DEV Community: Nowshed H. Imran

Fixing broken website Bangla font in Firefox(Linux)

Nowshed H. Imran — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 19:19:53 +0000

Here is the solution to the pesky problem that plagued me for two days. After the fresh installation of Arch Linux, Firefox was rendering me broken Bengali fonts. The issue was especially prominent in social media pages.

As you can see, the configuration was correct. At this same configuration, the font was rendering perfectly in Chromium. For some idealistic reason, I wanted to use Firefox anyway possible. I keep Chromium for backup purpose only.

What was the issue then?

After searching countless hours, I got the same result. Installing the noto-sans-font was the solution. As you can see, I did that already. In a Firefox support page, I got the idea of using the debugging tool provided by the browser. By using this official guide, I debugged the webpage I was having the issue with. To my utter surprise, webpages were loading one more font, along with noto-sans. A package called ttf-liberation was installed as Chromium dependency and that was causing the problem.

Solution

Force removed the package from the system using:

pacman -Rdd ttf-liberation

Launched Firefox and everything was working fine.
Installed the package again, as it is a Chromium dependency:

pacman -S ttf-liberation

I felt compelled to write this as this kind of obscure difficulties are very hard to solve, and I somehow chanced upon one.

Banker Learning C: Part 2

Nowshed H. Imran — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 19:09:41 +0000

Comment

Try to remember what you ate last night. Easy right? What about Thursday night one week ago? What about a month? If you don't have a pitch perfect Instagram account, you won't be able to easily answer these questions. Programming is much harder than remembering your last meal. So how does a programmer remember, what have they done with a complex piece of code 5 years ago?

The ingenious solution is called “Comment”.

Commenting involves placing Human Readable Descriptions inside of computer programs detailing what the Code is doing. [Source]

Let's decrypt the statement. I am sure you have seen sidenotes on books. Those side notes provide example and explanation of complex concepts. Comments are exactly that. Providing side notes, reference, explanation that will help us understand the code in the future.

How to Comment?

In C, we can comment the code in two ways. One is commenting a block of text that covers multiple line, and the other is commenting just one line.

1. Single Line Comment:

By using “//” a single line comment can be made.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("It's unbelievably chilly today!\n"); // I am learning to comment!
    return 0;
}

By pressing ctrl+F5, you get the following result.

If you observe, you can see the compiler totally ignored the following line

// I am learning to comment!

One important aspect is single line comment can be added in a line that has code in it, but it after comment no new code can be added.

2. Multi Line Comment:

In this method, we can take as many line as we want to explain a complex mechanism.

/* I always wondered why every programming language starts with “Hello World” 
printing demo. After some thought, I think I know why. 

1. It enables to show the learner an instant result. Dopamine gets released in 
our brain and that enables us to feel happiness and a sense of accomplishment.

2. Print a sentence is one of the easiest form of programming for any given 
languages.

That is why, here is a printing program to calibrate the Eureka moment. */

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("The ranting above is unbearable\n");
    return 0;
}

Again, hitting ctrl+F5,

Compiler ignored a whole paragraph(rant) which doesn't follow C Syntax at all.

Why does Commenting Matter?

Commenting is not any less significant than documentation at all. Good comments are like time investment that can save myriad amount of time in the future. It can contain custom algorithm, reference link, maybe some warning even!(Some codes are so ancient and obscure that touching them is sure to break them)

Banker Learning C: Part 1

Nowshed H. Imran — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 19:02:52 +0000

Back to learning. I will not list some processes here like installing IDE, compiler etc. but provide useful links, as Internet has already better resources in this topic I can ever produce.

Compiler?!

Most of us who are not from CS background find the idea of compiler very hard. The main reason is, we start with a programming language like Python or R that doesn't require learning this concept. These languages make writing and executing code very easy. For Python, steps are:

Go to the download page and download the package based on your OS,
Run Python from the OS(for Windows PowerShell, Linux Bash etc.),
Start coding and executing.

Python Code Example:

print("I can actually code!")

You can press enter the given code, and print a line of your choice. In this case, I choose, "I can actually code!". However, C is a bit more complex. C requires a piece of software called Compiler.

What really is a compiler?

For people like me, compiler can be best explained as the word Translator (Not using the word interpreter, as it has different meaning in programming language).

Suppose, John is visiting Germany for business purposes. He knows only English, but his meeting is with Mr. Lange who only knows German. They can't really communicate with each other. Luckily, Mr. Lange has a son called Richard who understands English and translate it to German so that Mr. Lange can understand.

Richard is called compiler in computer science.

Why is this needed?

Because C is a high level language. We can write code in words that is understood by us, but not by machines.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("My god, this is much harder than Python!\n");
    return 0;
}

Given code is how you can print a statement in C (Don't worry about it now, it will make sense later). But, we kind of understand what is written, a computer on the other hand doesn't.

Digital computer only understands two digits; 0 and 1. The job of a compiler is to convert the code we write into 0s and 1s that the computer understands. You can see an example of machine code on Wikipedia.

Why C requires a compiler and Python doesn't?

Because the core design is different in these two languages. In case of, Python, it takes your code, translates it to machine and execute the machine code, then shows the result. This takes more computing power and time to do it compared to C. The way C works makes it very fast and eligible to write code that needs every bit of computing power like an Operating System.
Windows, macOS, Linux all has major portion of code written in C.

What are the available compilers for C?

GCC and Clang are two of the most popular compilers available today. You can learn more about these online. For our purposes, we will head straight to the coding environment.

Integrated Development Environment

IDE is an application software where developer can efficiently write and debug(finding problem) codes. As we are a beginner here, we are not going to use hardcore IDE like, Code::Blocks rather a code editor called Visual Studio Code. Here is how you can set up the coding environment like my PC:

Install VS Code,
Install C/C++ Plugin for the editor

Running our first code

Create a folder that you want to experiment with C
Open VS Code and File> Add Folder to Workspace
File> Save Workspace As...
Add a file to the Folder that ends with .c like hello.c

You will get a similar looking IDE like me.

P.S. I didn't get accepted in Hogwarts doesn't mean that I can't do magic wizardry in a folder called Hogwarts.

Paste the following lines in your .c file. In my case, wizardry.c.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("My god, this is harder than Python!\n");
    return 0;
}

Hit ctrl+F5 in your keyboard. This will compile the code into an executable (instructions for computer written in machine code), run the executable and show the output in the terminal. In my case:

Whew, this is lots to take! It gets easier, though (God, I hope so!).

Pro Tip

Both Google and YouTube is your only friend in this journey. Learn to use them well. I am going to provide as many resources as I can, but your issue will be unique and self-learning will not be possible without tremendous reading. Get ready for that.

Banker Learning C: Part 0

Nowshed H. Imran — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 14:10:22 +0000

Premise

Background

Let's start with embarrassing myself. I am Nowshed H. Imran. I have completed my BBA and MBA in Banking and started my career in a commercial bank, and currently working in the Central Bank of country(Entry level obviously).

Say, what?

You might ask yourself, what is this atrocity doing here? I am here for the love of open source. I have been using various Linux based Operating Systems for more than 5 years, and along with various open-source software programs.

Why C, not …?

I also sense that a vast portion of financial organization is bound to shift towards Data Science. Thus, I started learning Python, R, and even Julia. I learned a bit and pieces here and there, but I was in a limbo(You may relate to this part). After contemplating a lot, I have decided to learn C. It neither low level like Assembly nor very high level like Python. I won't kill me and if I can get through this, It might be the foundation that I need. As a bonus, there is no end to C related problems whose solution is not already available.

Resources

Here are the resources I will be following to complete this trail, I guess!

Online Tutorial

A well curated program in Udemy to have a class lecture like interaction.

Books

C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide by Greg Perry and Dean Miller I will follow this book primarily, as it is targeted towards beginner and explained very thoroughly.
The C Programming Language(2nd Ed.) by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie For reference purpose only.

IDE

Vscode. Please listen before throwing the rock. Codeblocks looks hideous in KDE. Neovim still a stretch for me yet. Learning the language comes first, perfect IDE will reveal itself.

Why, this?

The motivation is simple, after reading a ridiculous amount of blogs, it became apparent to me writing while learning is very important. I will learn and write blogs that might help someone like me.

Disclaimer

I am really not a novice in this. By using Linux based Operating Systems for a couple of years, I am well versed in terminal, commands, and some technical terms. I am also familiar with the basics Python and R and so, it is easier for me to grasp some concepts. I will try to do my best to tone it down when necessary.