Category: C/C++

Want to make a career out of programming in 30 days?

by Taree6205in C/C++, C#, HTML/CSS, Javascript, Web, Web DevelopmentLeave a Comment on Want to make a career out of programming in 30 days?

Want to make a career out of programming in 30 days? Here are the things you need to know and the path you need to follow.

What are Computer Programming Languages?

Programming languages are just like human based languages, they are a set of languages that humans can use to communicate to computers, the portion of the language that computer understands is called a binary when the commands given to computer is translated to binary is called compiling, every language that exists taking the example of python to C have their own unique features although some times there are things that are in common.

These languages that are a piece of machine intelligence allows computers to process large and complex bulk of information in no time for example, if a person is given a list of random human names and is asked to place them in alphabetical order, chances are that it will take a good amount of time and will include number of errors.

MAKING A CAREER OUT OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES:

Programmers are a type of architects, digital architects you can say to be precise who give their time and effort to create new and amazing technologies and it is a fantastic profession, and you have probably found yourself thinking, sitting on your couch, wondering how to become a programmer.

Take a deep breath and give it a thought about all the online things you have done today like all tech-savvy people out there, you have probably checked your emails, scrolled through your social media and browsed through your favorite websites, but have you ever imagined that the virtual world that you visit every day and go by in seconds is the result of hours long full of fatigue programming work.

Programming is a fantastic career path with great potential for growth, especially since so much of our lives are now lived online and here are some statistics to prove you that

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the profession will grow by a full 13 percent between 2018 and 2028 twice the average rate of growth expected for all other occupations. 

According to PayScale, the majority of programmers feel happy about their success, confident in their skills, and secure about their financial futures; the profession enjoys a 4.5 ranking (out of 5) for satisfaction.

Perhaps you also wish to be a part of this community. If yes, here are the 5 steps you can follow in becoming a successful programmer:

  1. Decide Which Industry You are Interested In
  2. Identify the Languages You Need to Learn
  3. Start Learning Independently
  4. Start Your Own Projects
  5. Begin Looking for Jobs

Top 10 programming languages:

1. Python

 Python is greatly regarded as a programming language that is easy to learn, due to its simple syntax, and a toolkit, in fact, it’s the first language that many students learn in the field of programming.

2. JavaScript

JavaScript is the most popular programming language for building interactive websites.

3. Java

Java is the programming language most commonly linked with the development of client-server applications, which are used by large businesses with masses of data around the world.

4. C#

 Microsoft developed C# as a faster and more secure variant of C. It is fully combined with Microsoft’s .NET software framework, which supports the development of applications for Windows, browser plug-ins, and mobile devices.

5. C

 Along with Python and Java, C forms a “good foundation” for learning how to program, As one of the first programming languages ever developed, C has served as the foundation for writing more modern languages such as Python, Ruby, and PHP.

6. C++

 C++ is an extension of C that works well for programming the systems that run applications, as opposed to the applications themselves. C++ also works well for multi-device and multi-platform systems. Over time, programmers have written a large set of libraries and compilers for C++.

7. Go

Also referred to as Golang, Go was developed by Google to be an efficient, readable, and secure language for system-level programming. It works well for distributed systems, in which systems are located on different networks and need to communicate by sending messages to each other. While it is a relatively new language, Go has a large standards library and is taking over the market rapidly.

8. R

R is heavily used in statistical analytics and machine learning applications. The language is extensible and runs on many operating systems. Many large companies have adopted R in order to analyze their massive data sets, so programmers who know R are in great demand. 

9. Swift

Swift is Apple’s language for developing applications for Mac computers and Apple’s mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Like many modern programming languages, Swift has a highly readable syntax, runs code quickly.

10. PHPs

PHP is widely used for server-side web development, when a website frequently requests information from a server.

Why database should be taught before programming in universities?

by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin .Net, Android, AngularJS, ASP.Net, C/C++, C#, Database, HTML/CSS, Javascript, jQuery, MS SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PHP, Ruby, Web Development, XMLLeave a Comment on Why database should be taught before programming in universities?
Database Programming
Learn Database before Coding

Often students from the initial semester ask me how do we store our data in our programming projects? When students join university to learn about computer science and technology they are usually taught programming first in courses like introduction to programming. As part of the coursework, students are required to work on a project. The majority of the projects, in fact almost all projects involve data handling and that data needs to be stored somewhere, usually in databases.

Problems Students Face

As a novice students don’t know how to store data. One option is to store data in plain text files if filing is taught to them but in that case, their project becomes too complex for them. In my opinion, file format is an advanced topic for students that have just started learning how to program. So, students get stuck on where and how to store data. They create variables and arrays to store data in memory but that is not very useful until they have the option to store their data somewhere permanently that they can retrieve later. Otherwise, every time they run their project they have to feed data from the beginning.

Teach Database Before Programming

If universities modify their courses and add database in the first semester and replace programming courses with it then it would be easier for students to get started in computer science degree. Introduction to databases is a relatively easier course than programming and students will know what a database is, how to store data in the database, and how to retrieve it later using SQL. Then in the next semester if they do a programming course then it will require only one lecture to teach them how to access a database from your code and how to store and retrieve data. That will make their projects more valuable and make more sense to them and they can take it to an advanced level in forthcoming courses.

Your Take?

What is your opinion? Please, let me know in the comments.

Click here to read more about Databases.

One reason why you should refactor your code often

by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin .Net, AngularJS, C/C++, C#, Javascript, jQuery, PHP, Project Management, Ruby, Web, Web DevelopmentLeave a Comment on One reason why you should refactor your code often

Once upon a time, a consultant made a visit to a development project. The consultant looked at some of the code that had been written; there was a class hierarchy at the center of the system. As he wandered through the hierarchy, the consultant saw that it was rather messy. The higher level classes made certain assumptions about how the classes would work, assumptions that were embodied in inherited code. That code didn’t suit all the subclasses, however, and was overridden quite heavily. If the superclass had been modified a little, then much less overriding would have been necessary. In other places, some of the intentions of the superclass had not been properly understood, and the behaviour present in the superclass was duplicated. In yet other places several subclasses did the same thing with code that could clearly be moved up the hierarchy.

The consultant recommended to the project management that the code be looked at and cleaned up, but the project management didn’t seem enthusiastic. The code seemed to work and there were considerable schedule pressures. The managers said they would get around to it at some later point.

The consultant had also shown the programmers who had worked on the hierarchy what was
going on. The programmers were keen and saw the problem. They knew that it wasn’t really their fault; sometimes a new pair of eyes is needed to spot the problem. So the programmers spent a day or two cleaning up the hierarchy. When they were finished, the programmers removed half the code in the hierarchy without reducing its functionality. They were pleased with the result and found that it became quicker and easier both to add new classes to the hierarchy and to use the classes in the rest of the system.

The project management was not pleased. Schedules were tight and there was a lot of work to
do. These two programmers had spent two days doing work that had done nothing to add the
many features the system had to deliver in a few months’ time. The old code had worked just fine. So the design was a bit more “pure” and a bit more “clean.” The project had to ship code that worked, not code that would please an academic. The consultant suggested that this cleaning up be done on other central parts of the system. Such an activity might halt the project for a week or two. All this activity was devoted to making the code look better, not to make it do anything that it didn’t already do.

How do you feel about this story? Do you think the consultant was right to suggest further clean-up? Or do you follow that old engineering adage, “if it works, don’t fix it”?

Six months later the project failed, in large part because the code was too complex to debug or to tune to acceptable performance. The consultant was brought in to restart the project, an exercise that involved rewriting almost the whole system from scratch. He did several things differently, but one of the most important was to insist on continuous cleaning up of the code using refactoring.

This is an excerpt from the book preface “Refactoring – by Martin Fowler”.

How to kill your time by hardcoding?

by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin C/C++, C#, PHP, Project Management, Technology, Web DevelopmentLeave a Comment on How to kill your time by hardcoding?

My colleague asked me to help him solve an issue he was facing. I sat with him and after spending more than half an hour I realized that someone has hardcoded the server name :@ while we were assuming that we have already moved to another server.

The main thing to realize here is that if we have spent few more minutes in making the server name configurable at first place then we could have saved hours that we spent later just to find out that server name was hard-coded. Not doing this results in frustration, waste of time, de-motivation, brings down the moral of the team, and finally kills productivity and you lose credibility.

Why code bad instead of clean code?

by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin C/C++, PHP, Project Management, TechnologyLeave a Comment on Why code bad instead of clean code?

I was reading the book Clean Code – A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Rober C. Martin Series. A section in chapter one caught my attention and remind me of code and reasons that I got for writing bad code and designing bad solution. Now I think this is a good argument against it which I am quoting here from the book.

“Have you ever waded through a mess so grave that it took weeks to do what should have taken hours? Have you seen what should have been a one-line change, made instead in hundreds of different modules? These symptoms are all too common. Why does this happen to code? Why does good code rot so quickly into bad code? We have lots of explanations for it. We complain that the requirements changed in ways that thwart the original design. We bemoan the schedules that were too tight to do things right.
We blather about stupid managers and intolerant customers and useless marketing types and telephone sanitizers. But the fault, dear Dilbert, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. We are unprofessional.
This may be a bitter pill to swallow. How could this mess be our fault? What about the requirements? What about the schedule? What about the stupid managers and the useless marketing types? Don’t they bear some of the blame?
No. The managers and marketers look to us for the information they need to make promises and commitments; and even when they don’t look to us, we should not be shy about telling them what we think. The users look to us to validate the way the requirements
will fit into the system. The project managers look to us to help work out the schedule. We are deeply complicit in the planning of the project and share a great deal of the responsibility for any failures; especially if those failures have to do with bad code! “But wait!” you say. “If I don’t do what my manager says, I’ll be fired.” Probably not. Most managers want the truth, even when they don’t act like it. Most managers want good code, even when they are obsessing about the schedule. They may defend the schedule and requirements with passion; but that’s their job. It’s your job to defend the code with equal passion.
To drive this point home, what if you were a doctor and had a patient who demanded that you stop all the silly and-washing in preparation for surgery because it was taking too much time?2 Clearly the patient is the boss; and yet the doctor should absolutely refuse to comply. Why? Because the doctor knows more than the patient about the risks of disease and infection. It would be unprofessional (never mind criminal) for the doctor to comply with the patient.
So too it is unprofessional for programmers to bend to the will of managers who don’t understand the risks of making messes.”

Breaking problem into code

by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin C/C++, Project Management, TechnologyLeave a Comment on Breaking problem into code

Let us consider an example. If you have two boxes say BoxA and BoxB, and there are few balls of different colors, let’s say 5 balls (red, blue, green, yellow, and white) in BoxA, and you want to move one ball, say red ball from BoxA to BoxB. What will be the steps? If you can make a flow chart of it then its good, but if you find it difficult to make a flow chart of it then you need to do some hard work to become a programmer.

I asked this to someone and guess how he solved it. Here is his solution. Take out all balls from BoxA, then pick the red ball, put it in BoxB, and then put all remaining balls back in BoxA.

Fine! it worked. But why would you take out all balls if you can only take out red ball and move it to next box?

Let’s move this to programming side. In the above mentioned scenario we will have two database tables, boxes, and balls. boxes will have boxid as PK, name, and other details. Keep it simple so we don’t get lost in other details. balls table has ballid as PK, name, boxid as FK, and other details. boxes table has two records with 1 and BoxA as its boxid and name. balls table will have 5 records with id between 1 to 5 and red, blue, green, yellow, and white as their names, and all balls will have 1 in boxid field which is FK to boxes table.

Now if we adopt the first solution then it will run following queries (these are pseudo queries not actual SQL queries):

– select all balls where boxid=1 (so we can have a list of all balls before deleting them from database)
– delete from balls where boxid=1
– insert into balls values ballid=1, name=red ball, boxid=2
– insert into balls values
(ballid=2, name=blue ball, boxid=1)
(ballid=3, name=green ball, boxid=1)
(ballid=4, name=yellow ball, boxid=1)
(ballid=5, name=white ball, boxid=1)

Or even worse if we use multiple insert queries. It will run from 4 to 7 queries.

Now let’s see what happens if we just perform operation on the red ball and don’t touch other balls.

– update balls set boxid=2 where ballid=1; /* ball with id 1 is the red ball */

Wow, just one query and we’re done! We saved 3 to 6 queries. Imagine this scenario for a high traffic website or any other application, we can improve the performance with a big difference by just implementing correct logic to solve a problem.

Common coding pitfalls developers should avoid

by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin C/C++, C#, Microsoft, PHP, Technology, Web, Web Development, Windows1 Comment on Common coding pitfalls developers should avoid

This article highlights some common coding pitfalls that developers make. I’ll elaborate on it with a simple example.

$obj2->FuncOne( $obj1->GetData() );
$obj2->FuncTwo( $obj1->GetData() );

The result of GetData is passed to FuncOne and FuncTwo in two subsequent calls. What is the benefit of this approach? A simple answer is to save memory, by not using any variable to save the result. This argument was very strong until there were memories with very less capacity. But now even home user has a system with memory in GBs. So this practice is not good in today’s world.

So, what’s the drawback of this approach? Performance degradation. But how can it degrade the performance? Let me explain a bit. Consider a situation where GetData runs a query on database to fetch some data from multiple tables by joining them. Joins themselves are heavy by nature. So when GetData is called twice it will run query twice, and suppose that this code snippet is a part of a heavy process that can be called by multiple users on the web or in an enterprise application, just imagine what will happen to the database and application itself. The performance of the application will be degraded. Users of your application will get frustrated and at the end you will lose business.

Now let’s look at it from another perspective. This approach will also increase the CPU workload. When GetData will be called it will jump from one branch instruction to another and before that, it has to save the current address to the stack so it can pop it back when it returns back to the caller function. This has to be done every time when function is called. And when function performs heavy computation it needs more memory and processing power, increasing the footprint of your application and execution time. So you’re wasting your servant’s (CPU) time and energy by assigning it the same task twice.

Other drawbacks can be that code is more error-prone and is difficult to debug and troubleshoot, and code maintenance is high, especially when you have to modify the code to meet new requirements.

You can make your application and code much better and more efficient by adhering to a few simple best practices. In this case, the rule is that

“If result of a function is needed more than once then don’t call that function multiple times. Save the result of that function in a variable and use that variable instead. “

In view of this, the above code could be written like this.

my $result = $obj1->GetData();
$obj2->FuncOne( $result );
$obj2->FuncTwo( $result );

There is one extra line of code in the above example but is more efficient and much more readable than the previous one.

Let’s see another example.

my $result = $obj1->GetData();
$result = { %$result, %$someData };
$obj2->FuncOne( $result );
$obj2->FuncTwo( $obj1->GetData() );

In this example, the developer fetches the result, appends another previously obtained data, and passes it to FuncOne. Then he needs the same result, so he called GetData one more time. Now again, we can write this code in a much more efficient manner.

my $result = $obj1->GetData();
my $result2 = $result;

$result = { %$result, %$someData };

$obj2->FuncOne( $result );
$obj2->FuncTwo( $result2 );

Here we have saved another call to GetData, which might be performing some heavy computation or running a heavy query with joining multiple tables in it.