DEV Community: akinsiraifedayo

Set Up SSH in 1 Minute Setup Like a Pro (With Some Fun Along the Way)

akinsiraifedayo — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 09:42:43 +0000

Ah, SSH. It's like your tech BFF that lets you teleport into servers without leaving your desk. If you've ever felt like setting it up is a secret handshake only hackers know, I'm here to let you in on the club. Let's do this step-by-step, with a sprinkle of geeky fun.

Step 1: Is SSH Installed?

First things first, let's see if you've got SSH installed. Open your terminal and type:

ssh -V

Pro tip: That's a capital V, not a lowercase v (you're welcome). If it spits out a version number, you're golden. If not, Google how to install SSH for your OS---I believe in you.

Step 2: Head to Your SSH Folder

Run this command to jump into your hidden SSH folder:

cd ~/.ssh/

This is where all your SSH magic happens. Think of it as your secret lair.

Step 3: Generate Your SSH Key

Ready to make some keys? Run this:

ssh-keygen -C "your_email_here"

The -C is just adding a comment, like your email, to the key. Follow the prompts, and when it asks for a name, get creative! Name it something like id_rsa_myserver or id_rsa_mycomputer. Naming things is half the fun.

When it asks for a passphrase, consider adding one. It's like giving your private key an extra layer of protection---a bit like 2FA for your SSH.

Step 4: Check Out Your New Keys

Run this:

ls

You should see two files:

id_rsa_something (your private key---NEVER share this)
id_rsa_something.pub (your public key---this is the one you'll share with the server)

Step 5: Add the Key to SSH

To use the key you just made, run:

ssh-add id_rsa_name_you_used

Step 6: Share the Public Key

Display the contents of your public key with:

cat id_rsa_name_you_used.pub

Copy it (Ctrl + Shift + C for terminal users). Now hop onto the server or computer you want to connect to.

Step 7: Paste the Key on the Other Computer

On the remote computer, navigate to its SSH folder:

cd ~/.ssh/

Then open the authorized_keys file:

vi authorized_keys

Press i to enter insert mode, and paste the key you copied. It should all be on one line.

When you're done, hit the Escape key, type :wq, and press Enter to save and exit.

Step 8: Connect Like a Boss

Now, back on your computer, connect to the server with:

ssh username@server_or_ip_address -p PORT

When prompted, type yes to add the server to your known hosts. And there you go---you're in! Easy, right?

Bonus Tips for Maximum Coolness

Use Aliases

Tired of typing long commands? Add an alias to your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host myserver
    HostName server_ip_or_hostname
    User username
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_name_you_used

Now, you can just type:

ssh myserver

Keep It Secure

Never share your private key---like, ever. If you're using keys, disable password logins on the server for extra security.

Debug Like a Pro

If something goes wrong, use:

ssh -vvv username@server_ip_or_hostname

This will give you a play-by-play of what's happening. It's like the director's cut of SSH troubleshooting.

There you have it---your quick-and-fun SSH setup guide! Now you're ready to take over (remote) servers with style. 🎉

Big O: The Secret Behind Speedy Code (And How It Can Save You from Becoming a Code Sloth)

akinsiraifedayo — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 16:31:43 +0000

Let me tell you a little story. Picture this: You're running late to catch a flight, and you're frantically speeding down the highway. The exit sign appears in the distance, and you think, "Yes! I'm going to make it!" You exit with a triumphant grin, only to find... a traffic jam. There's not a single car moving, and you're stuck in place, watching your hopes of catching that flight vanish into thin air. It's like that one episode of Friends when Ross tries to hurry through Central Park, but somehow the universe just doesn't want him to succeed.

Now, why did this happen? Simple. You didn't consider the exit's efficiency in the grand scheme of things. A slight diversion here, a bit of delay there, and boom---you're stuck. And guess what? This is exactly how Big O notation works in programming.

Before you click away, thinking this is just another nerdy jargon-filled post, stick with me. I promise this will be as fun as solving a mystery, but with a dash of code. So grab your detective hats, because we're about to break down Big O!

What is Big O Anyway?

Imagine you're at a fancy dinner party, and everyone's talking about something incredibly sophisticated---like quantum mechanics or the latest Doctor Who episode. You know just enough to nod along and look intelligent, but deep down, you have no idea what's going on. That's how I felt when I first encountered Big O notation.

But fear not, my friend! Big O is not here to make you feel like a clueless guest at a party. It's actually a way of measuring how fast or slow an algorithm is. It's like looking at a recipe---Big O is the measure of how long it'll take to make that cake, regardless of whether your oven is brand new or straight out of the 90s.

Why Do We Care About Big O?

Alright, so you've got a killer algorithm that solves problems like a pro, but here's the catch: Does it solve them quickly enough? Big O helps you figure out if your algorithm is going to turn into a sluggish sloth or if it's going to take off like the Flash. 🚀

Think about it: You could write a code that solves a problem, but if it takes forever to run, it's pretty much useless in the real world (unless you're trying to simulate the aging process of a tortoise---then, it's perfect).

Breaking Down Big O Notation: Let's Get Personal

Here's the thing: Big O notation isn't about the exact time an algorithm will take. It's about the rate at which the algorithm's runtime grows as the input size increases. Think of it as trying to eat a bowl of spaghetti (stay with me here) as the noodles keep multiplying. The more noodles there are, the longer it'll take you to finish. Simple, right?

Here are the common Big O "personalities" you'll meet along the way:

O(1) -- The Fast and the Furious

This is your fast lane---the Vin Diesel of Big O. It doesn't matter how big the input gets; the time it takes to run your code stays the same. You could double the number of noodles in that spaghetti bowl, and O(1) still won't break a sweat. It's like showing up to the party and knowing you're the fastest one there, no traffic jams, no slow walkers.

Example: Accessing a value in a list by index.

O(n) -- The Casual Walk in the Park

O(n) is the friend who doesn't rush, but still gets where they need to go eventually. As the input grows, the time taken grows at the same rate. Double the number of noodles, and it's going to take you twice as long to eat them.

Example: Looping through an array to find a specific element.

O(n²) -- The Social Butterfly (Too Many Friends)

Imagine you're trying to make a list of every possible pair of friends at a party. You'd have to compare every guest with every other guest---sounds like a lot, right? O(n²) takes the longest because it grows exponentially as the input increases. If there are 100 guests at the party, you're making 10,000 comparisons. Yikes!

Example: Nested loops, like checking all pairs in a 2D array.

O(log n) -- The Cool and Collected Binary Search

O(log n) is that person who takes the shortest path to the finish line, like someone using Google Maps to avoid traffic. They don't need to explore the entire space. Instead, they cut the search area in half with each step. It's efficient, like searching for a word in the dictionary---you don't start from A and check every single word, you jump to a spot and keep narrowing it down.

Example: Binary Search.

Big O in the Real World: Why It Matters

Now that you've met the Big O family, you might be wondering, "Why does this matter to me?" Well, let's think back to our traffic jam analogy. Imagine you're trying to write code for a large system with thousands or millions of users. If your code has O(n²) behavior, it's like trying to navigate a 20-lane highway during rush hour. Things are going to slow down, and your users will notice. But if you're using O(log n), you're that savvy driver who knows all the shortcuts and keeps everything running smoothly.

Wrapping Up: A Speedy Code, a Happy Life

Big O isn't just a bunch of abstract math that lives in the depths of computer science books. It's practical, and knowing how to optimize your algorithms can make a huge difference in how quickly your code runs, especially when it's dealing with massive amounts of data.

So the next time you're faced with a problem to solve, remember: Choose your algorithm like you'd choose a fast, reliable route to the airport. Avoid the traffic jams (i.e., avoid those O(n²) nested loops), and you'll find yourself in the fast lane to success.

And hey, if you ever get lost in the world of Big O again, just think of it as navigating through traffic---only this time, you've got the perfect GPS to guide you.

Happy coding, speedsters! 🚗💨

Unlocking Success: The Best Way to Validate Your Product Idea

akinsiraifedayo — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 06:12:04 +0000

Ok, I have to come clean. I don’t own a crystal ball. (They were sold out in Diagon Alley the last time I checked.)

But I have launched a lot of products.

Tip 1: Don’t let people take photos of you while you’re talking, you’ll always look weird.

If you’ve come of to one of our annual talks at Google campus then you’ll know that I’m the sort of person who has a new app idea every 5 minutes.

In fact, I should probably turn my Twitter into an ideas feed for entrepreneurs. It would be like a soup kitchen for the “idea-less”.

At the App Brewery, we specialise in teaching skills that turn ideas into products. So we meet a lot of entrepreneurs.

Many of the entrepreneurs I meet are very attached to their idea. I’ve heard the following sentence more often then I’ve found a sufficiently hoppy beer*.

“Hey Ma'am I really need your advice on my idea. Can you sign a non-disclosure agreement?” — An Entrepreneur

As my more eloquent VC friend puts it — “Anyone who’s launched a successful company, knows how much blood, sweat and tears are involved. A founder who’s obsessed with keeping their idea secret is falling at the first hurdle”.

There have been countless times when I’ve been helped in the most unexpected of ways. All from sharing my ideas freely.

It takes more than a great idea to build a successful product. And first-to-market is not always as important as you think it is.

Google Orkut, the world’s first social network.

Facebook was not the first social network (remember Orkut?). And Google was not the first search engine.

Instead of focusing on idea secrecy. The real focus should be on idea validation.

Yes, there’s a way of seeing if people will actually buy your product way before you lay down a single line of code.

If I ask 100 failed startups, would you have taken the opportunity to save yourselves all that time and money and figured out right at the start if people wanted your product? What do you think they would say?

Don’t get swept into the first-to-market obsession. Get serious about product-market-fit instead.

So what’s the best way of validating your idea?

Step 1 — Build a simple landing page.

Step 2 — Drive traffic towards it.

Step 3 — Look at your conversion rates.

Your conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of signups from the total number of people who land on your page.

This is like time-travel. You’re in the future where your product is already made and you’re promoting it. How many people, once they know about will actually sign up?

Which feature are they potentially most excited about?

You can figure out so much valuable information from this simple experiment and potentially save yourself money, time, energy and your sanity by doing this one simple thing. (If I were Buzzfeed, the title of this article would be “The one weird trick that will save your startup”).

If you enjoyed reading this article, we’d love it if you could recommend it and share it with your buddies. If you don’t have buddies, then just follow us, we’ll be your friend.

If you want to learn more about practical idea validation and step-by-step instructions on how you can build your own landing page, you’ll find all of that and more in our online courses for entrepreneurs.

App Marketing Course Curriculum

Struggling with a Limited Budget? Uncover 5 DIY Hacks to Instantly Elevate Your Product!

akinsiraifedayo — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 05:33:53 +0000

We all know that designers are amazing. The design of your product can often make or break a startup.

But what if you can’t persuade one to join your band based on a payment of cookies and doughnuts? (I’ve personally had more success with Czech Marlenka cake because you know, designers are fancy).

Who needs to read this article, if we can just stare at doughnuts all day.

In the last article, we spoke about step-1 of creating a hit product and that was idea validation — proving to yourself (and VCs) that people actually want your product.

So today we’re going to focus on step-2: designing your product.

We’ve gone into excruciating detail in the online course about typography, colour theory, wireframing, prototyping, UI and UX design.

So here, I wanted to boil it down a bit and just give you the 5 most actionable DIY steps to start improving your designs today.

1. Avoid Confusion
Design is at heart about solving problems. it’s not about making pretty gradients and giving everything a curvy edge.

Let’s think about a really simple problem, designing door handles.

I know, it’s not the most glamourous. But I bet you’ve come across one of these doors before:

Pushing a handle? WTF?

These are doors that are opened by pushing, but confusingly have a handle attached. These doors are so ubiquitous that they even got their own name. They’re called Norman doors, after Don Norman — the writer of the brilliant book “The Design of Everyday Things”.

We, humans, are used to environmental cues that indicate to us what we should do in certain situations. There is a line of people, I should get behind it (or if you’re in Asia, I should squeeze my way to the front).

Responding to these cues makes us faster and allows us to focus our energy on processing novel information. But at times, these heuristics can be abused by bad designers.

So evaluate your designs, are you making everything as simple and as clear as possible? Or are there things in it that could potentially confuse a user?

2. Create Contrast
Let’s think about another problem. You have to present the user with two options when they land on your landing page. You want to contrast the design of the two buttons so that users can distinguish which one is more important.

For example, when you close an unsaved Keynote presentation, you’ll see the above prompt. The contrast between “Don’t Save”, “Cancel” and “Save” pushes the user towards the more attention-grabbing blue save button.

So think about the hierarchy or importance of the buttons and you can subtly use contrast to nudge users towards one over the other.

The text reads: “Do you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Empire that was enacted on 13 March 1938, and do you vote for the party of our leader Adolf Hitler?” The huge circle says “Yes” and the tiny circle is for voting “No”.

3. Hierarchy
Design is all around us. The best proof of that is the 2017 Oscars. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty received the wrong envelope and accidentally read out “La La Land” instead of “Moonlight” as the winner of the best picture.

The reason for this could at least be partly down to the design of the announcement cards.

Here’s the culprit.

In the current design, the name of the award is the least important item at the bottom, in the smallest type and would be read last according to visual hierarchy. The name of the actress is also in the same hierarchy bracket as the name of the film, being the same weight, size and both in all-caps.

I took the liberty of redesigning their announcement card. Now the first thing the presenter sees is the award name and the next thing is the name of the winner. The name of the winner should be the most attention-grabbing and hence it’s the biggest, boldest, heaviest thing on the card.

Now no one can mess that up. (Congrats to Moonlight btw, great film!)

4. Alignment
This is probably one of the first things you learn in design school. Making grids and aligning elements.

Let’s say that we were commissioned to design some business cards.

Grid lines will help you immensely in this task. As you want to try and align and group elements together to provide a cohesive feel to the design.

This is something the design team at Canva made earlier.

Now say if they had broken the rule of alignment and tossed away all their grid lines. Here’s what that design might have looked like.

Ok, obviously I’ve exaggerated it a bit. But you’d be surprised, how often you come across terrible alignment on the web and in real-life. It’s one of those once-you-see-it, you can’t un-see it scenarios (like Lisa Simpson’s involvement in the London 2012 Olympic logo, I’ll let you google that one).

Take notice around you, see how often the rule of alignment is broken and the aesthetic result of that. in my experience, the worst culprits tend to be charity bake-sale posters. And the next time you’re making a design try to align and group elements together and see an immediate improvement.

5. White Space
Have you ever noticed the difference between an expensive store and a cheap one? The next time you go shopping, take a look at the difference in the number of items on display.

Now compare the top image with the bottom. If you had to guess the price of the same handbag, would they be priced the same?

This is the power of white space. Apple could have crammed in loads of devices into their stores. So that you don’t have to queue to confirm just how few ports the new Macbook Pro has. (The answer is too few).

Have white space around your designs works in the same way. It elevates it and makes everything look instantly more expensive.

Image courtesy of the Canva team

Remember, just because there is space in your design, doesn’t mean you have to fill it. Leave some white space for the imagination.

Alright guys, hope you enjoyed our second instalment of how to make products from beginning to end. If you’re interested in learning more about design then head over to our online platform and learn about typography, color theory, wireframing prototyping and lots more design goodness.