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?

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.

Mark parent category menu active on single custom post view in WordPress

Recently I developed a theme for one of my clients and I had to highlight the menu item of the parent category in the main menu when one of its associated single custom posts was viewed. For that, I had to add an action in my functions.php file for nav_menu_css_class. It returns the ‘active’ class, which WordPress adds to the parent category menu item in the main menu. You can see the code at Gist here or below.

<?php

add_action('nav_menu_css_class', 'add_current_nav_class', 10, 2 );

function add_current_nav_class($classes, $item) {
// Getting the current post details
global $post;

// Getting the post type of the current post
$current_post_type = get_post_type_object(get_post_type($post->ID));
$current_post_type_slug = $current_post_type->rewrite['slug'];

// Getting the URL of the menu item
$menu_slug = strtolower(trim($item->url));

// If the menu item URL contains the current post types slug add the current-menu-item class
if (strpos($menu_slug,$current_post_type_slug) !== false) {
$classes[] = 'active';
}

// Return the corrected set of classes to be added to the menu item
return $classes;
}
?>

Adding above code in you functions.php file will do the trick.

Click here to read more on WordPress.

Displaying Multiline Title in WordPress

In WordPress when the title is written it is usually displayed in a single line on front-end until it is too long to display in one line. But if you want to write the title in multiline and want to line break the title after a certain word how can you do that?

It is pretty simple. Since we know the fact that when the title is displayed it is a heading which is displayed using an HTML tag of course. So, taking benefit of HTML we can just insert an HTML line break element <br/> just after the word in our title where we want the line break. Like this:

“This is my title <br/> with my own line break”

WordPress Multiline Title

This will be displayed in two lines when you publish the post.

Read more about WordPress.

Different color for each menu item in WordPress

In a recent project, I got a requirement that each menu item should be highlighted in a different color when visited. The menu items and their required active colors were:

  • Home – Green
  • Portfolio – Blue
  • Team – Yellow
  • Contact – Red

These colors were to be applied only when that page is being visited otherwise color of the menu item should be the default black color.

So, if a user is visiting the home page then the menu item should something like this

home_menu.png

And if the user is visiting the Portfolio page then the menu should be something like this

portoflio_menu.png

Considering that this was a WordPress theme project where we were using Understrap as a base theme which is based on Twitter Bootstrap. So, when user visits, for example, a home page WordPress will attach a .active CSS class to it. Taking advantage of that we added different classes for each menu item and then used the following rule to make menu item colors different:

.navbar-nav > .home.active > a {
    color: green!important;
}
.navbar-nav > .portfolio.active > a {
    color: blue!important;
}
.navbar-nav > .team.active > a {
    color: yellow!important;
}
.navbar-nav > .connect.active > a {
    color: red!important;
}

CSS Class Chaining Method

We utilized the class chaining method here. If you note that .home.active classes are chained together without space and which means it will select an element with both these classes.
That did the trick and all menu items were in a different color.