DEV Community: Amruta Ranade

What's your favorite article that lives in your head rent-free?

Amruta Ranade — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 15:22:30 +0000

I found myself randomly thinking about Vitor Paladini's excellent article about Technical Writing Tips for Non-Native English speakers and made me wonder: does anyone else have articles that are so relevant and well-written that they stay with you long after? Tell me in the comments!

What's your favorite programming newsletter?

Amruta Ranade — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 14:42:07 +0000

I start every morning with the Morning Brew (for tech/business news) and Skimm (for world news) and would love to add a tech/programming newsletter to the mix. What's your favorite newsletter?

5 Beginner-Friendly Coding Livestreams to Learn Programming

Amruta Ranade — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 22:55:26 +0000

2020 has been a great year for code livestreams. Stuck at home, developers took to their OBS setups to share their coding projects with their peers. And viewers tuned in to watch a fellow developer struggle through a programming issue, get stuck, google things, and eventually figure things out, and found their coding communities in the process.

But if you are a code newbie, you might find it daunting to follow along with the experienced developers' livestreams. Fear not, for you have your own peers learning new tech stacks live! Here are five of our favorite beginner-friendly streamers that you can watch to learn programming:

Learn full-stack web development with Leon

Leon Noel (https://www.twitch.tv/learnwithleon) runs a free Web Dev Bootcamp live on Twitch every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30 PM EST. The goal of the bootcamp is to help those affected by the pandemic as well as help underrepresented folks learn web development and get hired as software engineers. You can also bring your questions to the Office Hours on Saturdays at 12 PM EST.

Learn Python with Pachi

Pachi Carlson is currently learning Python live on her Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/pachicodes) on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 AM EST.

Learn Golang with Paul

Paul Kernfeld is currently learning Golang from scratch every Friday at 12 PM EST on Cockroach Labs' Twitch channel.

Learn Rust with Prince

Prince Wilson is currently learning Rust with Exercism.io on his Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/maxcellw)

Learn JavaScript with CJ

The creator of the popular coding YouTube channel (Coding Garden) also has an excellent Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/codinggarden) for full-stack app projects, tutorials, and Q&A sessions (mostly featuring JavaScript).

Bonus streams

Follow along Jeseekia Vaughn's awesome journey through 100 Days of Code: https://www.twitch.tv/metadevgirl
Want to get some of your own coding done? Join Mayuko (https://www.twitch.tv/hellomayuko) for a chill co-working stream for pomodoro coding sprints.

What’s So Special About Spatial Data?

Amruta Ranade — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 21:53:00 +0000

How is Lyft able to tell you how far away your driver is? How does DoorDash give accurate estimates for the food you just ordered? Both of these satisfying user experiences are possible because of spatial data. In this blog, we’ll cover the basics of spatial data and then show some examples of common applications and use cases that use spatial data.

What is Spatial Data?

Spatial Data, often referred to as geospatial data, is any data that contains information about a specific location. In layman’s terms, spatial data is data about location. You may not realize it, but you’re already familiar with spatial data because you interact with it whenever you open your map application to look for the nearest gas station or to see the full landscape of cafes nearby.

The quantity of data that relates to the location is overwhelming but becomes easier to digest when broken down into the two most commonly used spatial data types.

Spatial Data Types

The two primary spatial data types are Geometric and Geographic data.

Geographic data is data that can be mapped to a sphere (the sphere in question is usually planet earth). Geographic data typically refers to longitude and latitude related to the location of an object on earth. GPS data is a good example of geographic data.
Geometric data is data that can be mapped to a two-dimensional flat surface. A good example of geometric data would be the floor plan of a building.

Think about the last time you were running low on gas in an unfamiliar area. You probably used a map application to pull up all the gas stations nearby. That application contains geometric data that captures all the data related to the roads nearby. That application can tell you how long it will take you to get to the gas station by applying driving speed pattern data, with traffic pattern data, and the geometric data.

The map application is the simplest of spatial data examples. There are literally thousands of other examples.

Examples of Spatial Data Applications, Use Cases, and Workloads

IoT Applications & Spatial Data

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to networks of objects that are embedded with sensors (think Bird scooter or Citi Bike) that make it possible to send data from the “thing” to a database. IoT workloads often employ spatial data. Here are a few examples:

IoT Platform Analytics: Spatial data is the data that shows where users are signing into an application or, to reference the Bird example, accessing a scooter.
Real-Time Sensor Detection: This is spatial data on your Fitbit tracking how far you ran (or didn’t run) today.
Personalized Views: Google maps knows where you are, and it knows you like Thai food and Mexican food. It can serve you an ad based on your location and the fact that you have a crippling affection for Taco Bell.

Transportation/Logistics Applications & Spatial Data

Transportation and logistics companies deal with the movement of people and products. These include companies such as airlines, trucking, railroads, shipping, and logistics firms, as well as companies that provide transportation infrastructure. Here are a few examples of spatial data workloads from that industry:

Operations Research: Spatial data knows which machine type will work best in a certain location based on the topographical characteristics of a location as well as the surrounding conditions like temperature and traffic.
Supply Chain Management: Spatial data can estimate how fast a person or a product will get from point A to point B.
Real-Time Analytics: Spatial data can tell you where in the world your latest shipment of olive oil is.

Environmental Technology Applications & Spatial Data

Environmental technology is the use of electronic devices to monitor a natural environment. The output of environmental technology could be measurements of tidal patterns, temperature patterns, or the status of a forest fire. The most relatable spatial data workloads have to do with using environmental technology to protect the environment and ourselves.

Flood Risk Analysis: Spatial data keeps track of areas that are particularly susceptible to flooding by combining the geographic data with weather data and historical data.
Real-Time Natural Disaster Detection: Spatial data can help predict where a wildfire will spread by capturing its current location and then factoring in the wind speed/direction as well as the objects that lay in its path.
Farming/Irrigation Management: Spatial data can record which areas of a farm have been serviced or not serviced by the machines used for planting, harvesting, pruning, or irrigating.

These are just a few examples of how spatial data is used in the real-world. There are tons of other use cases for spatial data that relate to urban planning, or fraud detection, geomarketing, civil engineering, and more.

How to build with Spatial Data

When you talk spatial data you have to talk PostGIS. PostGIS is the spatial database extension for PostgreSQL. It has over 300 different built-ins and functions to make it easier to work with spatial data. PostGIS has helped launch apps like Instagram and FourSquare and is included in the tech stack for countless other applications.

Until very recently Spatial Data workloads could not reliably be built on any of the truly distributed databases. But that isn’t the case anymore. CockroachDB, the cloud-native distributed SQL database, now supports spatial data types. Rather than reinvent the wheel, CockroachDB uses the same PostGIS compatible SQL syntax. So you can build applications that leverage spatial data on a database that’s always on, easy to scale, and simple to use.

Deploying spatial data workloads on a distributed database, rather than a monolithic database means that reads and writes aren’t routed through a single node and you don’t have to do asynchronous replication across multiple sites. And when it’s time to scale to different regions you don’t have to worry about manual scaling responsibilities.

If you have questions about spatial data you can ask them in the CockroachDB community slack. If you want to learn more about deploying distributed spatial data workloads you can look at our spatial features support documentation.

29 apps created and 33 Docs issues closed..Hacktoberfest FTW!

Amruta Ranade — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 22:05:27 +0000

With 29 CockroachDB apps created and 33 Docs issues closed, it’s officially a wrap on CockroachDB’s Hacktoberfest 2020 project.

While planning for Hacktoberfest, we asked our community: What holds them back from contributing to open source and how we could help them overcome those obstacles?

The unanimous response holding developers back from contributing to open source was that they wanted us to help curate "beginner-friendly issues.”

So that’s what we did.

We combed through our code and docs repos to identify beginner-friendly first issues. We also created a sample applications repository for folks to contribute CockroachDB apps using a language/framework of their choice. The goal here was to allow contributors to use a technology they were comfortable with while learning a new technology (CockroachDB), and helping our open source project build out our sample apps repo. Win-win!

The project served its purpose: It enabled folks to make their first-ever open source contributions:

Pratik Sethi

@sethi_pratik

Great start to the week!! My first ever contribution to open source got merged 🎉🎉 Thanks a lot @AmrutaRanade @CockroachDB #specialMoment

15:09 PM - 12 Oct 2020

1 7

Mentored by our Education, SQL, and App Dev teams, the new contributors were able to take their first giant leap into the world of open source, and created some very cool PRs!

Some contributors chose to contribute all 4 PRs required to win the Hacktoberfest to CockroachDB projects:

deepti korwar

@deeptikorwar

@CockroachDB @digitalocean Thank you @AmrutaRanade and your wonderful team ❤️ at @CockroachDB for making this possible!

07:18 AM - 31 Oct 2020

2 4

In addition to the open source projects, we also published this article which proved to be a community favorite:

An Absolute Beginner’s Checklist for Hacktoberfest

Amruta Ranade ・ Sep 10 ・ 4 min read

#hacktoberfest #opensource #beginners #codenewbie

We had a blast participating in Hacktoberfest and welcoming new contributors into our open source community. Thank you DigitalOcean, Intel, and DEV for organizing the event.

If you wanted to contribute to CockroachDB projects but missed out on Hacktoberfest, you can participate in the next MLH Hackathon and compete for the ‘Best Use of CockroachDB’ prize.

In the meantime, don’t forget to join the fun on our community CockroachDB Slack.

Answering your Frequently Asked Questions about Hacktoberfest

Amruta Ranade — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 22:28:46 +0000

Even though the DigitalOcean team has done a fantastic job creating a helpful FAQs page on the Hacktoberfest website, I have noticed Hacktoberfest newbies asking the following questions repeatedly. Hope this post helps answers some of the additional FAQs and saves the Hacktoberfest maintainers some time:

What is Hacktoberfest?

A monthlong celebration of open source software brought to you by DigitalOcean, Intel, and DEV. Make four or more high-quality, meaningful pull requests to open source projects on GitHub in October to earn a t-shirt or plant a tree.

How are my Pull Requests tracked?

After you log in to the Hacktoberfest website with your GitHub account, it'll track the Pull Requests you make in the October.

What repositories can I contribute to?

You can open pull requests for any open source project on GitHub as long as it isn't a spam repository banned by Hacktoberfest community managers (for example: "Add your name" type of repository). For more information, see https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details

Can I make a PR to my own repository or a friend's repository?

Yes, but it's encouraged to contribute to other repositories instead

Do all PRs have to be in the same repo?

Can all 4 PRs be in the same repo?

Yes

Do the PRs have to be merged to be counted?:

No, your pull requests need not be merged to count, but they must not be marked "invalid" by the project maintainer. More details here: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details

Does the repository need to have issues?

Do the issues need to be marked as `hacktoberfest`?

Are the issues marked `good-first-issue` beginner-friendly?

Not always. good-first-issue can be a confusing label. good-first-issue doesn't necessarily mean an easy issue for code newbies; it can mean it's an easy issue to get started with the codebase for that project. For example, the CockroachDB good-first-issue are good issues for Go developers who want to get started with CockroachDB contributions. For new developers, we recommend checking out the CockroachDB To-Do apps project or CockroachDB docs project instead.

How do I win a t-shirt?

The first 70,000 folks to make 4 PRs in the month of October will be eligible to get a t-shirt.

Will you run out of t-shirts?

The Hacktoberfest community managers estimate they won't run out of t-shirts well into the third week of October.

I am new to coding/new to open source. Where do I find help?

How to contribute to open source without compromising your mental health and work-life balance

Amruta Ranade — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 19:04:43 +0000

Paraphrased transcript:

Contributing to open source projects is work -- like actual work. It's like joining a new company -- getting to know the product, the people, the codebase. Setting up a new environment, learning new tools before you can start contributing. And it's work not only for the contributors but also the maintainers of the project. They have to code and write docs and keep improving the project -- all on their own time. They also have to keep training and mentoring new folks. It's a lot of actual work.

And not everyone has the bandwidth, the mental state, or even the desire to spend off-work hours doing more work. And that's totally okay! The hustle culture feeds into this "need to do more" mentality which is incredibly stressful. But it's totally okay to not want to do more work in your free time!

So before you start contributing to open source projects, I urge you to take a moment, think about why you want to contribute -- what's your goal here?

To get started with open source contributions?
To get more experience with a particular technology?
To learn a new technology?
To build a portfolio?
To help make your favorite open source project even more awesome?

Setting your goal upfront will help you stay motivated when you inevitably hit the rough patches in your open source journey.

Once you set your goal, think about how much time and effort you can allot to the project without hurting your mental health and work-life balance. Then take stock of your current experience and skillset. Are you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced professional. This will help you identify the right project for you.

Things to look for in a project:

Documentation
Communication channels/ community
If the technology interests you
If you can contribute to the project without requiring personal attention from the maintainers
Does the scale/brand name matter to you? (Maybe yes, if you are want to feature in your portfolio)

The final question to answer is are you willing to self-learn and to accept and work on feedback?

As I said earlier, open-source projects is not only work for the contributors but also for the maintainers. In fact, it's far more work for the maintainers. Most open source maintainers have full-time jobs and they work on their open-source projects on their own time. So if you want to contribute to their project, please be respectful of their time and bandwidth. Self-study and do your own research, try things out, and then ask informed, pointed questions. I guarantee you will get better responses than if you ask uninformed, open-ended questions.

Then when you make a PR and the maintainer gives feedback and asks for an iteration, know that it's a good thing. My professor in grad school once said something that has stuck with me ever since - "If someone gives you feedback, it's a sign that they care". It's very easy for folks to just approve your changes. But if they take the time and put in the effort to give feedback, it's a sign that they care about your work and want to help you get better and make your work stronger.

If you answered the questions and still want to contribute to open-source, join us for Hacktoberfest! If not, I will see you elsewhere on the internet :)

An Absolute Beginner’s Checklist for Hacktoberfest

Amruta Ranade — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 15:58:30 +0000

If you want to contribute to open source projects and don’t know where to start, Hacktoberfest is the perfect opportunity for you. Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source software sponsored by Digital Ocean, Intel, and DEV. The goal of the event is to encourage participation in the open source community all across the globe. And the challenge is simple! Open four high-quality pull requests in the month of October on any open source project to get a limited edition Hacktoberfest T-shirt.

My favorite part of the event is the community. It’s an excellent mix of experienced contributors willing to mentor, and new contributors just like you.

But Hacktoberfest can get intimidating pretty fast. There’s a lot to study, a lot to read, and a lot to learn. That’s why Digital Ocean has deemed the month of September as #Preptember, a whole month dedicated just to preparing for Hacktoberfest.

And in that spirit, I’ve compiled a list of resources for absolute beginners. Here’s what I recommend you do in September to prepare for Hacktoberfest.

[Optional] Step 0: What is Open Source and Why Contribute?

You can skip this step if you already know the answer to these questions. If not, I highly recommend this article, “What is Open Source?” followed by this article about “How to Contribute to Open Source?”

Step 1: Git and GitHub

GitHub is a critical tool for participating in Hacktoberfest. If you’re new to the platform, Google search for “GitHub for Beginners,” gives literally millions of resources. I’m going to give you a condensed, controlled version of those resources below. Keep in mind, different people learn differently! I’m including tutorials, guides, and videos, for different types of learners.

I recommend starting with this video, which is an overview of Git as a version control system, followed by this video about the difference between Git and GitHub, and then this video about GitHub.

Next, complete GitHub’s official “Hello, World” tutorial. After that, head over to the "Understanding the GitHub flow tutorial", also from GitHub. Next, take the free “Introduction to GitHub” course.

By this stage, you’ll have created an account, your own repository, and added an issue to that repository, and a PR.

Now, we’re going to take it one step further and make a contribution to someone else’s repository. For that, I highly recommend starting by looking at the First Contributions repository. It’s a great resource for beginners. The only purpose of this repo is to create your first contribution, and all you’re doing is adding your name to the list of contributors. All you have to do is follow the steps, and by the end of the tutorial, you’ll have made your first contribution to someone else’s project. Congrats!

By the end of this stage, you should have a solid handle on the basics of Git and GitHub.

Step 2: Study the Hacktoberfest Resources

This step is about getting acquainted with Hacktoberfest: the goals, the community, and the available projects. First, I recommend exploring the Hacktoberfest website and signing up for their updates. Note: signing up for updates is not the same as signing up for the actual event! You’ll have to sign up for the actual event with your GitHub ID after it launches.

There’s also a great list of resources on the site for beginners. You’ll find details on what makes a good pull request, what kinds of pull requests will be rejected, and other resources.

I recommend joining the Hacktoberfest Discord. It’s a dedicated space for people participating in Hacktoberfest, and it has a really good mix of experienced mentors and new contributors, and there’s a lot to be learned just from interacting with the community.

Next, check out the open issues for Hacktoberfest! Go to GitHub issues labeled Hacktoberfest, (you’ll need to be logged into GitHub to open that link). As you can see, there are already more than 26,000 issues open marked for Hacktoberfest. Now the question is, “How do I select projects right for me?” That’s the topic of our next blog post -- stay tuned!

Pace Yourself and Be Patient!

These resources can feel like a lot at first, so please remember to be patient and pace yourself. You have the entire month of September just to prepare. If all you do in September is create your GitHub account, go through a couple guides, and contribute to the First Contributions repository, that is a big win in and of itself. Happy #Preptember!

How to contribute to open source without compromising your mental health and work-life balance

Amruta Ranade ・ Sep 14 ・ 3 min read

#hacktoberfest #opensource #codenewbie #beginners

Update: Thanks to everyone who helped us make Hacktoberfest 2020 successful for CockroachDB! 🥳

29 apps created and 33 Docs issues closed..Hacktoberfest FTW!

Amruta Ranade ・ Nov 13 ・ 2 min read

Reviewing Google's Technical Writing Courses // Would I Recommend Them?

Amruta Ranade — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 17:03:38 +0000

Recently, I have been recommending Google's Technical Writing courses to new writers. However, I also find myself pointing out content gaps in the courses and sharing complementary resources. So I made a video to share my opinions and other resources:

https://youtu.be/fAGE8OepYUo

TL;DW: The courses are designed to help engineers to improve their tech writing skills. I think the assumption is that the student already knows the technology they are writing about. IMO, the courses are an excellent starting point for new tech writers and they are even more useful when coupled with Google's developer documentation style guide and Divio's documentation framework. In the video, I also share how I would have used all these resources if I were a new tech writer. Hope the video helps you decide if the courses are worth your time!

How do you evaluate new technology?

Amruta Ranade — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 12:26:44 +0000

This question is inspired by Chris Bertrand's post.

Chris' warning of not buying into the hype around new technologies without social proof resonated with me. But it also made me wonder about if and how I should be vetting new technology. How do I pick the new tech to explore and what to be wary of?

I would love to know how you decide to explore or ignore new technologies.

Open source maintainers: How do you work with tech writers?

Amruta Ranade — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:46:28 +0000

I am considering mentoring tech writers to contribute docs to open source projects, but I want to make sure I don't create additional work for open source maintainers. Can you help me understand:

If a tech writer wants to contribute docs your open source project, what would you want them to focus on?
How much effort would it take on your part to help them make effective contributions?
What would make you nervous about their contributions?

Season of Docs + How to write a proposal

Amruta Ranade — Fri, 15 May 2020 14:20:11 +0000

DEV Community: Amruta Ranade

What's your favorite article that lives in your head rent-free?

What's your favorite programming newsletter?

5 Beginner-Friendly Coding Livestreams to Learn Programming

Learn full-stack web development with Leon

Learn Python with Pachi

Learn Golang with Paul

Learn Rust with Prince

Learn JavaScript with CJ

Bonus streams

What’s So Special About Spatial Data?

What is Spatial Data?

Spatial Data Types

Examples of Spatial Data Applications, Use Cases, and Workloads

IoT Applications & Spatial Data

Transportation/Logistics Applications & Spatial Data

Environmental Technology Applications & Spatial Data

How to build with Spatial Data

29 apps created and 33 Docs issues closed..Hacktoberfest FTW!

An Absolute Beginner’s Checklist for Hacktoberfest

Amruta Ranade ・ Sep 10 ・ 4 min read

Answering your Frequently Asked Questions about Hacktoberfest

What is Hacktoberfest?

How are my Pull Requests tracked?

What repositories can I contribute to?

Can I make a PR to my own repository or a friend's repository?

Do all PRs have to be in the same repo?

Can all 4 PRs be in the same repo?

Do the PRs have to be merged to be counted?:

Does the repository need to have issues?

Do the issues need to be marked as hacktoberfest?

Are the issues marked good-first-issue beginner-friendly?

How do I win a t-shirt?

Will you run out of t-shirts?

I am new to coding/new to open source. Where do I find help?

How to contribute to open source without compromising your mental health and work-life balance

An Absolute Beginner’s Checklist for Hacktoberfest

[Optional] Step 0: What is Open Source and Why Contribute?

Step 1: Git and GitHub

Step 2: Study the Hacktoberfest Resources

Pace Yourself and Be Patient!

How to contribute to open source without compromising your mental health and work-life balance

Amruta Ranade ・ Sep 14 ・ 3 min read

29 apps created and 33 Docs issues closed..Hacktoberfest FTW!

Amruta Ranade ・ Nov 13 ・ 2 min read

Reviewing Google's Technical Writing Courses // Would I Recommend Them?

How do you evaluate new technology?

Open source maintainers: How do you work with tech writers?

Season of Docs + How to write a proposal

Do the issues need to be marked as `hacktoberfest`?

Are the issues marked `good-first-issue` beginner-friendly?