getting started as a developer, you should focus on learning different algorithms to become a proficient programmer. However, with so many algorithms to learn, it can be challenging to pick up the essential developer algorithms.

To help you with the choice, we have created a list of the essential algorithms every developer should learn.

Let’s get started.

1.Dijkstra’s algorithm

Named after one of the most influential computer scientists of all time, Edsger Dijkstra, Dijkstra’s algorithm is used to find the shortest path between two nodes in a graph. It is also known as Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm.

How does the algorithm work?

Dijkstra’s algorithm is used in computer applications to find the single shortest path in the graph from a source to all graph vertices. It is an iterative algorithm in which a vertex is added to the array with the minimum distance from the source. The iteration is repeated until all the vertices are covered. This is a greedy approach used by the algorithm.

In practical applications, Dijkstra’s algorithm is implemented using a set. It is very efficient when implemented with a Min Heap data structure. It also has a much lower running time at just O(V+ElogV) (V is the total number of vertices, and E is the number of edges in the graph).

Navigation applications like Google Maps use Dijkstra’s algorithm to find the shortest path to reach a destination.

One of the limitations of this algorithm is that it only works with directed and undirected graphs with positive weight edges.

2. Merge sort

Sorting algorithms are essential for developers. There are several sorting algorithms, but merge sort is one of the crucial developer algorithms to understand.

How does the algorithm work?

The merge sort algorithm is based on the divide and conquers programming technique that is much more efficient. In a worst-case scenario, this algorithm can sort n number of elements in just O(nlogn) time. For comparison, it is often more efficient than primitive sorting algorithms like the Bubble Sort, which takes O(n^2) time to sort the same number of elements.

The approach here is simple. This algorithm repeatedly breaks down an array into subarrays until each subarray contains only a single element. Then the merge sort recursively merges the subarrays to create a sorted array.

You can learn more about the theoretical aspect of the merge sort algorithm here.

In practical engineering, the merge sort algorithm is used by e-commerce websites to recommend “you may also like” options to the users.

3. Depth First Search

Depth First Search or DFS is one of the first developer algorithms taught to computer science students. It is an efficient algorithm to traverse or search a graph and other data structures. DFS can be easily modified to traverse trees.

How does the algorithm work?

The Depth First Search traversal can start from any arbitrary node of the graph, and gradually, it dives into each adjacent vertex until there are no unvisited vertices. The algorithm stops when it encounters a dead-end. It is one of the simplest developer algorithms that you should learn to traverse a data structure easily. The algorithm is also exceptionally efficient, taking only (V+E) time for complete traversal.

In practical applications, the DFS algorithm is used for topological sorting, detecting cycles in the graph, and finding strongly connected components in DNA analysis.

4. Minimum spanning tree algorithms

In computer science, a spanning tree is an important concept. A spanning tree is a subset of a graph that has all the vertices covered with the minimum number of edges.

How does this algorithm work?

The minimum spanning tree algorithm (MST) is used to find the minimum cost among a graph’s possible spanning tree. The cost of a graph spanning trees depends on the weight of the edges. There are several MST algorithms, but the two most widely used ones are Kruskal’s and Prim’s.

Kruskal’s algorithm creates a minimum spanning tree for a graph by adding the edge with the minimum cost to a growing set. Here the algorithm first sorts the edges by their weight and then starts adding the edges to the minimum spanning tree. This algorithm is preferred for sorting sparse graphs.

On the contrary, Prim’s Algorithm uses a greedy approach which is ideal for dense graphs. This algorithm creates two sets of structures, one containing the growing minimum spanning tree and the other containing all unused vertices. Each iteration adds the edge with the minimum weight to the graph.

In practical application, MST algorithms are used for broadcast networks, taxonomy, and cluster analysis.

Conclusion

Algorithms are the core essentials of computer programming; learning them improves your skill. It is the reason why interviews at tech giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Netflix is focused on evaluating a candidate’s knowledge of algorithms and data structures. Learning algorithms improve your problem-solving skills and as technologies are evolving, more efficient algorithms will be needed to make the most use of these advancements.

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Steps for effective debugging of web applications

Posted on July 22, 2022July 22, 2022 by vallish

Web applications are at the forefront of business expansion irrespective of the industry. With the evolution of technology, web applications are becoming complex. Bugs occur all the time – when you build the applications, test after completion, and even post-production. On average, a developer creates 70 bugs per 1000 lines of code. Most web developers spend many more hours debugging rather than creating.

Around 75% of the development time is spent on debugging, but there are some techniques to reduce the pain significantly.

This article aims at providing some practical recommendations to help you prevent bugs and shorten the time spent on debugging.

Use Console.log with variable

JavaScript is part of over 90% of web applications, and one of its most commonly used methods is console.log. Developers often use this method with variables to debug. When you run a web application, the values returned by the variables are specified inside the way in the console. This makes it easier to check the returned values to ensure that they are as expected.

However, it is not an effective debugging method because you cannot see the progress of code execution. If you try to see the progress, you have to insert console.log every few lines. You would not want to use console.log so frequently because then the amount of data shown in the console will be unreadable.

To overcome this challenge and more efficiently use the console.log method for debugging, use a string and the following variable like this:

console.log(‘variable’, variable)

By doing so, you will be able to track the progress of the code and easily debug it.

The ‘debugger’

The debugger is a vital JavaScript concept that can make your life easier when debugging the code. The debugger is a JavaScript keyword that halts the execution of a web application such that the developer can interact with the variables, executing code one step at a time.

Developers can use this keyword for explorative debugging, a paradigm used in manual testing. The debugger is handy for large web applications for which console.log is not enough. You can use the debugger directly from Chrome’s Sources tab or Firefox’s Debugger tab.

<h4>Debugging demonstrations using Debugger keyword</h4>
The solution of 20 * 5 is:
<p id=”test”></p>
<p>If the debugger is turned on the code stops
execution at the start of the debugger</p>
var x = 20;
var y = 5;
var z = x * y;
debugger;
document.getElementById(“test”).innerHTML = z;

As you can see in the code above, the debugger is used before the variable z in the JavaScript part of the code. The code execution stops before displaying the output when you run the code in the Google Chrome browser.

This is a simple example of how developers can use the debugger keyword to make debugging more efficient.

React developer tools

If you are working with a web application built in React, you can utilize React Developer Tools suite for debugging. These tools allow you to easily view the React tree structure, breaking down the project code by the states and the props in the component. It comes in handy when hundreds and even thousands of parts are in a project. Going through thousands of lines of code to find a component is tedious; this debugging tool simplifies the process.

You can install React Developer Tools as an add-on to the Google Chrome Developer Tools debugging module. It is a free and open-source extension that provides a powerful ‘Select an element’ functionality to inspect any project element if you are unaware of the whole project. It also helps you quickly discover components in a large project. If your project uses Vue.js, there is another excellent extension, Vue.js devtools, that you can use for similar debugging features.

Explicitly document all external dependencies

Every project should have a README file within its source control system. A quality of a good developer is that they include every bit of information with the applications they develop to make it easier for other developers and stakeholders to use the application.

A README file should document all external systems, resources, or databases necessary for the web application to function correctly. It should also explicitly list what resources are optional and how to handle external resources.

All significant web projects have a README.md file that keeps track of what bugs occurred and changes made to the project. It is also a way to tell your company what improvements you made to the project through debugging.

Conclusion

Follow these recommendations when you are building a new web application, and it will become a lot easier to debug errors. These debugging techniques will reduce the time and cost spent troubleshooting production bugs and crashes.

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In-depth knowledge of JavaScript

Familiarity with React assumptions

Familiarity with frequently used tools

Official resources

Online courses and tutorials for React Native developers

Books for React Native developers

Online communities for React Native developers

Podcasts for React Native developers

Conclusion

1. Proper research

2. Choose a platform based on skill set

3. Focus on app performance and UX experience

4. Scope for maintenance and updates

5. Security measures

Conclusion

Conclusion

An overview of React Native

Reasons to use React Native for app development

1. Code reusability

2. Easy availability of JavaScript resources

3. Hot and live reloading

4. High-performance applications

Conclusion

Flutter and React Native: A background check

Performance

Architecture

Smaller app size

Development tools and documentation

Conclusion

1. Choosing DevOps tools without thorough consideration

2. Oversimplification

3. Assuming DevOps can’t be measured

Conclusion

What is DevOps?

What is Agile?

Main differences between the DevOps and Agile software development methodologies

Using DevOps & Agile together

Takeaway

1.Dijkstra’s algorithm

How does the algorithm work?

2. Merge sort

How does the algorithm work?

3. Depth First Search

How does the algorithm work?

4. Minimum spanning tree algorithms

How does this algorithm work?

Conclusion

Use Console.log with variable

The ‘debugger’

React developer tools

Explicitly document all external dependencies

Conclusion