Technology – Page 2 – Talent500 Blog

What is the future of DevOps technologies?

Posted on October 10, 2022November 10, 2022 by vallish

DevOps is one of software development’s most widely adopted automation processes. DevOps engineers are responsible for accelerating the development of products and frequent releases of updates. Some of the most renowned companies in the world, such as Google, Netflix, and Amazon, use this methodology to increase the efficiency and productivity of their teams.

According to market research, the expansion of DevOps is expected to reach $287.9 billion by the year 2026. This growth will demand more DevOps engineers to join the engineering teams. If you are wondering about the future of DevOps technologies, the prospects are up-and-coming.

This article explores the future of DevOps technologies and how organizations are improving the development culture by implementing this methodology.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is the methodology that provides an alternative to the agile development environment for creating faster and smoother development of applications. It is a continuous process that also includes last-mile delivery. This methodology ensures that product testing, development, and operation are in sync and that delivery can be made in less time. Several processes are involved in DevOps, such as voting, building and integration, continuous testing, reporting, monitoring, and configuration.

For a successful career as a DevOps engineer, you need to focus on building skills in the following technologies.

1. AI/ML in the DevOps

The DevOps methodology has made the software development life cycle much more efficient. Combined with a cloud-native approach and microservice architecture, it is possible to build any software with limited resources and time. With this approach, you can integrate testing and production environments to find problems with the application before it goes live proactively.

But there is scope for further improvement in DevOps pipelines by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning. With these technologies, you can build and automate much better, which is why the industry is gradually transitioning from DevOps to DataOps and AIOps. The focus is shifting to using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to log and monitor metrics that give more control automatically. It would help if you learned tools like Moogsoft and BigPanda, a leader in AIOps.

2. Serverless computing

DevOps teams are actively using serverless architecture for maintaining their production pipelines because of the massive operational cost of server infrastructure. DevOps automates software development and deployment based on several components. When you get a modular component view of the pipeline, it becomes much easier to identify the bottlenecks and unnecessary server resources. The serverless architecture can mitigate the challenges common to the product’s deployment and development.

If you plan to become a DevOps engineer, you should learn how serverless computing can streamline overall DevOps operations. Companies prefer serverless architecture because it dramatically reduces server maintenance costs and workloads. The flexibility, reliability, cost efficiency, and speed of serverless DevOps infrastructure improve the efficiency of the complete software life cycle from development to deployment.

3. Low-Code/No-Code applications

Many organizations are adopting the low-code/no-code development approach to deploy applications swiftly and to keep up with the demand for new features and applications from users. DevOps engineers experience higher agility and can develop fast-track applications to meet the market’s demand. Adopting a low-code approach in the DevOps framework is a game changer.

With no-code application development, you can allow non-technical contributors to be part of software development through the help of visual interface integrations. As DevOps engineers play an essential role in connecting end users with developers, they play a crucial role in adopting this trend. This is another DevOps technology that you should focus on.

4. Container technology

Another technology that is evolving fast and emerging strongly is container technology. Containers are handy for sandbox applications for security or resource constraints reasons. There are also instances when companies use containers per user or user session to micro-monitor the behavior of their products. Including container technology in DevOps allows limitless possibilities to improve user and system security and enhance user analytics.

Simply put, container technology allows putting all the software components in a single unit that can be used to run microservices or larger applications alike. All the code, libraries, configuration information, and other dependencies can be withheld in this container, making it much smoother to deploy software across the network. Another reason why this DevOps technology is becoming popular is because of its lightweight architecture. Unlike deploying full-scale servers to test applications, containers make it possible to deploy multiple versions of the same application and multiple operating systems.

Conclusion

DevOps is evolving fast and driving a significant transformation in the software industry. The DevOps technologies we have listed here are helping organizations to move rapidly beyond simple automation and enhance their ability to design, produce, launch, and maintain high-quality software products. As a DevOps engineer, you must familiarize yourself with these technologies for a successful career.

Talent500 helps start-ups and Fortune 500 companies to build remote engineering teams. Join us here and explore career-redefining opportunities at some of the largest tech companies.

5 most commonly found types of bugs and how to fix them

Posted on October 10, 2022October 10, 2022 by vallish

The software development life cycle (SDLC) has several stages that include testing. No code is ever written with perfection when first created. Bugs, errors, and anomalies repeatedly occur, so companies perform a comprehensive software assessment to maintain its quality.

But what happens when bugs are not identified early on during the software development?

The cost of fixing bugs and security issues increases with each development stage. It is least expensive to correct errors and anomalies in the design phase. According to a study by the Systems Sciences Institute at IBM, fixing a bug during implementation costs 6x higher than fixing it during the design phase. Furthermore, the study found that companies waiting to fix bugs during the Testing phase of SDLC could end up paying 15 times more compared to the cost of recording and resolving bugs during the design and development phase.

Competent QA engineers understand that to fix bugs early stage, it is essential to know the most common errors that occur. It helps to understand what kind of bugs popup during which phase of project development.

To save time and cost invested in testing, here are the most common software bugs that developers and QA engineers often encounter. Pay attention as soon as you identify them because that is the best way to tackle them effectively.

1. Functional Bugs

The errors associated with the functionality of a specific software component are called functional bugs. A non-responsive Login Button or an erroneous Cart function is functional bugs as they don’t function as intended.

It can be costly to fix these issues if they appear in actual use conditions. Functional testing help testers evaluate a website or app in a live environment early on rather than discovering them in the production environment.

2. Logical Bugs

Nothing can be more complicated to troubleshoot than a poorly constructed logic. Logical bugs cause the software to malfunction, disrupting the entire application. How devastating the effects of logical bugs can be was evident when NASA lost its Mars Probe spacecraft in 1999 because engineers in the software team forgot to convert British measurements into American units.

While most software projects won’t be of such scale or involve millions of dollars worth of space vehicles, logical bugs can be challenging to track. Fuzzy testing is a common approach for identifying logical bugs. During this testing, malformed inputs are sent to a code block to expose infinite loops, memory leaks, and crashes.

3. Workflow Bugs

Workflow bugs are associated with the navigation of a software application.

For example, consider a payment function that involves several steps. Users can switch between pages with ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons to complete the process. But if the ‘next’ navigation exits the process, the workflow is broken, resulting in a bug.

Fortunately, workflow bugs are the easiest to identify as they are much more apparent. Manual testing is enough to find most workflow bugs.

Unit Level Bugs

Unit level bugs are pretty common and easier to fix. As each software module is in written form, testers can test small batches of code to ensure they are functioning as expected. Unit testing helps developers capture bugs that are left undetected during coding. Before moving to the next component, the bugs are isolated and fixed.

For instance, when working on a signup page, a developer can verify all the user input fields and validation buttons. If a field does not accept input or the validation is not working correctly, that will be a unit-level bug.

4. System-Level Integration Bugs

These bugs are in one word: miscommunication. System-level integration bugs occur when two or more units created by different developers are integrated. These bugs stop different units from interacting due to inconsistencies or incompatibility.

System-level integration bugs are hard to track and even harder to fix as developers need to examine thousands of lines of code. Inappropriate interfacing, memory overflow issues, and database connectivity issues are common system-level integration bugs.

5. Out of Bound Bugs

When a system user interacts with the UI of an application or website unintentionally, out-of-bound bugs occur. Entering a too large or too small value in an input field or using an undefined data type are expected out of bound bugs. Form validation issues that pop up during functional testing are examples of such errors.

Conclusion

For any website or mobile application to be helpful for the end-users in the real-world environment, it needs comprehensively testing for the most common bugs. Regardless of the software complexity and size, testers and developers must ensure that most bugs are identified and resolved early as possible. Fixing bugs at the later stages of software development proves to be costly and time-consuming.
Talent500 is the platform for Quality Assurance engineers to find opportunities with global companies. Join our elite pool of software testers found by fast-growing startups and Fortune500 companies.

PHP developer toolkit: Important skills, learning resources, interview prep & more

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by

PHP is a popular backend programming language empowering the web since it first appeared in 1995. Today, 77.4% of all websites use PHP as the server-side programming language. You are in good company as a PHP developer as millions of backend developers use the programming language in their tech stack.

This toolkit will list the ultimate resources to be a skilled and job-ready PHP developer.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: In addition to PHP, a developer is also expected to have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. PHP is combined with frontend technologies to create web applications as a backend language. To fully utilize the benefits PHP offers as a general-purpose server-side scripting language, developers must be proficient in writing quality JavaScript code with HTML and CSS.

Advanced PHP Concepts: Any PHP project developed for web services uses many third-party web applications. A competent PHP developer should be familiar with advanced concepts, most importantly, parsing JSON, handling HTTP requests, using XML, and working with package installers like the composer.

Composer is an important concept to learn as it helps PHP developers to manage dependencies like classes, functions, and libraries conveniently. Also, developers can effortlessly switch between different versions of PHP using composer.

PSR (PHP Standard Recommendation), issued by PHP-FIG, is a PHP specification that developers should know. Knowledge of PSR is essential to standardize PHP code that enhances the interoperability of PHP components and frameworks.

Laravel: PHP developers seldom work on raw PHP code when building web applications. You will be utilizing PHP frameworks like Laravel to increase the productivity and accuracy of your code. While there are several PHP frameworks such as CodeIgniter, Symphony, and CakePHP, Laravel is the most widely used. Over 67% of PHP developers use Laravel for building web applications.

Databases: Web applications use several databases depending on the nature and type of data they deal with. PHP developers use PHP code to create, update and maintain databases in web applications. MySQL, MariaDB, and MongoDB are the three most widely used databases for PHP applications. Companies hiring PHP developers expect programmers to be skilled in one of these databases.

Web servers: PHP is primarily a server-side scripting language, and knowledge of web servers will help PHP developers with full-stack programming. Employers prefer PHP developers who know web servers as they can create faster and more scalable web applications.

Top 40 PHP Interview Questions and Answers in 2022 – [Fresher to Experienced]

21 Essential PHP Interview Questions

How to land a high paying backend developer job

Backend developer: interview preparation resources

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

Official Resources

PHP Manual

PHP official community

PHP Git Repository

PHP Wiki

Online Courses & Tutorials

KillerPHP is an excellent resource for PHP developers that have been around since 2010. The site has insightful blogs, videos, and short tutorials.

PHPtherightway.com is the best PHP documentation; some developers find it more comprehensive than official PHP documentation.

Packagist.org is a resource that every PHP developer should bookmark. The website has information on every open-source composer package. The website also integrates with GitHub well, so developers can easily install, create, and publish new packages.

Learn PHP with Codeacademy is a free resource that teaches PHP coding from scratch without being distracting. The lessons are interactive sessions, rather than just video or text tutorials. It is a self-guided PHP college course with articles, quizzes, and freeform projects.

Build a Social Network from Scratch is a Udemy course to learn the features and concepts of PHP through a project-based approach. Developers build a social networking site in PHP, JavaScript, and MySQL in this course.

PHP with Laravel for beginners is another quality Udemy online course to learn the Laravel framework. It teaches the best practice of creating PHP web applications using Laravel.

Object-Oriented PHP & MVC by Brad Traversy is a course for advanced learners as it dives deeper into PHP concepts. This course teaches you to create a basic framework using PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Then you build an application based on that framework.

Books for PHP Developers

The Joy of PHP Programming: A Beginner’s Guide – by Alan Forbes

PHP & MySQL Novice to Ninja – by Kevin Yank

Headfirst PHP & MySQL (A Brain-friendly Guide)

PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide

Modern PHP: New Features and Good Practices

Online Communities for PHP Developers

PHP Dev Community

PHP Forum

Webdev Subreddit

Laracasts- Official Laravel Community

Laravel.io

Podcasts for PHP Developers

PHP Arch Podcast

PHP Internal News

PHP Podcasts | The voice of the elePHPant

Soft skills for PHP Developers

Good Communication Skills: Communication is the key to projects’ success, and PHP is no exception. Basic communication etiquettes are a must for PHP developers, whether they work solo or as a team. It would be best to learn to communicate like a professional to land jobs easily.

Project Management: Managing programming projects is an essential skill that PHP developers should nurture to independently track and complete PHP tasks. Leadership, delegation, risk management, and quality management are part of project management skills.

Critical Thinking: Developers who are critical thinkers are better at application planning and design. They are also more efficient in debugging project code as they can critically analyze it. Furthermore, critical thinking makes PHP developers adapt to innovations and technologies quickly.

There is more to explore; here are some soft skill development resources from Talent500:

How soft skills transitioned to become the new power skills

6 soft skills that still impress employers in 2022

7 Most valuable soft skills of exceptional software engineers

Conclusion

PHP is a popular language for building web applications that over 80% of websites utilize. From creating custom websites to entire Content Management Systems, you can achieve a lot with PHP if you have the right skills. This PHP toolkit is the ultimate resource guide to learning and upskilling as a PHP developer.

Talent500 has the pool of elite PHP developers that global companies hire to build their remote teams. Join our platform today to find career-redefining opportunities.

Golang developer toolkit: Important skills, learning resources, interview prep & more

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by

Google first introduced the Go programming language, popularly known as Golang, in 2009. The open-source programming language is famous for its efficiency, simplicity, and tooling. Even though Go is comparatively new, it is already the 10th most popular programming language, according to the latest Stack Overflow developer survey. Most developers create in Golang because it helps them deploy applications with fewer servers saving them cost, and its simplicity and familiarity make it easier to learn.

We have created this Golang toolkit as a complete resource directory for beginners and experienced developers.

Expertise with Goroutines: Goroutine is a function that can execute independently yet connected with other Goroutines within the program.

According to Ben Popper, the Content Head at Stack Overflow, Goroutines are the “worth the price of admission alone” for the Go language. With Goroutines, you can create multithreaded programs. Go developers need to make their programs fast and efficient. With Goroutines, you can make your program continue execution even if one task is stuck.

This is a non-negotiable area of expertise that companies look for in any Go developer.

Go Channels: These are the medium used by Goroutines to communicate and share data. It is an essential mechanism for Go developers to learn. You will use Go Channels in your program to synchronize any data exchange between two Goroutines.

This prominent feature makes Golang better because most programming languages that allow concurrent threads to share data lock that data, creating several issues with memory management. Go overcomes this problem by allowing data to be sent via Go channels, with both threads ‘waiting’ until the variable value reaches its destination.

Companies want Go developers to be familiar with Go channel types (buffered and unbuffered) and the most common concurrency patterns and frameworks.

Godoc commenting: Comments in Go can go beyond just basic information, unlike most programming languages. You should be aware of godoc: Go’s built-in documentation tool.

With Godoc you can scan any Go source code for commands and compile them together to form the package’s documentation as an HTML page or plain text. No other programming language offers such an effective documentation tool out of the box.

Go templates: This simple template language allows customizing outputs from the code in different formats such as web pages, emails, and forms. You should be familiar with two template packages—text/template and HTML/template. These templates are used to produce text files and HTML pages depending on the project’s requirement.

Versioning tools: Any developer should know versioning tools. It is not a skill strictly related to Go but to software development overall. Git is the most popular version control tool that most companies use. It works with Golang code as well.

Top 25 Topics and Resources to Crack Golang Developer Interviews in 2022

Golang Interview Questions (Freshers to Experienced)

Crack the top 50 Golang interview questions

Top 20 GO Programming / Golang Interview Questions & Answers

7 Common full stack developer interview questions

Full Stack developer interview preparation resources

11 Top full-stack developer interview questions

Official resources

The Go Programming Language Blog

Go community Wiki

Online courses & tutorials

Learn Golang at Tour of Go: A good starting point to learn about Go.

Go by Example: You should bookmark this website. It will be a great resource to refer to when you want to understand any concept of the Go with code snippets.

Learn How To Code: Google’s Go (golang) Programming Language: This Udemy course is excellent for learning Go through an entire semester course. This video lecture-based course is a good starting point for learning Golang.

Programming with Google Go Specialization: A comprehensive Coursera online course, it is a good resource for learning Go Interfaces, Functions, and Concurrency.

Go (Golang): The Complete Bootcamp: If you want to learn Go with hands-on practice, this Udemy course is the best. It offers 1000+ exercises and projects to learn Go.

Books for Golang developers

The Go Programming Language by Donovan and Kernighan

Go in Action by Brian Ketelsen, Erik St. Martin, and William Kennedy

Programming in Go by Mark Summerfield

Building Web Applications with Golang

Learning Go by Miek Gieben

Online communities for Golang developers

The Go Forum

Go user groups and meetups

Gophers’ community on Slack

Podcasts for Golang developers

Go Time

JustForFunc

Soft skills for Golang developers

Remote working skills: Apart from technical skills, as a Go developer, you will be benefit from learning work-related skills. Remote working skills have become essential for employers ever since the Covid-19 pandemic. You should be familiar with collaboration tools and have good organization skills and task tracking.

Checkout out this Covid-19 Job Resource Toolkit to learn more.

Communication: Software development depends a lot on high-quality communication. Version control, test design, documentation and the like all depend on clear communication between team members. A competent Go dev must communicate effectively with other developers and stakeholders.

Organization: Organization keeps projects on a strict timeline. When you are organized in your work, you don’t have to deal with backlogs that often, and the quality of your code is high. Companies expect developers to be familiar with Kanban-style applications like Trello, Jira, Asana, etc.

For more, refer to – 8 Project management tools for remote software engineering teams.

Here are some more resources for you to check out:

The importance of leadership transparency and accountability in a hybrid and distributed workplace

6 soft skills that still impress employers in 2022

Conclusion

A competent Go developer can balance technical skills with soft skills to deliver projects on time without compromising quality. We hope that this Golang toolkit will provide a reference for all essential resources to become job-ready.

Talent500 helps Golang developers find the best opportunities. We are a preferred partner of global companies to build remote engineering teams. Join us today and become a vetted Go developer to get hired faster.

5 must-learn JavaScript concepts for front-end developers

Posted on August 8, 2022August 8, 2022 by venkatesh

JavaScript is undoubtedly a language for both front-end and back-end developers. It is touted as the web language because over 90% of websites use JavaScript in one way or another.

If you are just getting started with JavaScript, you must have written functions, used simple algorithms, or worked with classes. However, as you progress in your career, you will realize that modern JavaScript frameworks like Node.js can extend the application of JavaScript to the backend. Learning advanced JavaScript concepts will help optimize the speed and performance of applications. You can move ahead from using jQuery for each functionality in the web application that makes it load slower.

Here are the must-learn JavaScript concepts that every front-end developer must know:

1. Let and Const Keywords

In its early days, JavaScript only supported var keywords for declaring variables. However, it limited the scope of the language as it only allowed variables to be global or functional. Also, variables declared with var can be re-declared and even updated. This makes it unsafe to use for security features and applications.

JavaScript offers two new keywords to overcome these challenges – Let and Const.

Variables with these keywords have block scopes. Moreover, let variables cannot be re-declared. But they can be updated. While the variable declared with const can neither be re-declared nor be updated.

New JavaScript developers must learn the concept of let and const keyword variable declaration to write more optimized code.

2. Closures

A closure is a function created inside another function but has access to the outer function variables. While the definition might seem straightforward, the closure is an excellent feature for making JavaScript code more cohesive. As the closures can access the variable defined within its scope, in the range of their parent functions, and the global variables, you can extend the behavior of an external function to the inner function.

Being an essential object-oriented programming (OOP) concept, it makes JavaScript a highly scalable and high-performance language for front-end development.

Here’s an example:

function init() {
var name = ‘Mozilla’; // name is a local variable created by init
function displayName() { // displayName() is the inner function, a closure
alert(name); // use variable declared in the parent function
}
displayName();
}
init();

Code with Closure:

function makeFunc() {
var name = ‘Mozilla’;
function displayName() {
alert(name);
}
return displayName;
}
var myFunc = makeFunc();
myFunc();

Both the codes will have the same output, but in the second code, the displayName() inner function is returned from the outer function before being executed.

3. String Interpolation

In any programming language, strings are the most widely used data types. But, in JavaScript, strings are excessively used because front-end features like forms and logins have many string values. However, working with strings can be complicated when you have many inputs. For example, consider this code block:

let firstname = “Sarah”;
let secondname = “Connor”;

let age = 22;

let location = “Boston”;

return firstname + ” ” + secondname + ” is ” + age + ” years old and he lives in ” + city;

While there is no problem with the output string, and it will work just fine, the use of so many unique characters makes it somewhat complex.

String interpolation makes it a lot easier to handle such strings. The same output can be returned without any concatenation operators using string interpolation, as follows:

return `${firstname} ${secondname} is ${age} years old and he lives in ${city}`;

This concept makes it easier to work with strings. Furthermore, it is one of the most asked JavaScript interview questions.

4. Callbacks

In JavaScript, Callbacks are functions that are passed to other functions as parameters. They are invoked or executed inside other functions in serial formation, where one function waits for another to complete. As JavaScript is used to create asynchronous operations, Callbacks help to provide the synchronous capability to these operations.

Example:

function myDisplayer(some) {
document.getElementById(“demo”).innerHTML = some;
}

function myCalculator(num1, num2, myCallback) {
let sum = num1 + num2;
myCallback(sum);
}

myCalculator(5, 5, myDisplayer);

This example myDisplayer is a function passed to myCalculator() as an argument.

5. Arrow function

The arrow function is another important concept for JavaScript developers to master. It is a simple concept that enables developers to write functions succinctly. Let’s understand with an example.

function demo(a, b) {
return a + b;
}

The demo function is created using the traditional “function” keyword here. Now we make the same JavaScript function using the arrow function.

const demo = (a,b) => a + b;

The output will be the same. When a function has a single statement, we can omit the “return” keyword with arrow function.

Another reason to learn arrow function is that they are essential for functional programming in JavaScript. To know the advanced use of these functions, you can take the Udemy Advanced JavaScript Concepts course.

Conclusion

The JavaScript features listed above are easy to understand and can make your code much more functional. Due to its asynchronous structure, JavaScript code can get complex to write and debug as the size of the application grows. These concepts will help you write clean, concise, and maintainable JavaScript code at scale.

Talent500 is the platform for JavaScript developers to find the best career opportunities. Global startups and Fortune 500 companies trust us to hire, build, and manage their remote teams. Sign up today!

5 Best websites to learn JavaScript coding for beginners

Posted on July 22, 2022 by venkatesh

According to Atwood’s Law, “Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.”

It proved accurate as JavaScript is one of the major programming languages for building web apps. If you are beginning your journey as a developer, you should focus on learning JavaScript for web development. Even if you are an experienced programmer who never worked with web applications, learning this programming language will broaden your horizons. Once considered a strictly client-side language, Node.js now allows JavaScript to run both the front-end and back-end applications. Fortunately, there are several resources for beginners to learn JavaScript.

Here, we have compiled a list of the five best websites to learn JavaScript coding:

1. Udemy Free JavaScript Tutorials

Udemy is one of the best online resources for developers to learn and upskill. The website hosts free and premium online courses and tutorials in all technologies, including JavaScript, Java, Python, Spring, REST, Selenium, etc.

We recommend you use these tutorials for learning JavaScript as they are comprehensively structured for beginners to follow.

The Complete JavaScript Course 2022: From Zero to Expert!

The Complete JavaScript Course 2022: Build Real Projects

The Web Developer Bootcamp

While these courses are not free, their quality makes them a worthwhile investment. But, beginners can start with this free course first:

JavaScript Essentials

It teaches you the basic concepts of the languages and gives an overview of API design through a simple web project.

2. Pluralsight.com

Another great website to learn IT technologies. On Pluralsight, you will find many courses to learn programming languages like JavaScript. But it takes things a step further by allowing beginners to practice while they learn.

The site acquired CodeSchool, a live code editor that developers can use to write code through a browser to see how they worked. The best course on the site to learn JavaScript is the JavaScript Fundamentals by Liam Mclennan. While several free courses are available on Pluralsight, you should take its premium membership for the best courses. A membership gives you access to over 5000+ online courses, interactive quizzes, exercises, and certification material.

3. Coursera JavaScript Foundation Courses

Like Udemy, Coursera is an excellent online learning platform that offers quality JavaScript tutorials and courses. Founded by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, the platform grew fast and became one of the leading online degree platforms for IT professionals.

Learning JavaScript on Coursera will be a different experience. For instance, the course’s progress in a curriculum is similar to universities and you get a certification on completion. The website offers courses enabled by renowned universities like Stanford, University of London, Imperial College of London, University of Michigan, and Colorado.

Some of the best courses to learn JavaScript on Coursera are:

Programming Foundations with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

Interactivity with JavaScript

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for Web Developers

Beginners can get a good grasp of JavaScript with these courses. Furthermore, on completing courses, Coursera offers you a certification that you can showcase on your LinkedIn profile.

4. Freecodecamp.org

This website is a community-driven learning platform for beginners to learn how to code for free, build real-world projects, and land a job as a developer.

Freecodecamp has a massive repository of interactive tutorials and practice courses for learning JavaScript and other web development concepts. Many coders find this website a lot more interactive as it provides them with tools to learn through doing. You will also be able to connect with fellow learners and experienced programmers who mentor beginners. You will find over 2000 JavaScript courses on this website that are entirely free. Apart from that, Freecodecamp has a robust Facebook Group and Medium blog where they share articles and resources on trending topics and technologies.

5. Codecademy

Many first-time coders learn JavaScript from Codecademy as it offers a learning curriculum different from other websites listed here. The website has designed a crisp and easy-to-follow JavaScript course that helps beginners learn the essential concepts of the programming language at an accelerated pace.

The Introduction of JavaScript Course teaches developers both the programming language’s front-end and back-end aspects. The course is self-paced, so beginners can pause in between or revisit a concept later. This is why this JavaScript course for beginners has over 5 million enrolled students.

In this free course, developers get introduced to the most common concepts of JavaScript, such as functions, scopes, conditionals, arrays, and iterations. Then the course moves on to intermediate-level skills such as APIs and frameworks. Finally, you put your learnings to the test by building games and interactive websites.

Conclusion

JavaScript is the language of the web. If you want to get into web development, you must learn the concepts of the language well. Also, companies expect both front-end and back-end developers to know at least one JavaScript framework. The websites we listed here are the best resources to get started with JavaScript.
Talent500 is the platform for competent developers to discover career redefining opportunities with fast-growing global startups and Fortune 500 companies. Join us today!

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.

Top Indian talent finds career re-defining opportunities with Talent500. Join us today and be part of an elite pool of developers.

How to become a good game developer?

Posted on July 21, 2022July 21, 2022 by vallish

Video games are not just a fun pastime but part of a mammoth market with over $85.86 billion. In the second quarter of 2020, gamers spent a record $11.6 billion on video games.

The market is enormous, and demand is massive; that is why a career as a game developer can be rewarding. The need for game developers is expected to increase by 21% by 2028. If you possess comprehensive knowledge of gaming systems and have strong technical skills, you can become a game developer. In this article, we explore the career path of a video game developer.

What do game developers do?

Game developers are professionals who combine software development with mathematics to bring games to life. The responsibility of game developers is to write highly robust code to implement all the features and functionalities. Additionally, they need to work with highly skilled game designers to create visual content for a game. Even after publishing a game, video game developers are continually engaged in development to accommodate new game feature requests and improvements. A distinctive skill game developers must know about artificial programming intelligence is to create non-player characters.

Game Developer Responsibilities:

While the exact responsibilities you will be handling depend on the type of game you will be working on, here are some standard requirements for a video game developer.

Set up and manage Linux servers and HTTP servers
Writing scalable code with proper OOP practices
Lead workflow resolution by effectively routing information to appropriate queues
Develop systems with sufficient flexibility to handle exceptions
Provide support for any existing AS2 legacy code
Develop animation units for the game web pages using AS2
Work with ZendAMF and PHP to create flash communication
Communicate and partner with senior engineers and game programmers
Perform QA for games
Implement APIs to support hardware-specific features

Game development skills you will need

Strong IT skills

As mentioned before, strong technical skills are mandatory to become a competent game developer. With each passing year, video games are becoming more realistic. As the gaming features and visuals enter Photorealism – a new era of the realistic physical rendering of video games – you have to demonstrate IT skills beyond coding. Graphics and animation play an essential role in video game development which is why you need to improve your designing skills.

Creativity

Game developers don’t just write code; they create incredible virtual worlds that immerse the gamers. To come up with original video game ideas, you will need creativity, which is much needed. The video game market is saturated with sameness. The competitive advantage of a game lies in its uniqueness.

Video games are not like other software; they are a cultural product with cultural tastes and preferences. This article from The Atlantic elaborates that game developers need to understand human psychology and culture to capture and retain players’ attention.

Problem-solving skills

Resolving technical glitches and overcoming challenges will be a routine task for you as a game developer. You will require grit and patience to solve problems and debug code. This is why problem-solving skills are essential.

Time management skills

Today’s video games are highly complex products with hundreds of thousands of components. To pull all the pieces together, companies require multiple teams of technical and artistic professionals. To be a successful game developer, you have to learn to work well under pressure, collaborate effectively, and follow project deadlines.

Top countries in the world for game developers

Unlike other programmers, game developers are benefited from choosing a location when it comes to building a career. Most game publishers and studios still work with in-house teams at the office.

Here is a graph representing the best countries for game development jobs based on the number of game developers.

Challenges you need to know

Game developers often have to take criticism from the gaming community if the game or a new feature they incorporate is glitchy or brings down the user experience. It will be essential to take a step back and take criticism. Furthermore, gaming industry technologies change lighting fast. You must be ready to learn not to get outdated. Keeping up with trends is also essential. At present, mobile games are a rage, but soon, AR/VR driven metaverse powered video games might be the norm.

Conclusion

The video gaming industry is enormous, and the demand for quality game developers is high. If you genuinely love video games, you can create a successful career in the industry with a bit of planning and determination. Game developers must have an innate understanding of gaming systems and strong technical skills, as listed above. We hope this article will serve as a guiding resource to build your career in game development.

Talent500 is the hub for the best Indian IT talent to find the best opportunities in the industry. We are a global platform used by Fortune 500 companies and startups to build their remote teams. Join us today!

4 Great tools for asynchronous communication among developers

Posted on July 21, 2022July 21, 2022 by seoteam

The communication architecture of a team decides how productive and efficient it is. Excessive communication through video calls, instant messaging, and phone calls can create bottlenecks countering productivity. It is why companies are adopting asynchronous communication tools to maintain the overall efficiency of teams.

Asynchronous communication offers many benefits for teams-from greater flexibility to more thoughtful project collaboration-integrating asynchronous methods of communication will make team members happier and more productive. This is especially true if the teams are hybrid or remote.

This article will explore the asynchronous work environment and communication tools best suited.

What is asynchronous communication?

Before we understand asynchronous communication, let’s explore the communication challenges faced by remote and hybrid teams.

When employees are scattered over different time zones or working remotely, synchronous communication is difficult. If you require instant responses for employees to adhere to, there will be immense pressure on them. Also, too many workplace interruptions result in context switching as developers will be shifting between code editor, browser, and messengers. Asynchronous communication provides relief from all this communication overhead.

Asynchronous communication refers to the setup in which two or more are available simultaneously for a conversation to take place. The communication does not happen in real-time so that each team member can communicate in their own time.

Companies can adopt some of the best asynchronous communication tools to provide a better work-life balance.

Here are the four great tools for asynchronous communication that can help teams be more productive without wasting too much time on communication.

1. Twist

Constantly distracted employees experience poor productivity and have a higher risk of burnout. Twist is a unique messaging tool against the current status quo of real-time communication between teams and team members. It is an excellent asynchronous communication tool that allows users to focus on productivity rather than responsiveness.

Twist eliminates the need for a constant presence on communication apps. Workers can take complete control of notifications using Twist. Employees can create channels to organize chats by subjects, projects, or departments. They can further micromanage notifications to decide when, how, and messages they want.

Another highly usable feature of this tool is its advanced search. Twist organizes your inbox into a searchable threaded conversation. You can find the relevant information with a simple search without scrolling through random chatter.

2. Yac

Yac is an audio-first asynchronous communication tool giving workers freedom from the always-on trap. You do not have to be always present to collaborate more efficiently on projects or to have more productive discussions.

Rather than having endless scrum meetings on Zoom, managers can use Yac to record a quick voice message about the project to keep their teams in sync. The tool offers many options for the most efficient communication.

Suppose an idea or component is too complicated to be explained in the text; you can clarify the concept by recording your voice and screen. Then, you can send the message directly to your colleagues from Yac. You can even create a shareable link of voice notes that you can attach with emails or share on Slack.

3. Stepsize

An excellent asynchronous communication tool for issue tracking, Stepsize is designed for developers. It allows developers to share issues and collaborate on fixes by directly adding codebase issues from VSCode and JetBrains editors. Stepsize will enable developers to add code comments, bookmark, and send notifications to other Project Management tools.

For instance, if your team is working on a web project involving frontend and backend developers. Stepsize can streamline communication between them by allowing developers to comment or bookmark issues referred by other developers. Engineering teams can reduce technical debt and improve coding standards using this tool.

4. 360learning

Learning and knowledge sharing are essential for developing teams and a company’s growth. However, onboarding and training new employees can be challenging with remote teams. For this purpose, you can use 360learning. A collaborative learning management system allows teams to work asynchronously on the internal knowledge base and learning resources. People with different expertise can contribute to the same course individually in their own time.

Suppose you are working on a new learning course for a new tool your company has developed. Using 360learning, designers, developers, and managers can asynchronously share their insights in the course without working together synchronously.

Takeaway

Asynchronous communication offers many advantages, especially for remote teams. The goal of communication is to make teams more productive. Using asynchronous communication tools listed here makes sense to allow teams to work more and spend less time getting distracted by notifications, calls, and messages.

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5 subreddits every developer should follow

Posted on July 20, 2022 by vallish

Among many online forums and communities, Reddit stands out because of its large number of members and quality of content. Reddit is not only the most prominent social site but also one of the most widely used questions and answers websites for developers. Whether you want quick coding help or looking for some project ideas, you will find them all on this website.

What are subreddits?

Reddit is a vast website with millions of topics and questions. Each topic has a dedicated forum known as a subreddit. There are over 1,30,000 active subreddits on the website, from which we have curated the best developer subreddits for you. We picked the most active communities relevant to modern-day programming challenges to help you learn and grow.

/r/LearnProgramming

The /r/LearnProgramming subreddit is the preferred choice for beginners to learn new programming languages. Here you will find wide-ranging topics from tutorials that beginners can start with to more complex challenges for experienced developers.

The subreddit has a very active community, with developers asking questions on several programming-related issues. In particular, you will find interesting questions about C programming languages. If you are starting programming or consider yourself a beginner, then you should subscribe to this subreddit as the community is vibrant and highly responsive.

/r/WebDev

For web designers and developers, the best subreddit to follow is the /r/webdev. It is the largest and most active community of web developers on Reddit. In this web community, all sorts of questions related to web development are asked, from the latest frameworks to new website development standards. Suppose you are a web developer who does freelancing. In that case, this subreddit will come in handy to connect with highly experienced web developers who can help you choose the right plug-ins and libraries for your project. The community is highly active, so you can expect quick replies if you have any technical questions. While most of the questions posted in WebDev are about front-end development, you can also ask back-end programming questions.

/r/JavaScript

JavaScript is an essential component of website development. There is a reason why JavaScript is used by over 90% of websites on the internet. If you want to add any interactivity or unique user experience to your website, you need JavaScript. We strongly recommend subscribing to the /r/javascript community.

It is one of the largest subreddits dedicated to topics related to JavaScript, such as frameworks, libraries, updates, and features. Over 80,000 subscribers of this subreddit actively share interesting tutorials and information about new JavaScript libraries. As a front-end developer, if you need help with JavaScript, this is a great place and community to be part of.

/r/OpenSource

Usually, developers take refuge in GitHub if there is anything related to open source projects. However, /r/opensource is an excellent alternative for GitHub to seek assistance related to open source projects. There are over 30,000 active contributors to this community on Reddit to assist developers seeking help related to their projects. This is one of the best subreddits for developers, irrespective of the specialization. Whether you are a front-end or back-end developer, you can hope to find answers to your queries here. It would help if you built your online portfolio as a beginner, and open source projects are a great way to show your expertise. You can subscribe to this community and share your knowledge with other developers.

/r/WordPress

WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that allows for building websites without coding knowledge. However, there is a lot of scope for developers to customize WordPress for their projects. Currently, this CMS powers 25% of the internet, and there is a huge demand for WordPress projects and developers.

If you are a PHP developer who works with WordPress, the /r/wordpress subreddit must be on your list of resources to follow. All sorts of questions exist in this Reddit community, from development queries to discussions about WordPress resources and how to make it faster. If you are a developer with much experience in WordPress development, you might want to explore /r/ProWordPress. It is one of the most exclusive pro WordPress developer subreddits with links to tutorials and resources for advanced WordPress techniques.

Conclusion

Developer subreddits are highly useful for asking questions and getting assistance when you are stuck. The five developers’ subreddits listed here are just the starting points for you to explore more. There are hundreds of subreddits for developers to gain from. If you still haven’t experienced the great value of Reddit, start from these subreddits.

And if you need any assistance regarding upskilling and interview preparations to land a job at your dream company, Talent500 can help. We are a platform that Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing start-ups use to build their remote teams. You can join us here.