Tech meetup during holidays, thoughts ?

Sometimes the thirst for 'creating applications' just keeps increasing.

Now, do you have the motivation to do something new and create something of your own that can do some magical stuff ? Tech can help you with that!

Let's have tech meetups during holidays and have sessions and share what we know. Let's have workshops and hands on sessions and learn stuff! What do ya say ?

There are lots of benefits to this :

1. As coders and people of the tech industry, we will be able to learn some new stuff, which is really important, to keep ourselves up to date.

2. We get to know new stuff, which is out of our comfort zone and areas of expertise. Like in my case, I have no idea what is Machine Learning, what Artificial Intelligence is, so, if someone comes up with a session about it, well, it would give me some idea about what it is. And with some demos and implementation details, the sessions would just be - "Wow"

3. People get to know what they like. Let's face it -  people can't really judge if they like something or not just by hearing about it. Sometimes they need to be told more about it, so that they can decide that they like it or not. But yeah, there is really no measure of "more" over there. We just have to try the best to learn something so that we can decide if it really motivates you and if you like it. And yeah, people might find new stuff that they really like and may go mad about it and continue the madness for years. I still remember how a very simple Android Guest Lecture motivated me "try" Android development, which I ended up doing for long (with too much craze) for my small pet projects for college and I still develop some small stuff in Android.

4. New things add to your interest, knowledge and as a bonus, to your resume, for your future! It's so cool when you can actually put up what you like and know, in your resume.

5. We can have pair programming sessions. Code is not easy to learn. So, let's try to make it easy through one-on-one discussions and with help from a small active community (people at the meetup) which is entirely different from an online forum.

I can't think of more benefits, help me with it some some comments ?

What are your thoughts ? Please send feedback to karuppiah7890@gmail.com This is just an idea. If many people agree to it, and if we get some volunteers, then we could just start it up. And after college starts, we can continue it as part of iCellor continue it during the evenings in college, or something similar, I don't know.

And even if it the idea is a failure, those who like the idea, can check out http://meetup.com/ and look out for such tech meetups in companies and stuff. And there are other types of meetups too, in the site.

Algorithm Visualizer 2

Yet another site to visualize how algorithms work and how each step happens :)

https://www.cs.usfca.edu/~galles/visualization/Algorithms.html

If you find any more, please do comment! I guess I will start looking for more too. Since not all sites show everything. There's always something, which is missed out.

Start learning. Start reading. Start listening.

There are many ways to learn. Books. Videos. Professors. Friends ( So true. )

Find your way. But I would say, try all of them. Since doing the same thing again and again might make you feel fatigue. See videos, and if it starts getting boring, take a break, read something about what that video you just saw and get back to the video. Or just continue with reading if the book pleasures your eyes :D

Ask doubts to your professors if you think commenting on a tutorial video and getting a response will take a lot of time. Or Google your doubts. Be patient and keep searching till you get it.

Or talk to friends and discuss doubts. You could also discuss with friends about what you learned and learn from them and teach them too. Explaining a concept is one of the best ways to learn the concept. So, teach and learn. Don't have a friend to teach ? Write a blog like me :P or take a seminar in your deserted room ;) And it would be cooler to do it in front of a mirror :P Or, better, take a seminar in your class ! That is if you have the guts :P (Yes, I am basically challenging you to take a seminar)

These are some ways to just keep learning and feel good that you are better than what you were yesterday. That's the only thing you should care about. Don't compare yourself with others. I know it's a hard thing. Still. At least try not to do it.

And here's a link to a video playlist that I found in YouTube. Many must have tried it out. The videos look awesome to me. It's "Introduction to Algorithms" by MIT OpenCourseWare.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP61Oq3tWYp6V_F-5jb5L2iHb

I love to write about such stuff that I learn. And even make tutorial PDFs. But the actual source is the best any day :) So, I recommend you to watch the above series. At least a few of them. Ones that you feel that you must surely watch.

Algorithm Visualizer

Learning Algorithms ? Wanna visualize how they work ? Try this site! It has a lot of algorithms implemented in JavaScript ( Yes! Google more about Js :P ) and they have a algorithm visualizer to visualize how the algorithm does each pass (step) and finds the final output.

http://algo-visualizer.jasonpark.me/

If you code in Js, then you can check the code too :)

Get to know Amazon! :D

Okay, so, Amazon is coming for placements! Woah! Many look forward to it! And are working hard towards it.

I thought I will put up a post about it. So, here's the deal. I heard there's gonna be a lot of stages in the selection process and a weird name was given to the word "stages". They called it "hurdles". No wonder.

Anyways, from the mail that we got, looks like we will surely have an aptitude test and a face to face interview. People would already be preparing for the aptitude test, or at least will know what to prepare and would start soon.

But what about the interview ? It's always a tricky thing. Always. So, one of the things that came to my mind was - What if they ask me about the company ? About their products ?

Of course every company expects students ( who attend the interviews ) to know about them and their products, and their value. And it kind of makes sense. Well, if you wanna join their company, you must have a better reason (to join them) than just money, because they are looking for such kind of minds and not just money minded freaks. And to prove that you have a better reason, is by telling how cool their products are and how the cool the company is, in terms of present and the past.

Most people read about the company's history and know the present status too. Some check out the annual turn around and all. I hardly remember all this, but sadly, the recruiters want you to kinda know the rough values of this too.

Apart from these, one of the cool things you should know about the company is their products! And as of Amazon is concerned, don't worry, you don't have to act as though you like their products to impress the recruiter... because when you get to know their products, you will literally love it!

Now, off to the products, the main topic of this post!! I will try to list the famous products first, and in the order of how they are famous in terms of a normal man and not an IT person.

You already know Amazon has a Online Shopping site, of course. It's very famous. We in India, use the word "Amazon" to mostly refer to their Online Shopping Store. They are known for their customer service and have beaten Flipkart many times in those aspects. [ Calm down Flipkart lovers. Sorry. Truth being spoken. Can't help it. ]

Next they are famous for their Amazon Kindle Reader. You must have seen a lot of this in Ads and stuff. The Kindle is cool. No more words. Just Google them out. There are different types with different features actually. Based on the price of course.

And then to support their Kindle Readers with Ebooks, they have a very big Online Book Store with Ebooks.

And then there's Amazon Music to listen to songs and Amazon Video ( like Netflix ) to stream Movies, TV Shows etc. There's something called Prime Music and Video actually. Amazon Prime is like some Pro membership package for Music, Videos, Books and even photo storage ( like Google Photos I guess). Check out their sites :

Amazon Music
Amazon Video
Amazon Prime

Then they have their own Tablets, called Fire Tablets. I own one. They are pretty decent. It runs on Fire OS. Don't confuse that with Firefox OS, which is different and was made by Mozilla. Fire OS is built exclusively for Amazon Fire Tablets and the OS is built on top of Android. And they have the OS has a play store too! Called Amazon Play Store. But doesn't have much Apps sadly. Though all Apps are just APKs. Remember ? Fire OS is built on top of Android. So, what works in Android should work here too, which is kinda logical and it is correct too, in this case. There's more to the Play Store stuff, relating to Google Play Store and all. Look it up yourself.

Now, the last one I wanna talk about is Amazon Web Services. Now, most of you reading this might be in a confused state. Some of you might have heard the name if you had attended the Amazon Echo product intro which an Amazon Official gave in our college. Anyways, if you go look into this Wikipedia Page of Amazon, it says that the company - " is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company ". We know what the first is. It is kinda world famous. But the second ? Even the second is kinda world famous, just among developers and IT people though :P That's why it comes up as one of the main things in Amazon's Wiki Page.

Amazon Web Services is what they are referring to. It's called AWS.

AWS provides Cloud Computing Services. And their delivery model or service model is - IaaS - Infrastructure As A Service. There are some more delivery models like, SaaS and PaaS.

And there are so many services that they provide! Just now I was counting. There are at least more than 40 services I guess, but I was sleeping when I counted, so, never mind the count. But it's big fore sure. And each service is super cool. And lots and lots of companies use AWS. To know more about all this, you need to check about Cloud Computing first and then about SaaS, PaaS, and then IaaS. Since we are learning Grid and Cloud Computing as a course, learning this shouldn't be a problem and you won't regret it too :P just in case you are the kind of person who studies only if things are useful in exam.

That's all I wanted to say about the products and services of Amazon. Actually, I would say, try AWS for free if you are a developer. And the free period is for 12 months ! 1 year that is ! But it's worth it to try. :)

Learn Front End Development at FreeCodeCamp Now !

This post is for Web Developers or ones who wanna become Web Developers!

Know how to code sites in HTML,CSS and JavaScript ? Know how to create Cool sites with the same set of technologies ? Know all the new trends in the Front End Development ?

Get to know them using www.freecodecamp.com site. The site teaches Web Development - Front End and Back End too. But if you are a starter, you better go for Front End first. It has a lot of easy tutorials and challenges and it ain't one of those tutorials with hundreds of videos. Did you know that videos are not a good way to learn ? You get tired and fatigue. Free Code Camp uses written tutorials and works in a " Do and Learn" manner. You should try it once and you will love it ! :) Many sites use this technique now. Like www.codecademy.com too.

Have fun learning Web Development!

What Do Self-Taught Web Developers Wish They Had Known Before They Started?

A good article

This is an article about how NOT to learn code and how to learn code the right way by a famous guy Quincy Larson, the one who started freeCodeCamp:

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-cautionary-tale-of-learning-to-code-my-own-eddb24d9d5a7#.b5jgvci03

Firefox Add-ons

Ever wondered how browser extensions are created ? Here's a tutorial for knowing how, with respect to Firefox!

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2014/06/05/how-to-develop-firefox-extension/

Developing using one the techniques mentioned in the above article is using Add-ons SDK :

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK

Create Animation Videos for Presentation

Recently, my friend Gokul used a Web based tool to present his idea, in the form of an animation video, for one of his projects. It looked quite good and was an easy to use tool too.

It's called GoAnimate : www.goanimate.com . Of course, it costs money, but has a free trial for 14 days.

There are some more like these (not sure if all have a pricing).
Check them out here :

http://www.creativebloq.com/animation/tools-animations-10134750

http://www.razorsocial.com/animated-videos/

I just wanted to share this, because many people are into projects and are presenting ideas and stuff, in conferences and for internal funding projects etc.

These tools might come handy in any presentation!

Make Cross Platform Apps with HTML,CSS,JavaScript !

Did you know that you can make Apps with just HTML, CSS and JavaScript ? Apps for Android, iOS, and Windows too ! And all, with the same code! Cool isn't it ?

Here's a good theoretical explanation for how the Apps work :
[ Read note given below before reading the article ]

An Introduction to Cordova: Basics - Envato Tuts+ Code Tutorial

Note : For those who don't know what WebView means, WebView is just a type of View like TextView in Android, and WebView is used to show Webpages, given URLs. Google it out to know more.

A hand's on session in text form :
An Introduction to Cordova: Example - Envato Tuts+ Code Tutorial

A hand's on session through video tutorial :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRSXR68yd98

You can check more about Cordova, PhoneGap and related stuff.

Jade and Sass

What is Jade ? O.o and Sass ??

These are stuff used in Web Designing! I am currently learning Web Development stuff and creating sites, so I came across a few terms which sounded weird at first but then later, the concepts sounded cool!

Let's start with Sass!

Sass is a CSS preprocessor. Now, now. What is that ? And preprocessor ? CSS is the stylesheet you use in websites. And when you make really big websites, with lots of styles and stuff, it becomes really tough to maintain the stylesheet. It will have may be 100s of lines or may be a lot more when it comes to huge websites. And many components of the site will have some related or similar properties. So, when you change the styles, you have to change the related ones too! That's tiring! And then you gotta take care of writing styles based on different browsers, like Firefox, Chrome, IE.

What if you could use variables and also reuse code in CSS ? And use some more concepts of programming in here, to make life easier ? That's what Sass does!

You write code in a special language, with variables, nesting and stuff and then compile it to get CSS files.

To understand better, read this !

http://sass-lang.com/guide

or see this :

Understand CSS preprocessors in 60 Seconds !

If you are really too much into Web Designing and stuff, you must look into other CSS preprocessors too ! Like Less, Stylus etc

Few Other CSS preprocessors

So, What is Jade now?

When I first checked out about Jade, I understood that : Jade is to HTML, like how Sass is to CSS. Jade is like a HTML preprocessor. But it's called a template engine. Just some jargons. Look at this to understand more !

http://jade-lang.com/

Understand Jade in 60 Seconds !

Know any cool Web Designing / Web Development stuff ? Mail me to post it out here !

If you feel this post is informative, just share it! :)
Do comment your feedbacks below!

Get ready to learn some new Crazy Cool Tech stuff and IT Jargons!

Welcome All !

Wassup ? Feeling bored ? Wanna do something productive ? Do you feel that you are whiling away time and procrastinating ? Just bump in here and learn something new or may be even post something new ! :D Please don't hesitate to post stuff !

The blog will have techy posts with good hash tags describing the content, so that it will be easy to search the content later !

I will post stuff whenever I find something new and cool! And if long posts or long paras are boring to you, don't worry, I will link you up to small articles or short videos explaining stuff in short :)