DEV Community: kali kimanzi

The Vision of One or the Vision of Many: A Dilemma in the Age of Innovation(Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey)

kali kimanzi — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:29:46 +0000

Imagine a solar system with a single star and many planets, each with its own orbit, rotation, and characteristics. Now imagine another solar system with multiple stars and fewer planets, each influenced by the gravitational forces of different stars. Which solar system is more stable, more diverse, and more conducive to life?

This is the metaphor that comes to my mind when I think about the vision of one versus the vision of many in the world of technology and innovation. Should we follow the lead of a single visionary who has a clear and ambitious plan for the future, or should we embrace the diversity and creativity of many visionaries who have different perspectives and goals?

A few years ago, if you had asked me this question, I would have told you that I believe in the vision of many. I would have argued that from chaos comes order, and that the vision of many creates chaos that fosters innovation and adaptation. I would have associated Jack Dorsey with the vision of many, not from his role as the CEO of Twitter, but from his involvement in Bitcoin, Nostr, and Primal, projects that aim to decentralize and democratize various aspects of society.

But lately, I have been conflicted by the impressive achievements of Elon Musk, who epitomizes the vision of one. He has a grand vision for humanity that spans across multiple domains, such as space exploration, electric vehicles, renewable energy, neural interfaces, and artificial intelligence. He has demonstrated his ability to execute his vision with remarkable speed and efficiency, creating companies that disrupt and dominate their respective industries.

Can the vision of one and the vision of many coexist and complement each other, or are they incompatible and competitive? While I have not lived long enough to witness the long-term outcomes of these two approaches, I can see from a distance that both have their merits and drawbacks. The vision of one can provide direction, focus, and scale, but it can also entail risk, rigidity, and monopoly. The vision of many can offer diversity, creativity, and resilience, but it can also result in fragmentation, confusion, and conflict.

What does this mean for the computing systems of the future? Which approach has more advantages over the other, or should we reframe the question and look at how each approach has been implemented? Does this mean that centralized systems are not all that bad, or that decentralized systems are not all that good? Time will tell.

The Daily Newsletter: Your Secret Weapon for Success in Software Engineering

kali kimanzi — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 09:11:07 +0000

As a software engineer, I know how important it is to keep up with the latest developments in technology. But with so much information out there, how can I find the time and energy to read everything?

That’s why I have adopted a simple habit: reading a newsletter a day. Yes, you heard me right. Just one newsletter a day can make a huge difference in my skills and knowledge as a software engineer.

Here are some of the benefits of reading a newsletter a day:

It provides concise information that summarizes the most important updates in software engineering.
It offers curated content from reputable sources or industry experts who know what matters.
It ensures regular updates that keep me informed about the latest trends, tools, and technologies in software engineering.
It gives me diverse perspectives from different authors, which broaden my understanding and approach towards software engineering.
It allows me to learn at my own pace, spending time on complex topics and skipping those that are not relevant to me.
It creates networking opportunities with online communities or forums where I can interact, ask questions, and share ideas with like-minded professionals. I have been reading a newsletter a day for the past few months and I can say that it has significantly improved my skills and knowledge as a software engineer. I have learned new things, discovered new tools, and gained new insights that have helped me in my work.

If you’re looking for an easy and effective way to stay updated and grow as a software engineer, I highly recommend reading a newsletter a day. You can find many newsletters that cater to your interests and needs online. Just pick one that resonates with you and make it part of your daily routine.

Trust me, you won’t regret it!

The Efficacy of Psychometric Tests in Identifying Proficient Software Engineers

kali kimanzi — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:10:47 +0000

In the recent past, I found myself taking a psychometric test that emphasized speed and accuracy. This approach seemed somewhat out of place to me. Is the essence of engineering truly about speed? Has the discipline been diminished to mere instincts, much like foreign exchange trading? While I recognize that engineering involves solving problems, I question whether reaching a solution more quickly is synonymous with reaching the safest solution.

Engineering is not merely about finding solutions at a rapid pace. Accuracy is indeed a factor to consider, but it is not the sole determinant of a good engineering solution. Safety and resource efficiency must also be taken into account.

Interestingly, psychometric tests seem to reduce engineering to an analytical approach, while in reality, engineering is largely a classical discipline.

So, are psychometric tests the most effective way to determine if an engineer excels in their work? I would challenge this approach to some extent. From my own engineering experience, I have come to realize that solutions can arise from various perspectives and that quick thinking contributes minimally to effective engineering solutions.

I believe that speed and accuracy only measure certain aspects of an individual engineer's quick thinking abilities. While these traits might be beneficial in certain fields like aviation engineering, I believe that they represent an inner layer - something innate - that has minimal influence on the overall effectiveness of an engineer.

Finally, psychometric tests can be gamed. There are many resources available online and in books that teach people how to improve their performance on psychometric tests. This means that candidates who are good at taking tests may score higher than candidates who are more skilled in engineering.

While there may not be a universally accepted approach to determine a good engineer, I am skeptical about the inclusion of psychometric tests in the hiring process. These tests may provide some insights but should not be the sole or primary determinant in the hiring decision.

Efficient String Splitting in Go: A Solution for Gophers Dealing with API Responses

kali kimanzi — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 03:19:17 +0000

Introduction

When working with API responses in Go, Gophers often encounter the need to split strings based on a specific delimiter. This article aims to provide a solution to this common problem by presenting an efficient code snippet for string splitting in Go. By understanding and implementing this solution, Gophers can effortlessly separate string values, especially when dealing with API responses.

Understanding the Problem

In the realm of API development, parsing and manipulating response data is an essential task. It's not uncommon to receive a string that needs to be split into separate parts based on a specific delimiter, such as a dollar sign ($). While Go provides built-in functions for string manipulation, knowing the most efficient way to split strings can greatly enhance a developer's productivity.

The Solution: String Splitting in Go

To tackle this problem efficiently, we will leverage Go's standard library package strings and its Split function. The code snippet provided below demonstrates a clean and effective way to split a string using the dollar sign ($) as the delimiter:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

func separateString(input string) []string {
    // Split the string using the dollar sign ($) as the delimiter
    parts := strings.Split(input, "$")

    // Remove any leading or trailing empty strings resulting from the split
    var result []string
    for _, part := range parts {
        if part != "" {
            result = append(result, part)
        }
    }

    return result
}

func main() {
    // Example usage
    input := "Hello$world$how$are$you?"
    parts := separateString(input)

    fmt.Println("Original String:", input)
    fmt.Println("Separated Parts:", parts)
}

Results

Original String: Hello$world$how$are$you?
Separated Parts: [Hello world how are you?]

By utilizing the strings.Split function, the input string is split into separate parts based on the dollar sign ($) delimiter. To ensure clean results, the code snippet also removes any leading or trailing empty strings that may result from the split.

Benefits and Use Cases

The provided code snippet offers several benefits and can be applied in various scenarios:

API Response Parsing: When working with API responses, it's common to receive string data that needs to be parsed and processed. The efficient string splitting solution presented here can be a valuable asset in handling and extracting meaningful information from API responses.
Custom Delimiters: While the code snippet uses the dollar sign ($) as the delimiter, it can be easily modified to work with other delimiters based on your specific requirements. This flexibility empowers developers to adapt the solution to a wide range of use cases.
Improved Productivity: By understanding and implementing this efficient string splitting approach, Gophers can save valuable development time and effort. The solution provides a streamlined way to process and manipulate strings, making API response handling more convenient and less error-prone.

Conclusion

Working with API responses often requires Gophers to split strings based on specific delimiters. With the provided solution for efficient string splitting in Go, developers can handle this task effortlessly. By utilizing the strings.Split function and incorporating the additional logic to remove empty strings, Gophers can extract meaningful information from API responses with ease. Armed with this knowledge, Gophers can enhance their productivity and streamline their string handling capabilities in Go.

Sending Gmail with Swiftmailer

kali kimanzi — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 12:02:41 +0000

adding mailing functionality to website is quite an essential part of website development. most website have this sections either in the contact us section, feedback sections among other sections like registration and sign up. It can be quite a hustle when you are beginner because we have you need to have a solutions that works without too much hassle, I prefer swift mailer because i find it straight of the box solutions compared to vanilla solutions and PHPMAILER(you are allowed to have an alternative view who cares though ). This tutorial assumes you have installed your XAMPP or whatever server you have there and also prior knowledge on PHP is a bonus .

To avoid too much stories let's get straight to it.

Steps

Download swiftmailer
create mailing script
Enable your gmail account for IMAP
Testing your mailing script

1. Download swiftmailer

In your htdocs folder create your working director in my case i have named it sendmail.

inside the sendmail directory install swiftmailer with composer. Check also on the swiftmailer official website here

composer require "swiftmailer/swiftmailer:^6.0"

2. Create mailing script

This is a simple script which contains mailing function and html form, the message is hardcoded but for demonstration purpose. create this script inside your working directory eg sendmail

<?php

if (isset($_POST["email"])){

//echo $_POST["email"] ;

require_once './vendor/autoload.php';

// Create the Transport
$transport = (new Swift_SmtpTransport('smtp.gmail.com', 465, 'ssl'))
  ->setUsername('putyouremail@gmail.com')
  ->setPassword('putyouremailpassword')
;

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

// Create a message
$message = (new Swift_Message('Mail tutorial '))
  ->setFrom(['putyouremail@gmail.com' => 'sending mail tutorial'])
  ->setTo([$_POST["email"] => 'testing the mail sending option '])
  ->setBody('congrats you have send your firstmail cheers to your new skill')
  ;

// Send the message
$result = $mailer->send($message);

}
?>

<form action="" method="post">
<input type="text" name="email" placeholder = "Email Me">
<input type="submit" value="Email me">
</form>

3. Enable your gmail account for IMAP

after you have created this script use the following address to enable IMAP settings due to google security settings

https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

4. Testing your mailing script

Run your script on local host and enjoying using it. you can create complicated mailing systems with swiftmailer among other things. Happy coding

ABOUT ME

I hope you have liked this article.
I am Kali Kimanzi a Masters student Energy Informatics at University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, I am also a software developer at NTUITY a brand of neoom group Gmbh Wien | Freistadt. I take interest in Data sciences using python and I use python libraries like pandas, numpy and Matplotlib. I specialize in Python, PHP/Laravel, Java.
Social media links
Kali kimanzi @ Facebook: Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi @ Linkedin: Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi @ instagram : Kali_Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi GitHub: Kali Kimanzi
kali kimanzi Twitter : Kali Kimanzi

HOW TO PUT A ANGULAR APPLICATION TO A DOCKER CONTAINER

kali kimanzi — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 14:03:25 +0000

I have read quite complicated articles on how to deploy an Angular application to a docker container that is why I am motivated to write this simplest step by step guide to putting your angular app to docker container

1 Assuming you have already created your app and now you want to dockerize it. run the code below to create a dist folder in your application folder

ng build

2 create a file called Dockerfile under root of your application as illustrated below

3 copy following code to your Dockerfile

FROM node:alpine AS my-app-build
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN npm install && npm run build

FROM nginx:alpine
COPY --from=my-app-build /app/dist/{name-of-your-application} /usr/share/nginx/html
EXPOSE 80

4 Now your application is ready to be put in a docker container. this tutorial assumes you have downloaded docker and a copy is running locally on your machine. if you have not downloaded the docker application visit the Docker website to download the version suitable for your machine . when all that has been set up use the code below to build image for your application.

// docker build -t name-of-container:tag-of-image .
docker build -t my-application-container:latest .

5 To start your application locally and test it on a browser run
docker run --publish 80:80 --detach --name bb bulletinboard:lastest

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. i will write more tutorials on how to deploy your Docker container on Azure.

Finding a minimum number in a Java Array

kali kimanzi — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 10:35:38 +0000

Sometime back we were given a java assignment but I realized the concepts looked easy but some of my friends had problems implementing them that is why I have decided to be sharing some of the java assignments that I have done in the past to help students and learners who are new to programming in java.

Question:

Write a function int findMin (int[] numbers), which yields the smallest element of numbers that contains positive integers. The result shall be -1, if numbers has the value null or the array does exclusively contain positive integers. Use several test cases.

Java Source Code:



public class FindingMinimum {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // int[] numbers =null;
        // System.out.println(x);
        // int[] numbers= {2,3,4,5,6,20,1,-5};
        int[] numbers = { 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 20, 1 };
        //int[] numbersSet1= {2,3,4,5,6,20,1,-5};

        int minimumNumber = findMin(numbers);
        System.out.println("The Minimum number is :\t"+minimumNumber);
        //minimumNumber = findMin(numbersSet1);
        //System.out.println("The Minimum number is :\t"+minimumNumber);

    }

    static int findMin(int[] numbers) {
        int minValue = numbers[0];

        if (isExclusivePositive(numbers)) {

            for (int i = 1; i < numbers.length; i++) {
                if (numbers[i] < minValue) {
                    minValue = numbers[i];
                }
            }
        } else {
            minValue = -1;
        }
        return minValue;

    }

    static boolean isExclusivePositive(int[] numbers) {
        int value = 0;

        for (int i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) {
            value = numbers[i];

            if (value < 0)
                return false;
        }

        return true;
    }

}

Output:

The Minimum number is : 1

I hope you have liked this article.

I am Kali Kimanzi a Masters student at University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, I am a software developer at NTUITY a brand of neoom group gmbh Wien | Freistadt. I take interest in Data sciences using python and i use python libraries like pandas, numpy and Matplotlib. I specialize in Python, PHP/Laravel, Java.

Social media links

Kali kimanzi @ Facebook: Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi @ Linkedin: Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi @ instagram : Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi GitHub: Kali Kimanzi
kali kimanzi Twitter : Kali Kimanzi

Writing Python Api with Flask RESTful

kali kimanzi — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 22:20:15 +0000

I had been working on a python application, Now it came to the section where I had to write an API for my application. it was such a headache because I was a newbie on Api's and I had little understanding of APIs. So I spend so much time online reading about APIs and how to integrate one to my application. it all looked like rocket science from most of the articles I went through. that is why I decided to come up with this article. it will take you through implementing a simple API, Later I will come up with a more detailed article though this code will take you through most of the basics of flask RESTful API and how to create one successfully.
I have put comments on my code for clarification and detailed walkthrough.

everything that starts with # is a comment, I believe if you are reading the article you have an understanding of python coding. hope you will like this article.
The concept of using classes with python has been covered in this article to help you have full understanding. I will write a more advanced article for now this
article is for absolute beginners

what the application below does

Receives json file and extracts the json values that are then used for computation
After computation, the application creates a JSON file. this request can be done through postman which enable to make api calls and request.

Before i begin this article it would be nice if share how the file structure looks on my pycharm IDE.

This is the main file for your flask

from flask import Flask, jsonify, request
#importing flask restful extenstion
from flask_restful import Resource, Api

#importing a class from a package called ntuity in the application

from ntuity.ntuityprac import  #importing a class from a package called ntuity

app = Flask(__name__)
*api=Api(app)


##class Kamau(Resource):

    def post(self):
        jsonval=request.get_json()
        content=jsonval.get("number")
        sum=10*content
        bestie=["welcome", 525, "kiza"]
        return jsonify({"sum":sum,"kenya":bestie})

class Kithome(Resource):
    p=NtuityPrac() #class object
    getval=p.get_square
    getsum=p.get_sum


    def post(self):
        jsonval = request.get_json()
        content = jsonval.get("number")
        get_add=self.getsum(content)
        get_sum=self.getval(content)
        return jsonify({"square":get_sum, "sum":get_add})


api.add_resource(Kamau,'/kama')
api.add_resource(Kithome,'/kithome')
if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

below is the imported class from a package has two methods 

1. get_square()
2. get_sum()


class NtuityPrac:
#this class has two methods get square and get sum
    def get_square(self,num1):
        return num1*num1

    def get_sum(self, num1):
        return num1+num1

This a post man json request to kithome endpoint

The output of this request is json file with sum and square

I hope you have liked this article.

I am Kali Kimanzi a Masters student Energy Informatics at University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, I am also a software developer at NTUITY a brand of neoom group gmbh Wien | Freistadt. I take interest in Data sciences using python and i use python libraries like pandas, numpy and Matplotlib. I specialize in Python, PHP/Laravel, Java.

Social media links

Kali kimanzi @ Facebook: Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi @ Linkedin: Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi @ instagram : Kali Kimanzi
Kali Kimanzi GitHub: Kali Kimanzi
kali kimanzi Twitter : Kali Kimanzi

Nesting For loops in Java

kali kimanzi — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 17:28:32 +0000

this program aims at demystifying the headache behind nesting of for loops in java and other programming languages

?signin=true