DEV Community: Rishabh Singh ⚡

Overcoming "Cold Start" & Building Traction for your Startup through Active Marketing

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 08:35:28 +0000

It's been a few days since we kick-started the marketing for Creavio, but since until now that wasn’t our primary focus. My co-founder and I have come to realize that we're spending a majority of our time on the product itself, which is hindering our marketing efforts. We're barely managing to get new sign-ups on the waitlist due to this lack of attention.

With that in mind, I've decided to invest more time into formulating a marketing strategy. Although marketing is a broad spectrum, it can essentially be divided into two main categories: active and passive.

Passive marketing involves posting on social media and spreading the word about our product. While this strategy holds its own significance—especially when there's an initial audience to keep engaged—it's not the best solution to overcome the "cold start". This term, commonly used in the startup world, refers to the initial phase when a new product or service has no engagement or users.

To mitigate this, it's crucial to engage in active marketing. As the name suggests, active marketing involves reaching out to people, contributing to product-related communities, presenting your product as a solution to existing problems, and inviting supporters of competing products to try out yours and share their feedback. Unlike passive marketing, active marketing doesn't rely on potential users noticing you; instead, it involves going out there and drawing them in. Even though it can be challenging, active marketing often leads to valuable feedback and, most importantly, it works!

How do you execute active marketing? The answer primarily depends on your product and your niche. For Creavio, we plan to focus on:

Creator outreach
Contributing to discussions on Product Hunt
Engaging with Reddit communities
Attracting competitors' current users (you can find some of them by checking who follows your competitors on social media)
And much more

This strategy may not appear scalable, but that's okay. There's no need to worry about scaling your marketing in these early stages. The initial months should be spent closely with your early adopters and refining your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Once you've gained a substantial user base, things become easier due to word-of-mouth, referrals, and network effects.

That's our current strategy for Creavio, and I'll definitely keep you updated on our progress!

This is Day 3 of our #100DaysOfStartup journey, building Creavio, which is an all-in-one platform designed for creators to monetize their content and community. If this sounds like something you need, join our waitlist for VIP 1-1 onboarding and early access.

Want to delve deeper into our journey? Feel free to revisit Day 2 of our startup adventure here where I discussed some of the initial challenges we faced when planning our MVP for a rapid market entry. For real-time updates, insider perspectives, and engaging discussions around our progress, I encourage you to follow me on Twitter, Linkedin, and of course, here on Medium.

Remember, every follow brings you one step closer to our shared vision of empowering creators. By signing up for our waitlist, you'll not only get a front-row seat to witness the evolution of Creavio, but you'll also contribute immensely to the refinement of a tool designed for creators like you.

5 Phase effective learning approach for developers

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 10:59:19 +0000

You can go through 1000s of tutorials & still end up being completely clueless on how to implement the concepts, you just learnt, in the right way. This is one of the core reasons why people couldn't get enough of following tutorials & ends up being in a state known as "Tutorial Hell".

This is a state where you never feel confident enough about your foundations & just wish to continue learning indefinitely without trying to apply the knowledge.

Here is 5 phase learning approach to learn any new tech effectively & escape tutorial hell for once & all!

Why & how? 🤔

Learning begins way before you start the actual tutorial begins. The first & foremost phase is all about the recalling & understanding the standard motivation of why you want to learn this. And why this particular technology? Why not something else?

Having an end goal in mind with a soft deadline can really do wonders. Meanwhile also make sure that you are ready to devote enough time for consistent learning.

Prioritize the consistency over intensity.

Learn by Building 🛠

This is where you start with the tutorial. Here take you time making yourself familiar with the basic concepts. Now it's time to start building.

For this, I always recommend following this approach:

Once comfortable with basic concepts, try breaking the project into its basic components.
Try to figure out how to build each component individually. (Feel free to use Google here)

Pause & Revise 🔁

Focus on using your brain to process information, not storing it. As you'll learn, concepts will automatically become a second nature to you.

This is where occasionally pausing the tutorial & going back for a revision will play a vital role eventually. No need to rush.

Debug 🐞

Now up to this phase, you've completed most of all the core concepts and have built a couple of projects. You are now at the end of the tutorial, but this where the real applied learning begins.

It's time to get into reading other's people code & trying to fix them.

You can find a lot of issues on GitHub for any kind of tech you're currently learning. Try finding a couple of good first issues & try fixing them. Feel free to reach out to the project owners & maintainers for clarification & guidance.

Final Showdown ⚡

You did great! Your foundations are strong & you're ready for the final phase.

In this phase, find a good but challenging project idea & try building it from scratch. Don't follow any tutorial here, you're supposed to this on your own. But feel free to make use of google, researching, or going back to the concepts if you feel lost at any point.

That's it for today!

This write up was inspired by Jessica Wilkins' article on "How to Learn from Tutorials the Right Way – and Not Get Trapped in Tutorial Hell".

📖 Read here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-learn-from-coding-tutorials-and-avoid-tutorial-hell/

Support

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learnt something new today. Please leave a like, a lovely comment or feedback.

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub.

Feel free to post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D

Tiny Habits for career growth as a developer

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 03:40:10 +0000

The 3 most important aspects in the career growth of a developer are:

Developing your skills 💻
Establishing online presence 🌐
Networking 💬

Let's pick them up individually and learn what they mean & how we can build some easy-to-follow habits around them to stay on top of things.

1. Developing your skills 💻

The first step in your dev career is to start learning & developing your skills. There are many ways you can do this, try what works best for you! This involves building projects, practicing Leetcode, contributing to open source, etc. At the end of the day, everything comes down to finding what you're good at and focusing more on it.

Suggested Habits:

Build one small project every month
Solve at least 3 Leetcode problems every week
Solve one good first issue every week

2. Establishing online presence 🌐

Having an online presence on platforms like Twitter & LinkedIn is very vital for your career. You need to get noticed to attract opportunities. Good thing about these platforms is that it's easy to grow here despite of having a small following initially. However, you still need to give it some time by showing up on regular basis. I recommend devoting at least 30 minutes every day to building your online presence.

Suggested Habits:

Post at least once a day on Twitter
Post at least once a week on LinkedIn
Engage with the other like-minded people for 15 mins per day

3. Networking 💬

You might be wondering what's the difference between building online presence vs networking? 🤔 Well, networking is all about directly engaging with people you're interested in through DMs, etc. Days of randomly applying to hundreds of jobs and hoping to get selected in at least one are over now. Traditional hiring system is slowly fading away, this is the time you need to show how innovative and creative you are to directly attract recruiters to yourself. Networking plays a key role here to help you connect with potential employers and remain in their vision. This is also great for getting referrals and off campus opportunities.

Suggested Habits:

Reach out to companies & startups and appreciate them that you like their products & how enthusiast you are about the work they are doing.
DM to one of the persons you admire & ask for advice meanwhile showing your passion.

That's it for today!

This write up was inspired by Ken Rogers' article on "How to Use Small and Sustainable Habits to Get Your First Dev Job".

📖 Read here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-small-sustainable-habits-to-get-your-first-dev-job/

Support

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learnt something new today. Please leave a like, a lovely comment or feedback & also consider following me as I regularly post useful & informative articles to help you become a better programmer.

If you like my work, please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D!

MLH INIT - Calling out all the hackers 🤩 Win Swags & Stickers 🎁

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 07:18:17 +0000

One of the biggest hackathons organizers, MLH is comping up with a global event called MLH INIT.

What is MLH INIT?

MLH INIT is a weeklong celebration starting on June 27th to July 5th, of hackers from around the world where they come together to hack, learn & have a hell lot of fun 🔥 Complete Daily & Weekly challenges to earn points & climb the leaderboard. Oh, did I mentioned about the exclusive MLH swags & stickers you'll be getting? 😍

Sounds fun! How do I register myself?

That's easy! Just follow these steps:

1. Register at https://hackp.ac/init

2. Join the Guild at https://discord.mlh.io/

Fill in all the details & Select Basecamp Community under Guild Membership

Joining a guild has a lot of benefits and will also work as your support system if you get stuck in any challenge.

3. Join our Discord at http://bit.ly/basecamp-discord

Our discord server is one stop shop for all your MLH INIT announcements and a great welcoming community.

4. Complete Swag form at https://hackp.ac/INITswag

In case you're not interested in swags, feel free to skip this step.

5. Submit your address https://hackp.ac/address

Address is required to send you the swags. In case you're not interested in swags, feel free to skip this step.

In case you get stuck somewhere while registering, let us know by dropping a comment on this blog, we'll help you out.

Get excited! 🤩 We'll see you there 😉

23 useful GitHub Repos every developer should follow

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Mon, 31 May 2021 17:33:03 +0000

Introduction

Blah Blah Blah... Let's get into the list...

Free Programming Books

List of Free Learning Resources In Many Languages. This list was originally a clone of StackOverflow - List of Freely Available Programming Books with contributions from Karan Bhangui and George Stocker.

Repo Link: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books

⭐ 190K

🍴 42.4K

Coding Interview University

Originally created this as a short to-do list of study topics for becoming a software engineer, but it grew to the large list you see today.

Repo Link: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university

⭐ 174K

🍴 47.5K

You Don't Know JS Yet

This is a series of books diving deep into the core mechanisms of the JavaScript language.

Repo Link: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

⭐ 139K

🍴 27.6K

Node.js Best Practices

Pretty Self Explanatory right?

Repo Link: https://github.com/goldbergyoni/nodebestpractices

⭐ 66.4K

🍴 6.6K

Tech Interview Handbook

Materials to help you rock your next coding interview.

Repo Link: https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook

⭐ 54.5K

🍴 7.7K

Papers with Code

Repo Link: https://github.com/amusi/CVPR2021-Papers-with-Code

⭐ 5.3K

🍴 1.1K

33 JS Concepts

33 JavaScript concepts every developer should know.

Repo Link: https://github.com/leonardomso/33-js-concepts

⭐ 40.1K

🍴 5K

Awesome Cheatsheets

Awesome cheatsheets for popular programming languages, frameworks and development tools. They include everything you should know in one single file.

Repo Link: https://github.com/LeCoupa/awesome-cheatsheets

⭐ 20.3K

🍴 3.3K

Freecodecamp

Repo Link: https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp

⭐ 325K

🍴 25.9K

Public APIs

A collective list of free APIs.

Repo Link: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis

⭐ 126K

🍴 15.4K

Front-End Checklist

The Front-End Checklist is an exhaustive list of all elements you need to have / to test before launching your website / HTML page to production.

Repo Link: https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist

⭐ 53K

🍴 5.1K

Developer Roadmap

Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2021.

Repo Link: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap

⭐ 161K

🍴 23.3K

Awesome Python

A curated list of awesome Python frameworks, libraries, software and resources

Repo Link: https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python

⭐ 99K

🍴 19.2K

Storybook

The UI component explorer. Develop, document, & test React, Vue, Angular, Web Components, Ember, Svelte & more!

Repo Link: https://github.com/storybookjs/storybook

⭐ 62.2K

🍴 6.2K

CSS Protips

A collection of tips to help take your CSS skills pro

Repo Link: https://github.com/AllThingsSmitty/css-protips

⭐ 17.6K

🍴 1.4K

HTML5 Boilerplate

A professional front-end template for building fast, robust, and adaptable web apps or sites.

Repo Link: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate

⭐ 50.4K

🍴 11.6K

The Algorithms - Python

All algorithms implemented in Python

Repo Link: https://github.com/subbarayudu-j/TheAlgorithms-Python#the-algorithms---python-

⭐ 923

🍴 355

Awesome Design Patterns

A curated list of software and architecture related design patterns.

Repo Link: https://github.com/DovAmir/awesome-design-patterns

⭐ 12.9K

🍴 1.1K

RealWorld

Repo Link: https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld

⭐ 58.2K

🍴 5.2K

30 seconds of code

Short JavaScript code snippets for all your development needs

Repo Link: https://github.com/30-seconds/30-seconds-of-code

⭐ 76.5K

🍴 8.3K

Awesome Interviews

A curated list of lists of technical interview questions.

Repo Link: https://github.com/DopplerHQ/awesome-interview-questions

⭐ 40.9K

🍴 6K

The Art of Command Line

Master the command line, in one page

Repo Link: https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line

⭐ 89.8K

🍴 9.9K

Big List of Naughty Strings

The Big List of Naughty Strings is a list of strings which have a high probability of causing issues when used as user-input data.

Repo Link: https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings

⭐ 40.7K

🍴 1.9K

Support

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D

6 Movies Every Programmer Should Watch

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Thu, 06 May 2021 19:45:21 +0000

Now since the weekend is right around the corner, I am pretty sure you all must be having your own plans to make the most of it. And since it's not possible to go out for a trip, most of you will probably prefer binge-watching your favourite movies.

But how about watching something you can relate yourself to as a programmer & end up learning something to help you shape your future.

Here I present you a list of 6 movies you should definitely watch as a programmer this weekend.

The Social Network

Based on the story of Mark Zuckerberg, this movie takes on the journey of how the idea of Facebook came into existence and how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook as a Harvard student. A must watch for all future entrepreneurs.

⭐ IMDB: 7.7

🍿 Watch on Netflix here

The Imitation Game

This movie will take you back to World War II as you meet Alan Turing, a British mathematician who joins the cryptography team to decipher the German enigma code. With the help of his fellow mathematicians, he builds a machine to crack the codes. A must watch to help you gain insights into real-world problem-solving.

⭐ IMDB: 8.0

🍿 Watch on Netflix here

Pirates of Silicon Valley

This movie features the true story of Bill Gates & Steve Jobs and everything they did to turn their dreams into reality & changed the world forever starting from their small garage to the world's biggest companies.

⭐ IMDB: 7.3

Jobs

Based on the story of Steve Jobs and the bringing Apple to life. A must watch for all Steve Jobs fans out there.

⭐ IMDB: 6.0

🍿 Watch on Netflix here

Hackers

Dade, banned from using a computer until 18, grows up to be an even bigger hacker than his childhood pranks. Along with his friends, he discovers the plot of an evil genius to unleash a lethal virus. For all the cybersecurity dudes!

⭐ IMDB: 6.3

The Internship

Salesmen Billy and Nick find themselves unemployed in the digital world. In a bid to prove their competence, they land an internship at Google and try to beat some tech-savvy geniuses. For everyone who dreams to land a job at Google someday.

⭐ IMDB: 6.3

🍿 Watch on Amazon Prime Video here

Support

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D

9 Games Every Programmer Should Play !!!

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Wed, 05 May 2021 16:54:36 +0000

Learning to code is hard especially when you are just starting out but it becomes a lot more fun when you start to enjoy the learning process. And games are a great way to achieve the same.

So here's a list of 9 Coding based games you should start playing to help improve your coding skills and have a lot of fun in the process.

Codemonkey

Codemonkey teaches coding using CoffeeScript, a real programming language, to teach you to build your own games in HTML5. It's aimed at coding for kids, but it's definitely fun for adults, too.

Visit Codemonkey here - https://www.codemonkey.com/

CodinGame

If you are looking for a way to improve your coding skills as well as learn new concepts but are tired of the regular tutorials and want something fun and interesting then you should definitely try CodinGame. It is a platform providing interactive and free games to help learn more than 25 popular programming languages including JavaScript, Ruby, Java, Rust, C# and PHP.

Visit CodinGame here - https://www.codingame.com/

Flexbox Froggy

Want to learn how CSS flexbox works? Check out Flexbox Froggy. It has a simple interface that teaches you the basics of how things align in flexbox while you help Froggy and his friends.

Visit Flexbox Froggy here - https://flexboxfroggy.com/

Code Combat

Code Combat is aimed at teachers and students, but anyone can play. Learn Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, or the Lua game scripting language. On the beginner Dungeon level, you'll move your Hero through the game using some basic commands according to the tutorial alongside the game.

Visit Code Combat here - https://codecombat.com/

Untrusted

Untrusted is a meta-JavaScript adventure game that tests your JavaScript skills to solve problems. You use Javascript to guide Dr Eval through a machine continuum and alter his reality to move between levels. It's a free fun game for practising Javascript skills.

Visit Untrusted here - https://www.playuntrusted.com/

Cyber Dojo

Cyber Dojo has practise exercises and challenges for dozens of coding languages including Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, Python and more. Each exercise spells out a challenge to complete with an example showing what the end result should look like. It's a great way to practice your code skills.

Visit Cyber Dojo here - https://www.cyber-dojo.org/creator/home

Elevator Saga

Elevator Saga tests your Javascript knowledge with challenges related to moving an elevator and transporting people in the most efficient manner possible. It starts out with a challenge to move 15 people in less than a minute, with challenges getting progressively harder from there.

Visit Elevator Saga here - https://play.elevatorsaga.com/

Vim Adventures

Vim is a highly configurable text editor used by programmers. If you want to learn how to use Vim, then VIM Adventures is a great place to start! Use common VIM keyboard shortcuts to navigate your way through a Zelda-like adventures game.

Visit Vim Adventures here - https://vim-adventures.com/

AI Gaming

Last but not the least, we have Microsoft's AI Gaming Platform where you can code bots in python and compete against your friends on 30+ different games & challenges. You can also participate in tournaments to win some really cool prizes. Along with learning to code a bot in Python, you will also get hands-on practice in using Microsoft's Cloud Platform, Azure.

Visit AI Gaming here - https://www.aigaming.com/

Support

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D

Getting Started with NPM

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Tue, 04 May 2021 15:28:02 +0000

In this beginner guide to NPM, we will cover what exactly it is, how it works & a couple of commonly used NPM commands which you can start using right away in your projects.

What is NPM?

NPM is basically a Javascript package manager which allows you to quickly add & manage any available package /module/dependency in your project with just a couple of commands.

With NPM, you don't have to go manually downloading, installing & setting up the package. NPM take cares of everything so that you can focus on your project.

NPM official website

NPM has an official website which you should definitely bookmark. On the website, you can find all the npm packages available for you to use. The packages also have great documentation which you can follow on how to install and use in your project.

Not just that but if you wish, you can also publish and share your own packages on this platform which then will be available for anyone to use.

You can visit the official website here - www.npmjs.com

How to access NPM?

Working with npm is super easy, all you need is to make sure that Node JS is installed in your system. NPM comes pre-installed with Node JS so you don't have to worry about installing it manually. Once you've successfully installed Node JS, you can simply use any command-line interface like a terminal to run npm commands, install npm packages from the npm registry and start using npm in your projects.

Important NPM files in your project

If you are using npm in your project then there are two very important files associated with npm that you should know about.

They are:

node_modules - It's a directory automatically created in the root folder of your project which will contain all the npm packages you install locally. One more thing you should note here that this directory will be automatically ignored by git and will not appear in your project's repo.
package.json - It is a file that is again automatically created in the root directory of your project which contains metadata about the packages you have installed.

Both of these files are created automatically & are managed by npm so you don't have to worry about them until you're experienced enough to manually work on them.

Important NPM Commands

`npm init`

This command initializes npm in your project and will automatically create the package.json file.

`npm init -y`

This command is simply an alteration of npm init which just skips a few unnecessary steps and creates the package.json file quickly.

`npm install xyz`

This command will install the specified package locally and add it into the package.json as a dependency.

`npm install -g xyz`

This command is again an alteration of the npm install command which will install the specified package but on a system-wide or global scale.

`npm update xyz`

This command is used to update a specified package to its most recent release available.

`npm update`

This command is used to update all the packages present in the package.json file at once to their most recent versions available.

`npm list`

This command lists all the packages installed in your system.

`npm uninstall xyz`

This command is used to uninstall the specified package which you no longer need.

`npm uninstall xyz -g`

This command will uninstall the specified package globally.

Support

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D

What is Complexity Analysis?

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 05:01:50 +0000

While learning Data Structures & Algorithms, you must have come across the term 'Complexity Analysis' a lot. But what does it mean? And how does it works?

Keep reading & all your questions will be answered...

What are Algorithms?

In simple terms, an algorithm is just a series of steps to solve a particular problem. An algorithm takes an input and gives some output.

Now it is possible that a problem may have multiple solutions & we can design multiple algorithms to get different solutions.

Now the question comes in mind that which solution is the most efficient one? One way to answer it is to compare different algorithms with one another and see which one performs the best.

Now, this is not as easy as it sounds...

But why Complexity Analysis?

Consider this, suppose you have a brand new & super-powerful MacBook while one of your friends has a really old & slow MacBook. Now if you try running an algorithm in both of the MacBooks, you will notice that in the new MacBook, the algorithm is executed a lot faster than the old MacBook.

So is our algorithm slow because it took a lot of time in the old MacBook? Or is it fast since it got executed pretty fast in the new MacBook?

Noticed the problem with comparing the algorithms through the traditional way?

The performance of an algorithm is dependent on several factors. And any changes to these factors may lead to different performance results.

So to tackle this issue and come up with a universal way of analyzing algorithms that remain unaffected in all, we perform Complexity Analysis.

Finally let's talk about Complexity Analysis

So until now, we know that complexity analysis helps us compare algorithms and find the best one. Considering this we can also say that the best algorithm will have the best complexity.

But now what is complexity in the first place?

Well according to Wikipedia, the Complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it

Now an algorithm may require multiple resources to learn but these resources or requirements vary from one algorithm to another. But two things that every algorithm requires to run are time & space.

Hence we calculate the complexity of an algorithm considering only these two requirements i.e. space & time.

Space refers to the amount of memory required to execute the algorithm.

Time refers to the amount of time required by the algorithm for complete execution.

An algorithm is said to have the best complexity when it can execute properly in the least amount of space and time.

Now to express complexity we have some notations but do not worry about them. We will cover it in the next part of this series.

Complexity Analysis also helps us to find the most suitable data structure for a given task. While learning data structures, we are going to talk a lot about complexity analysis.

Final Summary

Complexity Analysis:

is a great way of comparing algorithms to find the best one
particularly focuses on two types of complexities - Space (memory) & Time (amount of time)
helps us find the most suitable data structure for a given task

Support

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learned something new today. Please leave a like, a lovely comment, or feedback & also consider following me as I regularly post useful & informative articles to help you become a better programmer.

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Connect with me

If you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion here & I will try my best to help you :D

What are Data Structures?

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 05:52:47 +0000

If you are preparing for a coding interview, implement a new algorithm or maybe you simply wanna help yourself with your computer science academic curriculum, the knowledge of Data Structures is a must.

In this article, we will cover all the essential yet basic knowledge you need to get started learning Data Structures and in the following parts, we will take a deep dive into all the popular data structures to help you get familiar with them as fast as possible.

What is Coding - in simple terms?

If you are from a computer science background then you may already know quite a few things about what exactly coding is but talking in the simplest terms possible & in the term that's relevant to our topic, coding is nothing but manipulation of data.

Now, this may sound a little absurd to you but if you look closely all we do in coding is structure, organize & manage data, in short, all we do is deal with data in one or another way.

Simplifying this definition, we can say that data structures are a way to organize and manage data.

What is Data Structures?

We already saw what basically a data structure is, in simple terms. Now coming to a more generic definition, let's have a glance over the basic Wikipedia definition of Data Structures.

A data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, and the functions or operations that can be applied to the data.

From this definition, we can extract 3 main points about Data Structures:

It is a collection of data values
There is a relationship among those data values
And there are certain operations that can be performed on them to manipulate it

Let's verify these points with an example of a simple one-dimensional array.

Don't worry if you know nothing about arrays right now, we are going to cover arrays in future parts of this series.

For now, you can refer to the Wikipedia definition here but basically, an array is a collection of data that usually belongs to the same type.

For example an array of numbers.

Now if you look closely at the above illustration, you will notice that an array can contain multiple units of data that usually belong to the same type. In this case, it is an array of alphabets.

Along with that, we have some notations below the array which starts from 0. These are called indexes and help us to access the values of the array at that specific index. You don't have to worry about the 3 digit numbers above the array as of now so let's arbitrarily ignore them.

Now coming back to our points, we can say that the first point is true since the array is a collection of data, the second point is true as well since there is a relationship between the data values which is described by the index number.

And we can definitely perform operations on the array to maybe delete an element, move an element, add a new element, etc. Hence the third point also ends up being true.

So you just saw how data structures like arrays fit well into the definition of data structures & follow the same fundamental points described.

Final Summary

A Data Structure is nothing but:

a collection of data
that data is somehow related to one another
& you can perform operations on it to manipulate it as per your needs

Support

If you like my work please consider Buying me a Coffee so that I can bring more projects, more articles for you.

Also if you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion & I will try my best to help you :D

AI Gaming with Azure & Python

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 17:36:28 +0000

AI has several applications but Gaming might be the most fascinating one! So how about we talk a little about AI Gaming & all the amazing things it brings to the table when industry-leading cloud computing service Azure and my favorite programming language Python comes together.

What is AI Gaming?

In classic gaming, we bring together two players and they play the game accordingly to score maximum points and the one with maximum points, well as you've guessed, wins the game.

AI Gaming is the same thing, but here you bring two programmers and they code their bots (or scripts). Both bots are programmed to play the same game and the bot which is faster, more accurate & can score more points will win the game.

Sounds fun right!

AI Gaming Platform

What if I tell you, there's an entire platform dedicated to AI Gaming where you can learn, code & compete with your bots? Well, I am not kidding, you can see yourself here aigaming.com.

Throughout this article, we are going to explore the platform and see how it works plus how you can create bots and power them with Azure's cutting-edge Cognitive Services.

Setting up your AI Gaming Account

Alright so before we do anything, let's quickly create your AI Gaming Account.

Go ahead and click on the Register on the top right corner and fill in your email, a strong password, a fancy username, and click on register. I'll leave the rest on you.

Now once you've successfully registered and logged in to your account, we can proceed to further steps.

Getting familiar with the Interface

Let's quickly gaze over the essential components the AI Gaming so we can quickly get started coding out bots.

In the top header, we have a few options:

Games: Under this menu, you can browse through all the games you can play on the AI Gaming platform. Every game is different, hence the strategies & code for each will be different as well. You can also register for tournaments & compete with other players.

Editor: The editor is where you will be writing all your code. This is where you'll probably spend most of your time.

My Account: Here you can find all the account and bot management options. Nothing much to worry about here.

Help: Help section is full of useful & beginner-friendly tutorials to help you get started with AI Gaming.

For now, you can ignore the About us & News Section.

Let's Get Coding!

Alright, so the fun part begins here! Let's do it!

Creating a Bot

So the first thing is to create a bot before we start coding it. Here's how to do it -

Head to the Bot Management Section in the My Account Dropdown.
Now create a new bot from the top right corner
Give your Bot a name and click on OK

Getting your Azure Computer Vision API Key

Although there are many games available for you to play on the AI Gaming Platform, for the sake of this tutorial we are going to play the good old Match Game. Now in Match Game, you have match titles with similar content. The catch is, to match the content, you have to turn the tiles to see what content it has and remember it, then you have to locate a tile with similar content to lock them and score the point. The bot with higher points and minimum turns will win the game.

To increase our odds of winning, we can make use of Azure's Computer Vision API Key to give our bot the power of AI.

To create an Azure Computer Vision API Key, follow these steps:

Create an account on Azure. If you are a student, then you can get the free student credits to get started.
Once done, head on to the Azure Portal.
Now click on Create a Resource
Now from the left-hand category list, select AI + Machine Learning category
Now from the right-hand list, click on Computer Vision
Now here are a few things you need to fill in to create the API

- Subscription: Select the subscription you would like to continue with. Most probably it will be your student subscription.
- Resource Group: Resource Groups are nothing but just a way to group certain resources to help you become organized. You can choose any of your previous resource groups or if you don't have any yet, you can create a new one easily.
- Region: Region is where your resource in the world will be located. You should make sure that your resource region is close to your current location so that latency can be minimized. If you're in India, then you are highly recommended to go for the West Europe region.
- Name: You have to give some name to your resource.
- Pricing tier: Here you have to select what tier you prefer. If you have the subscription then go for, Standard S1 tier since you can make more calls per minute with this tier, hence making it an ideal option for the AI Gaming tournaments.

Once done, click on **Review + Create**

Once your resource is successfully deployed, you will see this message. Simply click on Go to Resource
Now under the Resource Management in the left-hand sidebar, go to Keys and Endpoint
Now you will see the two API Keys that have been generated for you, copy any one of these & finally let's get to coding.

Writing some code

Now since your API keys are ready, head back to AI Gaming Platform & jump to the editor.
1. Click on the New & select Microsoft API Template.py
2. Give the file a name & click on YES
3. Now you will see a lot of readymade code over here. This will be helpful since we don't have to type everything manually.
4. Online 7, make sure the botName variable is set to the Bot you created. In my case it was botName='mindninjaX-defbot'.
5. One last thing, on line 16, we have to add our API key, which we generated in the last step.
```
headers_vision = {'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key': 'YOUR-WESTEUROPE-MICROSOFT-COMPUTER-VISION-API-KEY', 'Content-Type': 'application/octet-stream'}
```
  Here we simply have to replace YOUR-WESTEUROPE-MICROSOFT-COMPUTER-VISION-API-KEY with our API Key.
  
  For example if your API Key is 2f6c3c7d02db4490a6ac00a10a7af82e, then the line 16 will look like this:
```
headers_vision = {'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key': '2f6c3c7d02db4490a6ac00a10a7af82e', 'Content-Type': 'application/octet-stream'}
```
6. Save your code.
7. Now make sure that you have selected the Match Game in the Game Type dropdown since we are going to play Match Game. And also make sure that you have selected the housebot-practise bot in the Opponents dropdown.
8. Now finally, let's run our code!
Now you will see the game has started.

And since we are using Azure Computer Vision API Key, our Bot easily won the game with a large margin in the score.

That's it!

That was a lot! But honestly speaking we only scratched the surface of what's possible with Azure & AI Gaming. I highly encourage you to go ahead and play an AI Gaming Game & invite your friends to see who can score more points. With the power of Azure, the sky is the limit.

Thank you!

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you found this beginner tutorial useful.

Also if you have any questions or doubts feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn & GitHub. Or you can also post a comment/discussion & I will try my best to help you :D

Why do you still use Sublime?

Rishabh Singh ⚡ — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 19:21:25 +0000

In 2021, there are a wide variety of code editors available online & most of them are free. One of the most popular one is probably VS Code which comes with a lot of amazing features you'll ever need in a code editor. Not only that it also got a built-in marketplace from where you can get any extension of your choice and make your VS Code Setup even more powerful!

Now the question arises, does anyone still uses Sublime in 2021?

Well of course some people do but even after there are so many amazing code editors available, why they prefer sticking to Sublime?

Discuss

Do you still use Sublime?
If yes, then why?
Ever thought of moving to any other code editor?