Technology – Talent500 Blog

5 essential tools for faster frontend development in 2022

Posted on November 15, 2022 by monica jamwal

Frontend development isn’t always fast, as the development speed can suffer without the proper tools to incorporate complex app functionalities and visuals into the design. Fortunately, modern frontend development tools offer the rate to build applications much more efficiently.

This post will list the top 5 progressive frontend development tools for hassle-free web development.

Bit — Component-Driven for 10X

Modern frontend development is component-driven. Most modern frameworks focus on components to build apps faster.

Bit is an advanced frontend tool for next-generation component-driven development. It allows users to build components that can be used independently to compose different applications. As the components can run anywhere, you can build scalable applications faster.

The Bit Cloud Platform helps teams collaborate and build together. For instance, if you are building eCommerce, working on components for each product page can be time-consuming and tedious. Bit can speed up the process as it offers excellent features like reusable customizable component templates, impressive visual components docs, isolated unit-testing, and per-component versioning.

Overall, Bit is a powerful frontend development tool for Micro Frontends, Rapid App Development, System Designs, and faster delivery of projects.

npm (Node Package Manager)

It is hard to imagine modern frontend development without npm or Node Package Manager. The numbers can anticipate the extent of its use – over 10 million front-end developers download over 30 billion packages every month using npm.

Package managers are essential for front-end development as they help install new dependencies in the code without writing everything from scratch. Furthermore, they can handle duplicate dependencies- a significant hassle in frontend development that occurs when the same reliance occurs more than once.

Node Package Manager hosts a large software repository that includes popular BootStrap, Reach jQuery, and Vue packages. It would be best to use it in application development because it allows easy installation of node programs and reusable code packages. It is cross-platform compatible, implying you can use it on any OS for web app development. It is a standalone tool that you can use with almost any application.

GatsbyJS

GatsbyJS is one of the prominent frameworks for building static sites using JAMStack. Frontend developers can significantly speed up the web development process using GatsbyJS. It offers a readymade framework, rich web templates, and a well-optimized set of tools to start building out-of-the-box.

GatsbyJS is a free, open-source, React-based framework that makes it too easy to work with countless static pages. If you are working on a React project and want to deploy static pages, GatsbyJS is your best bet.

Developers use this framework to build React applications that are fast and optimized for performance and dev experience. Do not underestimate the scope of GatsbyJS for full-blown modern applications. With the availability of thousands of plugins, you can add extended functionalities to your JAMStack static sites.

Sentry.io

Sentry is an open-source full stack error tracking system.

Any frontend developer worth his salt knows that error tracking is essential for faster application development. With Sentry.io, you can track errors across servers, browsers, and frameworks. It allows error tracking for both desktop and mobile applications.

Another reason why this is an essential tool for frontend developers is that it is for web applications. You can install Sentry with just two commands, and the UI/UX is straightforward to use. It is an excellent tool for frontend developers to prevent errors from reaching production by identifying and resolving them early on.

Suppose you are working on an enterprise web application with a lot of backend code. It can be too time-consuming to track each conflict with the frontend code. You can deploy Sentry to trace all back-end errors caused by backend issues. This tool provides a holistic full stack approach to frontend error fixing. Sentry can automatically capture all unhandled exceptions to avoid rolling into a more significant problem.

Jira

Project management tools are essential for backend as well as frontend developers. Faster frontend development means collaborating efficiently and effectively with other developers and stakeholders.

Jira is a powerful project management tool for front-end developers that boosts team collaboration by facilitating project planning, bug and error management, task management, time tracking, and resource allocation.

When working on large projects such as an eCommerce portal, you will need to improve the project’s agility by allowing developers to collaborate without clashing. Jira can help teams with agile development at scale. It improves operational efficiency and delivers better results by keeping the teams aligned toward the same goal.

Conclusion

Frontend development is evolving fast, and there is so much innovation across the board. You do not have to stick with the slow and outdated tools; there are too many options available to speed up the development of your projects where time is of the essence. We hope these five front-end development tools will add value to your projects by helping you code faster and deliver the best results.

Some of the biggest brands trust Talent500 to hire, build, and manage their remote teams. Sign up here to join the elite frontend developers pool and get hired by the best companies.

Cracking Node.js interview for senior backend engineers in 2022

Posted on November 10, 2022November 17, 2022 by seoteam

Modern software application development is a requirement for most businesses to adopt and benefit from new technologies. Fortunately, backend developers have too many options to choose from. Node.js is a current application framework that has made large-scale application development easier.

Today, many companies use this backend technology for their tech stack. This includes well-known brands like Netflix, Uber, Twitter, and PayPal. According to StackOverflow’s 2021 Developer Survey, Node.js is the 6th most popular technology for backend development. According to a user survey report by Node.js, backend developers prefer this technology as it results in a 68% increase in developer productivity, boosts application performance by 48%, and results in a 13% increase in customer satisfaction.

Here we discuss the Node.js developer career landscape in detail.

Career Path in Node.js

Node.js developers as junior developers work on applications such as websites, native apps, and enterprise solutions. After spending 5-6 years on the technology as a senior developer, they get promoted to roles such as team lead, architect, scrum master, and product owners. Node.js developers can pursue a career as app developers, game developers, and product developers.

Developers who have a thorough knowledge of agile processes and ceremonies like backlog grooming, scrums, retrospectives, and demos are preferred for senior Node.js developer roles. Furthermore, the technical expertise of GitHub is also essential.

What skills will be evaluated during Node.js interviews?

Companies hiring Node.js developers look for some particular skill-sets. Along with good practical knowledge of Node.js, proven skills in fixing bugs and developing patches make a candidate stand out.

A competent Node.js developer, you should be comfortable with front-end technologies. Often, Node.js developers need to integrate various backend functionalities with front-end elements. Their HTML5, CSS3, and core JavaScript concepts are evaluated during an interview.

There are several Node.js frameworks, Express being the basic. Apart from Express, most interviews test developers’ knowledge of additional Node.js frameworks like Koa.js, Total, and Hapi. As these frameworks have expanded functionalities, you must familiarize yourself with them to demonstrate your experience.

Knowledge of Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks used in Node.js development is necessary. Sinatra, Rails, and StrongLoop are some important MVC frameworks.

Another responsibility of Node.js developers is to deal with interfaces between multiple systems. Here you can highlight your experience in working with RESTful APIs.

We already have great API-related resources for backend developers:

Tips on creating robust APIs as a backend developer

Best Practices to Design RESTful APIs

Also, check our guide on in-demand skills for a backend developer.

Interview Questions and Answers

Can Node.js support multi-processor platforms?

By default, Node.js is a single-threaded language that will run on the single processor core, thereby not taking full advantage of multi-core processors. However, Node.js supports the development of multi-core systems to take full advantage of the available hardware.

Node.js has the Cluster module that allows running multiple Node.js worker processes from the same port.

How does Node.js handle child threads?

Node.js is a single thread process that does not expose child threads to the developer. There is no way for a programmer to do thread management in Node.js, as everything goes behind the scenes.

Technically, Node.js does create child threads for specific tasks such as asynchronous I/O, but there is no way to execute any application JavaScript code for these child threads.

What are Promises in Node.js?

A promise is a placeholder in Node.js for a value available in the future. Commitments allow asynchronous methods in Node.js to return values just like synchronous methods. Instead of a final value, they return a promise. They have separate callback functions that are executed based on the status of the way, i.e., success/ failure and handling timeouts.

Promises in Node.js can have three different states:

The initial or the pending state
The fulfilled state represents a successful operation
The rejected state that results from a failed operation

What is REPL? What purpose is it used for?

REPL stands for READ, EVAL, PRINT, and LOOP. Node.js comes with a REPL environment bundled in its setup. This allows for the easy development of CLI (Command Line Interface) applications, usually part of enterprise software development.

Explain the preferred method of resolving unhandled exceptions in Node.js.

It is easy to catch unhandled exceptions in Node.js at the Process level by attaching a handler for uncaughtException event, something like this:

process.on(‘uncaughtException’, (err) => {
console.log(Caught exception: ${err});
});

However, as the uncaughtException remains a crude method for exception handling in Node.js, it is most likely to be removed in future language versions.

Also, this method catches the exception at the Process level, implying that the application and Node.js are in an undefined state. A better way to resolve unhandled exceptions in Node.js is to add another layer between your application and the Node.js process, called the domain.

As the domains provide a layer to handle multiple different I/O operations as a single group, you can safely handle exceptions at the domain level. It helps to prevent any exceptions from reaching the Process level.

The time required to run the following code snippet in Google Chrome is considerably more than the time it takes to run in Node.js.

{
console.time(“loop”);
for (var i = 0; i < 1000000; i += 1){
// Do nothing
}
console.timeEnd(“loop”);
}

Even when both the applications use v8 JavaScript Engine, explain why there is such a time difference.

In a web browser such as Chrome, we make it global when declaring the variable I out of the function’s scope. It binds the variable as a property of the window object. This results in repeated resolving of the property I with each for loop iteration within the heavily populated window namespace.

However, Node.js binds any variable declared outside of any function’s scope only to the module’s scope and not the window object. This is why the code resolves the value of I faster.

To improve the performance of the code in Chrome, we can replace var with let in the for loop declaration. It will reduce the loop’s run time by over 50%.

For more backend developer interview questions, you can check out:

Essential Interview Questions For Backend Developers With 1-3 Years Of Experience

Backend developer: interview preparation resources

Job prospects and average payscale Node.js developers

As of creating this guide, there were over 30,000 active job openings for Node.js developers on Naukri.com. Most of these ads were for experienced developers with at least one year of experience. LinkedIn has 55,000+ job listings for Node.js developers. Indeed has over 7000 active job openings for the same profile.

According to Glassdoor, the average salary of Node.js developers is INR 4,70,380 for junior developers. With experienced senior developers earn around INR 12,00,000 a year. Those in software developer IV roles get an average salary of INR 27,00,000.

Free Online Assessments

Node.js developers can use online free assessment tools to brush up on their skills and practice interview questions. Here are some online assessment sites:

Testdome.com

Devskiller.com

Tutorialsteacher.com

Conclusion

A career as a Node.js developer will be a long-term venture. As some of the biggest companies uses this technology and offer productivity benefits, Node.js will continue to be a dominant JavaScript framework.

Talent500 provides a global platform for elite developers. Our clients include fast-growing startups and Fortune 500 companies—signup today for a career change.

Cracking advanced level PHP Interviews in 2022

Posted on November 10, 2022 by harsha satyakam

PHP is one of the most widely used open-source general-purpose scripting languages that many companies use as their backend tech stack. Facebook is the most notable company using PHP. Demand for PHP developers remains high, and almost 79% of the top websites in the world use PHP as the server-side scripting language.

The number of PHP developers is growing at a fast pace and soon, it is likely that India will become the top source of PHP developers. It also implies that the competition for jobs will be stiff. Apart from your technical skills, you will also be required to have soft skills like communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We already have great resources on essential soft skills for software developers; you can check them out here:

Soft skills that still impress employers in 2022

Most valuable soft skills of exceptional software engineers

As far as the other skills are concerned, we will guide you through everything you need to know about a career in PHP development.

Career prospects: Demand, Job Openings, and Salary

PHP developers are some of the most in-demand professionals in the IT industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for web developers will increase by 13% between 2020 and 2030. Therefore, the job outlook for PHP developers is quite promising.

There are 15,580 job openings for PHP developers on Naukri.com, followed by 12,000+ active listings for PHP developers on Indeed and over 8000 requirements for the same role on LinkedIn. The demand for experienced PHP developers is high at companies like Accenture, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro.

According to the salary analytics platform Payscale.com, the average salary for experienced PHP developers in India is INR 6,20,000. The earning potential of PHP developers is often dictated by the company they work at and the experience they possess. Most senior PHP developers earn over INR 9,00,000 per year.

What all do PHP interviews involve?

Generally speaking, PHP developers need to demonstrate competence with the job’s technical aspects that demand a unique skill set.

During an interview, your ability to write clean object-oriented PHP code is tested. Experienced developers must also be efficient with SQL.

Candidates must be able to evaluate, design, develop and assist application systems. They need to have command over one or more JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, Vue, and NodeJS. We recommend PHP developers hone their skills in Angular as PHP developers with experience in Angular earn 23% more.

You can check out our comprehensive Angular Developer Toolkit which has all the resources required to become a successful Angular Developer.

Also, companies expect PHP developers to be skilled in Laravel, the most popular model-view-controller (MVC) framework built with PHP.

Important Interview Questions and Answers

What will this code output, and why?
$x = true and false;
var_dump($x);

The output of the above code will be bool(true). It is because the AND operator is behaving as an OR. The = operator takes precedence over the AND operator in the code snippet. This results in the statement $x = true and false being functionally equivalent to:

$x = true; // sets $x equal to true
true and false; // results in false without affecting anything

This code is an excellent example of why parentheses are used to specify the intent in a court.

What is the difference between == and ===?

The operator == is used between two different types of values.
The === operator is for a ‘typesafe comparison.’ It returns true only when the operands have the same type and the same value.

Can you explain the output value of $x in the following statement:
$x = 3 + “15%” + “$25”?

The output value will be 18.

PHP supports automatic type conversion. It implies that a variable is changed based on its context. For instance, if you perform an arithmetic operation on a string, then PHP will convert the string to its appropriate numeric type for calculation. If the string starts with one or more numeric characters, then the remainder of the string is ignored. And if the string begins with a non-numeric character, it will be evaluated to 0.

In the above statement, “15%” evaluates to the numeric value 15 and “$25” evaluates to the numeric value 0. Hence, 3 + 15 + 0 = 18.

What is PEAR in PHP?

PHP Extension and Application Repository or PEAR is a framework and repository for reusable PHP components. It is a collection of many PHP code snippets and libraries and supports CLI or command-line interface to install packages automatically.

What does the following code print?

$a = “PHP”;
$a = $a + 1;
echo $a;

The code will echo the number 1.

However, in PHP 7.2 record will throw a warning as the version of PHP will not convert the non-numeric value to int.

What are Traits?

PHP does not support multiple inheritances. Traits are a mechanism to provide some of the reuse advantages of multiple inheritances in PHP. Developers can use traits to reuse combinations of methods from different class hierarchies.

How does JavaScript interact with PHP?

PHP is a server-side scripting language, while JavaScript is a client-side programming language. PHP can generate JavaScript variables, making it possible to execute the code in a browser efficiently. It makes it possible to pass JS variables to PHP using a simple URL.

Here is an erroneous code-

$referenceTable = array();
$referenceTable[‘val1’] = array(1, 2);
$referenceTable[‘val2’] = 3;
$referenceTable[‘val3’] = array(4, 5);

$testArray = array();

$testArray = array_merge($testArray, $referenceTable[‘val1’]);
var_dump($testArray);
$testArray = array_merge($testArray, $referenceTable[‘val2’]);
var_dump($testArray);
$testArray = array_merge($testArray, $referenceTable[‘val3’]);
var_dump($testArray);

Explain what is wrong with this code and what the output will be.
Also, how will you fix the error?

The output of this code snipped will be:
array(2) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) }
NULL
NULL
It can also generate two warnings, similar to the following:
Warning: array_merge(): Argument #2 is not an array
Warning: array_merge(): Argument #1 is not an array

The issue with the code here is that if either of the first or second arguments to array_merge() is not an array, the return value will be NULL.
Most developers miss this because it is not well described in the PHP documentation.

This is why the call to:

$testArray = array_merge($testArray, $referenceTable[‘val2’])
evaluates to $testArray = array_merge($testArray, 3). However, 3 is not of type array, as a result this call returns NULL. This in turn sets $testArray equal to NULL. In the next call to array_merge(), $testArray is NULL so array_merge() again returns NULL.

The fix here is relatively straightforward. We can simply typecast the second argument to an array to get the desired results.

Here’s the corrected code:

$testArray = array_merge($testArray, (array)$referenceTable[‘val1’]);
var_dump($testArray);
$testArray = array_merge($testArray, (array)$referenceTable[‘val2’]);
var_dump($testArray);
$testArray = array_merge($testArray, (array)$referenceTable[‘val3’]);
var_dump($testArray);

The final output of the code will be:

array(2) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) }
array(3) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) [2]=> int(3) }
array(5) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) [2]=> int(3) [3]=> int(4) [4]=> int(5) }

Free Online Assessments

PHP developers can utilize the following resources to sharpen their concepts and understanding of tools to crack advanced-level PHP interviews easily.

TutorialPoint PHP Test

Multisoft Systems PHP Assessment Test

Testdome PHP Assessment Course

Conclusion

PHP developers will remain high in demand as the language evolves to accommodate the changing requirements of web development. We hope this guide will serve as a complete resource to prepare for advanced-level PHP interviews.

Talent500 has a pool of competent Indian developers. Sign up today and become ready for career-redefining opportunities at fast-growing startups and Fortune500 companies.

How to unleash the full power of Azure DevOps

Posted on November 4, 2022November 4, 2022 by

Microsoft Azure is the second most significant cloud provider behind Amazon’s AWS. Azure has over 20% of the cloud market share and is gradually catching up with AWS. Azure DevOps is a significant factor that contributed to Microsoft’s success in the cloud space.

Microsoft Azure DevOps offers the capability to deploy the hosted version of the cloud or effortlessly deploy your own data center. Its offerings include a one-stop suite of services to create continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, version control, test case management, and requirements planning and management.

This article details how DevOps engineers can effortlessly cover much of the application lifecycle with the Azure out-of-the-box components.

1. Getting started

When we pointed out that Azure DevOps technology tools easily integrate, we did not imply that simple out-of-the-box deployment is enough to get the best out of them.

When implementing a new setup on Microsoft Azure DevOps, you need to plan how you will put the elements together. Building a sophisticated pipeline can be much more challenging unless you understand CI/CD principles well. For instance, you must never stack together too many tasks in one stage when deploying an application with Azure DevOps. It leads to troubles when debugging, as all other tasks must be disabled to test a single job. This entire process is not only time-consuming but also frustrating, which defeats the purpose of DevOps.

2. Create proficiency with training

Azure DevOps is designed to be an off-the-shelf solution. However, when working with sophisticated workflow pipelines, engineers must assemble them in a way that offers a bespoke solution per the organization’s needs.

An easy way to introduce proficiency in your team to handle Azure DevOps better is to provide them with a few weeks of training. In-house software developers and architects might not be fully aware of the capabilities of the DevOps technology that can be deployed with Azure.

Also, your engineers must be preoccupied with projects which leave them little time or space to explore the full capabilities of Azure DevOps. An in-depth Azure DevOps training with people who have spent time in the trenches and have years of real-world experience can bring your development teams up to speed in no time.

3. Practice “un-deploy”

It would help if you could efficiently get the most out of Microsoft Azure. For this, you have to plan the application deployment in a phased-out manner to highlight the components that do not need to be moved to the cloud. One difference between in-premises hosting vs. cloud migration is that you are charged for everything you use. To cut costs and maximize the use of available Azure resources, you must un-deploy the processes that are not necessary. Also, DevOps engineers should create functional pipelines so that any component can be undeployed if required.

4. Put only the core team into Azure DevOps

Nothing is worse than building a failed deployment, often due to team mismanagement. With Azure DevOps, you can better manage teams reducing such failures. When too many members are working on Azure DevOps, somebody might tweak something without informing the DevOps team.

However, Azure DevOps has several security features that solve this problem. You can easily manage access to Azure DevOps, permitting only the core DevOps team to deploy. Other engineers and developers on the unit can be part of other Azure DevOps security groups and access their deployments.

5. Maximum strategy and protocol

When you have a strategy in mind, you can always handle any aspect of the project without getting lost down the line. Multiple layers of planning must include different strategies for artifact naming, scaling, monitoring/logging, security, change management, and backups/reliability. It would help if you planned the maximum strategy by involving as many stakeholders as possible such as engineers, DevOps, and QA testers.

This also creates a deployment cadence for team members to have a better overview of the entire Azure project, enabling them to deploy anything, anytime, and in any environment. You must establish a protocol for the DevOps team to follow. Let your team practice the processes you set up on Azure DevOps such that they do not face difficulties later on. As the team starts building the protocol, they will encounter challenges that they have to address and resolve.

Conclusion

Deploying to the cloud gives businesses an advantage to grow at scale. However, you have to constantly change and improve with the cloud as it makes your services better. If you are using Microsoft Azure, this guide will help you to use Azure DevOps at its full potential. Ensure you are flexible and ready to learn new tools and DevOps technology.

Talent500 is the remote team-building platform trusted by Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups. Sign up here to join the DevOps engineer pool and discover global job opportunities.

Things to consider while building apps for foldable devices

Posted on November 2, 2022November 7, 2022 by monica jamwal

Foldable devices had a tough run, but after years of experimentation and setbacks, they are finally gaining consumer acceptance globally. According to the International Data Corporation, the worldwide market share for foldable phones is expected to reach 27.6 million units or a market value of $29 billion in 2025.

What does it mean to developers?

The display technology used in Android foldable devices is different. Samsung Galaxy Fold, the first foldable smartphone, showed how the mobile app development domain has to act fast to keep up with the pace. The rapid transformation of display technology in foldable devices is unearthing new possibilities. As the growth of these devices is expected to be multifold, it is wise to consider the transformation of an app to support these multi-screen devices.

This article covers things app developers must consider when building applications for foldable devices.

What makes app development for foldable devices challenging?

A foldable device offers extra screen estate; that’s the main idea behind these devices. The availability of larger screens by combining two screens allows developers to provide a more immersive experience to users. Unlike traditional mobile apps, you must plan UX design with large-screen adoption. The challenge is to offer a glitch-free experience to users on foldable screens.

Another challenge is to design test cases for such apps. Foldable solutions make several use cases possible, and to ensure that there’s no bug hiding in the background, you have to test for all scenarios. Therefore, testing for foldable device apps requires more time and money.

The overall cost of building apps for foldable devices is high. Given the planning and compatibility needed in these apps, you will be venturing into a new space. This will require a unique design strategy, coding standards, and experimenting with new mobile app development frameworks and test cases, translating into higher expenses and increased development time.

1. Consider the state of the foldable device

Foremost, every foldable device will have two states: Unfolded and Folded.

When unfolded, a smartphone will essentially transform into a tablet. There is extra screen space available for a more immersive experience. You have the freedom to include more context for including secondary actions or events in your apps. The folded device will operate as a traditional smartphone, and your app will require a UI design that can be used with one hand.

The easy switch between one- or two-handed app operation requires the design teams to look at the critical UI/UX facets. There will be elements that should be within the thumb range when the device is folded, and an unfolded screen will have UI/UX elements within reach of other fingers.

2. Screen continuity and multitasking

Android foldable devices will be frequently switched between folded and unfolded states. Developers must ensure that they create a seamless user experience for both screen resolutions in their apps. With the layout changes, the app flow ambiguity will increase. As an app developer, you must code the app to keep the changes happening in the design minimal or nil.

Also, the multi-window operation presents an opportunity for multitasking. Developers and designers should consider a multi-window life cycle for their apps. Include features and design elements in your apps for foldable devices that encourage multitasking.

3. Multi-resume

Similar to multitasking, apps running on foldable devices must support multi-resume, i.e., the ability to resume functioning between foldable and unfolded screens without freezing other apps. Google allows the ability to open a few apps alongside Android 10. Previously, only one app could be resumed after the phone orientation was changed. Keep the multi-resume functionality in mind when building apps for foldable devices. It’s an essential component of app performance that must be maintained for a seamless user experience across various screen sizes.

4. Consider new screen resolutions

With foldable devices, you have more screen resolutions than traditional straight-screen devices. Android 10 and newer versions support a wide range of aspect ratios, but we never needed to explore them for a traditional smartphone. Android foldable devices, however, can give widely varying form factors, ranging from a long and thin screen to a 1:1 ratio. The apps you develop for such devices must be tested for as many resolutions as possible. Suppose your app cannot handle all the screen resolutions, in that case, you must define the maxAspect Ratio and minAspectRatio variables in code to indicate the highest and lowest ratios that your app can run.

Conclusion

As foldable devices gain popularity, more businesses will want apps that support these devices. As an app developer, you must focus on requirements to adopt the compelling future of the foldable devices landscape. The quicker you start developing apps for Android foldable devices, the more competitive edge you will have in the game-changing multi-window apps market.

Talent500 has a pool of great mobile developers that Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups hire. Join our platform and get ready for career-redefining opportunities.

AR technology in mobile app development: What you need to know

Posted on November 2, 2022November 7, 2022 by ashwin

Augmented reality (AR), after years of application in healthcare and other domains, is finding its application in mobile app development. The success of the mobile AR game Pokemon Go encouraged interest in including AR technology in app development. But make no mistake, the applications of this technology are not just in the entertainment sector. Apps across various categories are using AR to create a seamless user experience. Brands utilize this technology to offer customers options to try a product virtually before buying, and companies use AR for interactive advertising.

The adoption of AR technology is growing and is expected to reach a market valuation of $280 billion by 2028. Unsurprisingly, companies are interested in implementing AR technology in mobile app development.

This article explores the use of augmented reality in the app development industry.

What is augmented reality?

Augmented reality is the link between virtual data and the real world. While the technical definition of AR technology varies, here are the three characteristics it must have:

It should combine the real world and virtual data in real-time
Must be interactive in real-time, that is, offers the ability to users to interact with their virtual environment
Provide a view of the world around us in 3D

AR technology is already widely available for healthcare and engineering applications. Given the high hardware performance requirement, incorporating augmented reality in mobile applications was not easy.

However, with the advancement of smartphone technology, it is now possible to have AR in app development. With the help of VR headsets and glasses, users can experience virtual reality like never before. These kinds of innovations have encouraged mobile app developers to experiment with augmented reality.

Types of AR mobile apps

It is necessary to define your business goals for augmented reality app development. There are several kinds of augmented reality apps, each with its unique set of features.

1. Marker-based augmented reality app

This mobile application uses augmented reality technology for image recognition or image marking. Once the app can identify an image or object, it further overlays digital information on the marker. The most common marker-based AR mobile apps are Google Lens and Snapchat.

2. Location-based augmented reality

Location-based AR mobile apps are also known as markerless applications. Instead of using image markers, these applications use GPS, accelerators, and compasses to create AR objects based on the user’s current location. Pokémon Go is an excellent example of how location-based augmented reality can be used in mobile app development.

3. Projection augmented reality apps

Such applications use complex algorithms and rely on visual odometry to identify an object’s precise location. Projection AR is part of car parking systems and uses built-in cameras in vehicles that collect data from multiple sensors to assist drivers. Architects and engineers also use this technology to better study construction sites.

4. Superimposition-based augmented reality apps

These applications are primarily used in healthcare and medicine. The superimposition-based augmented reality processes the actual image of the environment and then recognizes and overlays the created environment with the AR object.

How to choose an augmented reality SDK for app development?

You must choose the suitable development kit (SDK) to use augmented reality in app development. There are several tools available to choose from. Vuforia, Google ARCore, and Apple ARKit are some of the most widely used software development kits for including augmented reality in mobile applications.

Here are the factors you must consider when choosing an augmented reality SDK:

1. Cost

Augmented reality technology implementation in the mobile app can be expensive. If you are not working on a production-level application, we recommend you choose a free, open-source tool like Google ARCore. And, if you plan to build a complex mobile app with large and dynamic content, you can use paid SDKs like Vuforia.

2. Platforms

Whether you’re building an AR mobile app for iOS or Android, there are enough software development toolkits available for both platforms. The choice depends on your familiarity with the programming languages for each platform. You can use the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) kit to build applications for Windows smart devices.

3. Image recognition

A non-negotiable feature for any AR app, the chosen SDK must provide image recognition to identify objects, places, and images. 3D recognition and tracking is also an important feature that enables mobile applications to use AR technology to identify the more prominent spaces around the user, such as shopping malls, bus stations, and airports.

4. Unity support

Unity is arguably the most powerful game engine for creating video games, but it can also be utilized to make your AR mobile applications powerful. By using the powerful effects of this platform, you can create a cutting-edge user experience.

Conclusion

Augmented reality is a powerful technology with innovative and exciting app development applications. We hope this article gives you a starting point to explore AR technology for your mobile applications.

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

Posted on October 31, 2022November 7, 2022 by

Kubernetes is one of the leading container orchestration platforms. Companies prefer Kubernetes for their projects because of its cloud-agnostic approach that efficiently manages workload whether your project resides in the cloud or on-premises. It has freed companies from being locked into the services offered by their cloud provider or managing entire team operations on-premises or virtualization platforms. This is why Kubernetes is one of the most critical technologies in the DevOps domain. In 2021, there were over 3.9 million Kubernetes developers worldwide, which is a 67% increase from the previous year. As the adoption of technology increases, it is a valuable skill to add to your resume.

This Kubernetes developer toolkit lists the best resources to learn, upskill, and succeed in the industry.

Microservices: Kubernetes developers must know how to develop software applications based on microservices. Even when the programming languages are the same, developing applications for Kubernetes based on modern architecture requires different coding patterns and software release processes.

System administration: Releasing software updates regularly on a Kubernetes hosting platform requires advanced system administration skills. With the traditional approach of deploying code, there is no way to know the scalability flaws unless the software is installed and used by the customers. But the modern software architecture requires developers to learn Linux commands and database queries to test the software in production.

CI/CD: Kubernetes is for hosted applications with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) as an integral part. As a Kubernetes developer, you must be familiar with CI/CD tools like Jenkins. You need to know how coding and software deployment steps can be automated. You will be asked about concepts like unit and functional tests, deployment of the Kubernetes pods, and code compilation in a hosted environment.

API support: You need to be able to create an Application Programming Interface (API) for the software deployed on Kubernetes such that users who want to interact with your hosted application directly can do it. You must know the concepts of API, such as JSON or YAML files. Learn more about tips on creating robust APIs.

Conclusion

Kubernetes is not a skill that you can master quickly. It demands a deep understanding of concepts and the ability to transform the knowledge into real-world projects practically. We created this Kubernetes developer toolkit to help you learn these concepts and succeed as a DevOps engineer.

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The Importance of design skills for frontend development

Posted on October 31, 2022November 8, 2022 by venkatesh

A good frontend developer understands the complex requirements of creating truly attention-capturing web designs. Simply gluing together HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code might make a working website or web app, but it won’t help create designs that communicate with the users.

A competent frontend engineer knows that harmonizing visuals and content requires non-technical skills. If the ‘harmonious’ part seems sophisticated, it is not. With an understanding of some essential design concepts, frontend developers can improve their design skills.

Let’s start with the concepts of design important for frontend development first.

The principles of design

You do not need to have an innate artistic ability to become a talented frontend developer; knowing design fundamentals is adequate. Understanding the design principles will make the difference between recreating a design you see and building unique and calculated designs from scratch.

The essentials of visual design principles are entirely rooted in Gestalt Psychology, the foundation of the modern study of perception. The same fundamentals form the foundation of web and graphics design. While a vast domain, here is the three fundamental principles of design you must know:

Emergence: It is the practice of seeing an arrangement of objects as a whole rather than focusing on individual parts. Emergence helps front-end developers identify asymmetry when a piece breaks a pattern.

Reification: It helps practice restraint in web designs. Reification is the practice of using only essential parts of an object to convey the meaning.

Invariance: It is the ability to include tasteful discordance in web designs and make an object stand out from a group of similar things. Designers use invariance to highlight parts of a design.

Typography

Typography shapes the perception of ideas when people look at them. Everything from a type’s weight to its geometry communicates meaning. As a front-end developer, you must understand how to make typographical choices to deliver the message in the best way.

Frontend developers have many resources to keep on top of typography trends. Font Reach is one such website. Good designers always understand the difference between type styles and how to use them.

Color Theory

Frontend developers should understand combining primary colors to create new color palettes. But effective web design requires a bit more. As a frontend designer, you should be familiar with the concept of the color wheel. You should know how complementary, contrasting, and analogous colors work together.

Knowledge of color theory helps frontend developers avoid common mistakes like the use of clashing colors. You should take the guesswork out of your designs and stop wasting time with a trial-and-error approach. Here is an excellent resource to learn color theory. Now that underlying concepts of practical and unique web designs are there, we must also provide tips on learning them.

Practice is the key

There is no alternative, the only way you will get better is by creating projects to bring your design ideas to life. Fortunately, plenty of resources such as Behance, Dribbble, and even Pinterest can serve as a source of inspiration for your next design. Keep in mind that you are exploring these websites for ideas and not to ‘steal’ things. You can start with a similar design or pattern that you saw, but as you iterate your project, introduce new colors, move objects, and try different compositions to transform it into something new.

Communication is mandatory

Being curious, asking questions, and respecting feedback will make you an excellent designer. It can be tricky to comprehend why communication can be an essential design skill for a front-end developer. Designing is a form of visual communication. For instance, when you put an element in the corner of a design, you tell the users that there is some action to be taken here.

Frontend developers build on top of the code written by backend developers. To integrate the backend functionalities seamlessly into the frontend design, you must communicate with other developers effectively. As part of a team, you can use communication to anticipate any design challenges that might come up during future development and deploy solutions proactively.

Tools come in handy

You do not have to practice on whiteboards; some great tools help you save time and increase efficiency. Adobe Creative Libraries is a fantastic tool for front-end developers to create unique elements that they can use for web pages, apps, and applications. Codepen.io is another excellent tool that helps front-end developers create UI elements in a live environment to see how things will look.

Conclusion

Frontend development lies at the intersection of technology, design, and communication. You can start by implementing the ideas of other great designers into your projects. With each iteration, introduce your elements in the design, and soon enough, you will be creating strategically calculated and unique web designs on your own.
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5 effective JavaScript debugging techniques

Posted on October 31, 2022October 31, 2022 by saurabh kale

JavaScript is the web language used by over 90% of websites. Still, it has a reputation of being difficult to debug. JavaScript’s asynchronous nature makes it easy for developers to create complex web applications, but the same attribute makes it challenging to locate errors. Fortunately, knowing the right tools and understanding a few debugging tricks can make it easier to resolve bugs and errors.

Here we have put together a list of practical JavaScript debugging techniques you should keep in mind.

Use debugger

For many JavaScript developers, the debugger is their favorite debugging tool. When writing extensive code with complex logic, experienced programmers place a debugger in the code line that they anticipate will produce an error. When such code is run in Chrome, the Developer Tool will automatically stop when it encounters a debugger keyword.

You can also wrap the debugger in conditions to run them in a particular event like this:

if (thisThing) {
debugger;}
Learn more about debugger keywords here.

Learn to use the console.trace

JavaScript has many frameworks such as Node.js, Vue.js, and React. These frameworks make it easy to produce code quickly. In a project, you will have many views, triggers, and too many events. When working with a framework, most of these events will be hidden in an abstract layer, so it will be challenging to identify what caused a particular function call.

JavaScript is not very structured, and it is hard to get a clear overview of what happened and when. This is why JavaScript developers should use the console.trace method.

Let’s assume in the following code, you want to see the entire stack trace for the function call funcZ:

var car;
var func1 = function() {
func2();
}

var func2 = function() {
func4();
}
var func3 = function() {
}

var func4 = function() {
car = new Car();
car.funcX();
}
var Car = function() {
this.brand = ‘volvo’;
this.color = ‘red’;
this.funcX = function() {
this.funcY();
}

   this.funcY = function() {
           this.funcZ();
   }

   this.funcZ = function() {
           console.trace(‘trace car’)
   }

}
func1();
var car;
var func1 = function() {
func2();
}
var func2 = function() {
func4();
}
var func3 = function() {
}
var func4 = function() {
car = new Car();
car.funcX();
}
var Car = function() {
this.brand = ‘volvo’;
this.color = ‘red’;
this.funcX = function() {
this.funcY();
}
this.funcY = function() {
this.funcZ();
}
this.funcZ = function() {
console.trace(‘trace car’)
}
}
func1();

This will be the output at Line 33:

As you can see that the trace clearly indicates func1 called func2, which is further called func4. Then the func4 created an instance of variable Car calling the function car.funcX, and so on. This is a simple script, so it is easier to follow through the flow, but when the code block is a big console.trace method proves to be handy. You can easily trace all related functions to pinpoint the bug.

Use console.time() and console.timeEnd() to benchmark loops

Not just JavaScript, but loops are trouble makers in every programming language. To create efficient and fast code, developers need to know how long any code segment takes to execute. Slow loops can degrade the performance of the entire JavaScript code.

But you can benchmark loops to evaluate their performance. Here is a way to set up multiple timers using console.time() and console.timeEnd() methods.

console.time(‘Timer1’);

var items = [];

for(var i = 0; i < 100000; i++){

items.push({index: i});
}

console.timeEnd(‘Timer1’);

The output will be:

As evident, benchmarking loops in JavaScript can help you save time trying to troubleshoot performance issues.

Chrome Developer Tool for responsive test

As most web applications are accessed through multiple devices, you have to make sure your JavaScript code works on all screen sizes. In an ideal world, developers would have every single device check the compatibility of their code. Unfortunately, in the real world, it is not feasible.

Chrome Developer Tool has the option to resize the viewport to check your code’s performance on any screen size. To use this feature, open the inspector in Chrome and click on the toggle device mode button as highlighted in the image:

Using this tool, you can instantly check the media queries, forms, and dynamic code for various screen sizes.

Black box scripts for faster debugging

Modern web applications use libraries and frameworks that are tested for bugs. But when you run any debugger tool, it will still check and try to debug all files, even those that have no relevance. It substantially increases the cost of debugging and takes longer too.

The solution lies in black-boxing the scripts you don’t need to debug. Fortunately, both Chrome and Firefox provide the option to blacklist scripts that you don’t want to debug.

In Chrome, open the inspector and right-click the JavaScript file you want to blacklist, and choose ‘black box script.’ You can learn more about Chrome Script Black Box here.

In Firefox, go to the debugger tab in the element inspector. Mark the scripts you want to blacklist, then click on the eye at the bottom-left corner. Learn more here.

Conclusion

Debugging is an active responsibility of developers. Its unstructured design makes it challenging to identify and resolve errors with JavaScript. The techniques shared above will help you create JavaScript debugging more efficiently.

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How does DevOps improve deployment frequency?

Posted on October 19, 2022November 9, 2022 by

DevOps has overtaken every other development methodology. Almost every successful company depends on DevOps to optimize its development and operations.

Simply put, DevOps is a set of processes that allow companies to improve the coordination between teams within the engineering and operations departments. This is important to create and enhance products faster and more agilely with a higher success rate than traditional software development methods such as waterfall methodology.

This article focuses on one of the great benefits of DevOps, which is to improve deployment frequency. We explore how companies can improve product delivery and deployment while automating the process.

What is deployment frequency?

The deployment frequency is one of the essential data-driven metrics of DevOps and represents the effectiveness of CI/CD. This metric function measures the frequency at which the development teams deploy code to development, test, and production environments. The deployment should include functional pieces of code, improved versions, or bug fixes.

DevOps improves development by making continuous code deliveries in smaller, faster, and more testable modules. This is why the deployment frequency is closely related to the DevOps continuous delivery philosophy. It is an essential metric in the overall software development life-cycle and provides an opportunity to monitor how well the development processes work. This more extensive overview helps identify broader issues like lack of professionalism among the team members and inefficient processes.

What causes low deployment frequency?

The success of any DevOps project depends on continuously measuring the team’s effectiveness. Your goal should be to improve the deployment frequency for delivering projects faster. Several actions can be taken in the software development environment to increase deployment frequency.

Before DevOps engineers can plan a strategy, they must understand the causes of low deployment frequency. Numerous reasons can bring down the deployment frequency – project size, the number of engineers in the team, and the deadline. However, here are the most common reasons:

Substantial changes are introduced in the code that requires hundreds of lines of code to be written and tested.
Fewer people in the team; for instance, if a senior DevOps engineer leaves when the project is still in development. Their absence can delay the project.
Any organizational structure changes can disturb the workflow.
Hurdles in the development process such as technological deficiencies, dependencies, etc.
Unplanned development cycle or bottlenecks in routes to production.

How can the deployment frequency be improved with DevOps?

DevOps implements CI/CD best practices in the team, allowing developers to increase software delivery speed. Continuous integration and delivery are known to automate several development pipelines and reduce the time it takes to include a new feature or update the existing product.

More minor and self-contained changes; as mentioned above, DevOps enables teams to segment the project update or development requirements into smaller tasks. One of the benefits of working with a smaller version of changes is that it makes it much easier to get feedback faster and resolve any issues sooner. This contributes to improving the deployment frequency.

DevOps reduces technical debt. In software engineering, technical debt is described as the implied cost of additional rework that needs to be done because the team chooses an easy (often limited) solution to solve a problem instead of a better approach. With DevOps, any team can significantly reduce technical debt and remove bugs that increase the rate of subsequent deployments.

Test automation with DevOps technology. Manual testing is resource intensive and takes longer, so incorporating automated tests at every stage of the CI/CD pipeline reduces the delivery time multiple folds. It also helps DevOps engineers to catch issues earlier during the development of the code, which further improves deployment frequency.

DevOps uses automated code review tools like GitHub and Review Board that can help improve the code quality and save valuable time. This provides development teams with enough time to regressively review code changes faster.

DevOps uses release trains for more enormous monoliths. Primarily for enterprise-level products, multiple changes are often released together. For such projects, DevOps engineers can batch numerous changes together and release them all simultaneously, thus coordinating the updates without slowing down the deployment frequency.

Conclusion

Deployment frequency is one of the essential metrics to analyze and improve the efficiency of any engineering team. It is valuable data that helps you understand the capabilities of your team and estimate how quickly you can provide value to your customers when required. With DevOps, any organization can promptly improve deployment frequency, as detailed in this guide.

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