DEV Community: quest!on mark

Become the next Steve Jobs in Public Speaking

quest!on mark — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 14:38:52 +0000

Do you really become so nervous when you approach audience at public events on stage?

Do you wonder how to overcome this kind of anxiety and nervousness?😑

Public speaking, rather than indicating it as a skill, this can be described as an art.

But what does it matter for beginners? Yeah, that is really an interesting question. If you are a beginner and experimenting yourself as a speaker for the first time ever, that is a true adventure!

Believe me or not public speaking isn't only meant for experienced speakers, it is also intended for beginners too! Beginners can take the opportunity of facing the audience very sportively.

It would be similar to trying a new dish at an unknown restaurant or exploring a new place. It is nothing but a sport, but why do people freak out or become scared?

That is another interesting question to answer. This nervousness would cloud their mind due to multiple reasons, the fear of being wrong, the fear of bad memory, the fear to stammering in front of people, or even the fear of transition for a beginner to excellent speaker.

But how to overcome all these? lets see one by one…

The Fear of Being Wrong

For a good speaker, what it matters a lot is their confidence!

Confidence is the key or even the foundation of a good stage talk. As a beginner, few people can attain confidence through practice, yes practice can boost your confidence as you are aware of what you are really gonna speak and what's next.

If you have practiced the content of your talk or speech you really need not worry about the performance. But what if you eventually forget things?

The Fear of Bad Memory

If you think that even proper practice will not help you, may be because you are likely to forget things easily, then this actually should not be considered as a fear, in fact, I consider this to be a gift!

Do you wonder why, the statistics says that even the people who practiced a lot before their talk have only the responsibility of delivering that same and right content to the audience, with same detailing.

But if they are likely to forget things, then they need not worry about the proper content delivery, they are free to do modifications! Yes they enjoy the freedom of speaking out what is in their mind, and not just stick to the prepared content. These people are praised as natural speakers !

The only thing you have to take care in that circumstances is to keep yourself on track because to much of modifications can divert you from the original content. So be cautious if you adapt natural speaking. Also, you can master this through experience, the best teacher!

A Glimpse of my Life, Stepping into the Battle made It Success!

During my school days, I was responsible for delivering some of the important information to officials who visited us for campus inspection. A meet was organized and the teacher asked us to speak our part beforehand.

I was literally very nervous, and I wasn't able to speak correctly, not even once, so the teacher went mad on me. She was pretty much sure that I was about to blabber things, but she couldn't do anything as I was the only person responsible to speak that part of the content.

After sometime the officials and the principles turned up, and the meeting started. My heart beat raced, I took a deep breath(following my mother's advice). And yes, when it was my turn, I started speaking things which were not in my content script! I started speaking my own thoughts, yes, these were the natural speaking instincts!

As I said before I just spoke what was in my mind rather than the script I was given, I knew the teacher was staring at me with surprise and anger. But I continued with that, and to everyone's surprise, I was very comfortable being a general speaker and answering to questions which were asked after that.

At the end, I was the special mention🤩 by each of the officials, for being so natural and giving honest answers to their questions! Yes, magics do happen, what you really need to do this is step into the battle field, the victory is all yours!!

You can win appreciation of many hearts, or you can even win lessons! Whatever it is, be optimistic and embrace the outcomes as a stepping stone, as a constructive feedback. Keep trying!

Podium's Favourite

The podium will definitely start loving their frequent visitors and eventually you will become podium's favourite. So, do speak whenever you get a chance! This will help you a lot to overcome your fears.

Beginner's Mantra🧘

( i ) Close your eyes

( ii ) Take a deep breath, inhale confidence and exhale all your fears

( iii ) The stage is all yours!

Happy speaking!!

Cohesion And Coupling Uncovered -Java

quest!on mark — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 18:29:43 +0000

The secret of creating manageable code is adhering to “high cohesion and low coupling”.

But what does these terms actually mean?

Cohesion and coupling generally focus on association or dependency between modules. In object-oriented programming languages like java, classes represent modules.

COHESION

Cohesion is the principle which makes sure that a single class is designed with a well-focused purpose. It can also be referred as the degree of atomicity of the concerned code base.

In simple terms, cohesion means focusing on one task at a time. There may be multiple tasks to be done by a team, the team lead allocates each task to a single member, here each member represents a module/class, and their focus is on a particular task only.

The advantage of high cohesion is that the code is easier to maintain and highly reusable as the classes have a well-focused approach.

Suppose we have a class that adds two numbers, also the same class displays the result. This is an example of a low cohesive class because displaying the result and the addition operation don’t have much in common.
To make it high cohesive, we would have to create a class Display and a class Addition. The Display will call the add method of the Addition class to get the result and display it. This way to develop a high cohesive solution.

Code:

//Separate classes for addition and display operations — High cohesion
class Addition {

int a = 5;
int b = 5;

 public int add(int a, int b) {
 this.a = a;
this.b = b;
return a + b;
}

}
class Display {

public static void main(String[] args) {
Addition obj = new Addition ();
System.out.println(obj.add(5, 5));
}

}

Pictorial Representation

COUPLING

On the other hand, Coupling refers to how strongly a module is connected to other modules. In other words, it is the number of connections between two or more units. There are two types of coupling, Tight coupling and loose coupling.

Code:

//Two classes with strong inter-dependency — High coupling
class Volume {
public static void main(String args[]) {

Box b = new Box(5,5,5);
System.out.println(b.volume);
}
}

class Box {

public int volume;

Box(int length, int width, int height) {
this.volume = length * width * height;
}
}

Explanation: In the above example, there is a strong inter-dependency between both the classes. If there is any change in Box class, then it will be reflected in the result of Class Volume. Another best example of tight coupling is RMI(Remote Method Invocation).

Therefore, Increased cohesion and decreased coupling do lead to good software design. The most effective way to decrease coupling and increase cohesion is design by interface.

By this method, the major functional objects of the class only know each other through the interface that they implement, thereby reducing coupling to a greater extent also the implementation of an interface as a sequence introduces cohesion.

Step by Step Approach

Consider the following example, in which we are constructing a typical monitorable ConnectionPool and have the following specifications. Be aware that while it may seem excessive for a straightforward class like ConnectionPool, the main goal is to illustrate low coupling and strong cohesion with a few simple examples, which I hope will be beneficial.

assist in establishing a connection
disrupt a connection.
view connection and usage statistics
get statistics on connection time.
Record the connection release and retrieval data in a database for reporting purposes.

We can create a ConnectionPool class with low cohesion by cramming all of this functionality and responsibility into a single class as seen below. We can see that this one class is in charge of connection management, communication with the database, and upkeep of connection statistics.

High cohesion allows us to distribute these responsibilities among classes, improving maintainability and reusability.

We shall use the high cohesion ConnectionPool picture above to illustrate low coupling. Despite supporting high cohesion, the ConnectionPool is tightly coupled with the ConnectionStatistics class and the PersistentStore because it directly interacts with them.

Instead, we may create a ConnectionListener interface, let these two classes implement it, and allow them to register with the ConnectionPool class in order to reduce coupling. Additionally, the ConnectionPool will loop through these listeners and alert them to connection get and release events, enabling for reduced coupling.

Why adapting High Cohesion and Low Coupling is good?

The code becomes maintainable which in turn increases the productivity for developers.

Then it becomes easier to design new features and write code. Modular, component-based, and layered code reduces the risks even when changes are made by the developer.

When the code is loosely coupled, that is when the modules are independent of each other, we can write code within one module without impacting other modules.

To Reader’s Attention

Asking yourself these questions while you write and work with your code base would help.

How many modules do I need to modify or add in order to create a new functionality?
How many separate locations will this modification occur?
How challenging is testing my code?
Can we make this better by making the code loosely coupled? Can we make this better by making our code more cohesive?

And yeah, if you have all these questions in your knowledge while coding your application, you can achieve the expected results!

Happy coding!

Java vs C++ vs Python vs C: Which Programming Language Will Help You To Crack Interviews?

quest!on mark — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 18:24:46 +0000

Why is this even a Question?

Due to increase in lot of tutorials and advancement in the coding field it is very difficult to choose one coding language because one coding language is better in development one is better in memory management and another one provide a lot of inbuilt features and it is truly very hard for student to choose one.

If you don't have time to read the whole article here is the short answer for you to choose 😉. If you have any confusion in choosing among java and C++ just go with anyone! you won't regret your decision.

Let's talk about C vs other languages :

Why we cant see people solving leetcode problems on C? this is the common question which arrive to every aspirant who is trying to learn data structure.. let's dive into it little deeper and find out why- by comparing it to C++.

C++ can be used as both procedural & Object oriented oriented language while C can be only used as procedural language & believe me oops plays an important role in interviews as well as in jobs.

C++ is also known as best for Competitive programming because of STL (Standard Template Library). Most Data Structures like Stack, Priority Queue, Min Heap ,Red-Black Tree , Hash Table etc. are already a part of STL & can be directly used.

Reference variables are supported by C++ but not by C.

This list goes on so if you're thinking of solving data structures in C seriously you have to change your mind!
C is not completely bad, it is very great for beginners to learn and you can get a strong grip on basics.

If you think that C++ is great and what is the point in further discussion!, now JAVA comes to the play ground.

Java vs C++ : the Real fight begins 💪🏻

Java and C++ both have its unique features and being favourite for many in respective field so everyone has their own perspective let me share mine

I divide this discussion in two parts

1.Development :

If you're interested in development then I would advise you to choose Java because many MNC use Java over C++ for developing. Once you have cracked the interview it would be really useful if you have learned Java.

2.Competitive coding :

If you really want to see your name on top of leetcode, codechef-like platforms then I would suggest you to choose C++ over Java. The reason is quite simple C++ is very fast compare to java and in coding competition how fast you solve the program really matters.

If you still don't know what to choose, don't worry, you can choose any language you like because both languages are built on the same foundation. If you have complete understanding of any one language then this is very easy for you to change because it would take utmost of 3 weeks for you to change so don't overstress between Java and C++.

Honourable mentions 😉:

I know when I talk about C, Java, C++ many of you thought about python and a natural question would have arised "why can't i choose python over java and C++".

The answer is you can choose any language you like but if you choose python means it is comparatively slower when compared to Java or C++ and it has many inbuilt packages which is very useful in some cases but in the interviewer point of you they expect you to know the knowledge behind each and everything so if you're using python I suggest you to learn the logic behind each inbuilt methods.

Conclusion:

As a conclusion I suggest you to learn either C++ or Java based on your priority, if you're interested in any other language you can definitely learn that also as an additional language. If you're confident on your skills then there is no question in choosing language you can ace the interview in any language you like but choosing the better language would obviously make the process lot better so think twice before you decide!

If you have come this far thank you for reading !!😉 have a great coding year.

Magic Spells to Increase your Net Worth upto $130 Million

quest!on mark — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:08:28 +0000

When I saw the M.S. Dhoni - The Untold Story it just hit my heart deeply. I was pondering how a railway ticket collector who was earning around 4 lakhs per annum at his early 20s which was a commentable job, then the hit of Magic spell of Determination towards his Passion turned him as Captain Cool with the net worth of $113 Million👀😄

We all know how much hard is to hit helicopter shot by using the BAT, but with the Magic Potion of determination + hardwork + practice -he stamped it in his history as the inventor of the famous Helicopter shot.

The power to bounce back stronger after every fall is essential- by BALL🏏

Does this Magic spell of determination worked out only in his life ?

Rowan Atkinson's sluttering problem almost cost him his career, But Atkinson overcame his disability and fear by exposing himself to the same fear. He did not shy away, but instead took to the stage and faced the world with Magic Potion of determination + enthusiasm.

Surprisingly, he still lives with the disorder. But as is clearly evident, he never let it keep him down. In fact, in creating Mr. Bean (still in my favourite playlists💓), he used it to his advantage!

Ludwig Van Beethoven wrote his immortal symphonies when he was deaf.

In a prison cell, John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress, a book that is one of the epics of English literature.

Glenn Cunningham who was horribly burned in a school fire at the age of 8 and doctor's predicted he would never walk again. 22 years later, he took his first steps and through sheer determination he ran a mile in 4:06:8 minutes, breaking the world's record.

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost when he was blind.

Robert Louis Stephenson was never, even for one hour, free from pain and a hacking cough. He suffered from fever and tuberculosis. Yet he wrote Treasure Island.

"What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me" -Hellen Keller. She overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians as well as co-founder of the ACLU, it's net worth is $300 million👀😄.

The Magic Spell of Determination surmounted their incapabilities and made them now what they are!!!

BONUS MAGIC SPELLS✨

🪄 I AM THE BEST
Just repeat this sentence in yourself from the beginning of whatever work you do( personal fav Magic Spell!).

🪄JUST 5 MINUTES MORE ..
5 minutes is enough to change! (mind: what the hell😂)…..yeah 5 minutes takeoff this is the second Magic Spell, just do the thing you procrastinated for so long for just 5 minutes, for example if you want to go for a jog just wander outside for just 5 minutes then see the magic.

🪄YOU
We all are gifted with some fascinating special skills and what we need is to discover that skill, sharpen it and use it to stamp our mark in this world by using the MAGIC SPELLS as our wand.

Still not convinced with the power of these Magic Spells🪄 , wow you are a tough person it seems, this is a good quality! , but if you step into what you want, no one can stop you that's what I like from these kind of people. So definitely tryout 5 minutes takeoff Magic Spell( specially made for you💗)and start doing ABRACAA DABRAAA around you🪄.

The Top Reasons People Succeed as a Beginner too In the Machine Learning Industry

quest!on mark — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 18:20:33 +0000

Are you really fascinated on the technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

Do you wish to showcase Machine learning or AI as your area of interest in your profile?

And the most common question, where can you get started?🤔

I would like to share my personal experience on how I started working with machine learning. Initially, I was also pondering the same questions. But after I started working in this field, I understood how well ML can help us in our day to day problems.

This quest to explore helped me in doing projects that shaped my knowledge and understanding towards ML and moreover benefitted me in several ways.

Be it any competition & hackathon or a summer internship at prestigious institutes or even cracking an interview, all these require a basic knowledge of any of the emerging techs. Machine learning will certainly be the best option for you to choose!

ML - Precise definition

Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that has an ability to learn automatically without being explicitly programmed.

Why machine learning?

Machine learning is simply not restricted to one or two use cases. It is an exciting technology to learn and has its applications in hundreds of avenues of life.

When I came across this word Machine learning, I thought this will comprise of complex math equations and algorithms which a layman or a sophomore student would find very difficult to understand.

But to my amazement🤩, machine learning was one of the simplest and easiest areas to learn as a beginner. Let me tell you how, in later part of this blog. Machine learning does not require any expensive tools for deployment, all you need is a PC in a good working condition!

Beginner's secret

As a beginner, I preferred reading blogs to get familiarized with the concepts and to begin from the scratch. Blogs and tutorials can serve as a great resource for you to pick any specific sub-domain as the field is very vast.

Also, reading the experiences of many machine learning enthusiasts can help you create some perspective with better understanding. You can also take up an online course to learn the basic concepts in ML, there are lots of helpful courses for beginner, so do give it a try!💪

Get strong hold over the concepts

Initial stage of mastering any tech is getting a strong hold over the important concepts and terms. The theoretical aspects will help you better understand and map your learnings that are performed during practical implementation.

Maintaining short notes of the concepts learnt will serve you great in the future! So do make a note of what you learn.

Learn By applying

Apart from mastering the theoretical aspects, you will certainly have to apply the machine learning technique or process that you learn. The application can either be a simple supervised learning model (where you got to do data pre-processing and training prebuilt algorithms as a major task) or even a full-fledged project.

The choice of your application is based on your understanding of the concepts and your confidence to implement it. Also make sure to save this implementation for future reference.

Most importantly, pick a process and a tool for implementation. The process itself refers to the methodology or the overall plan and the tool is the ML model(start with the basic one, example: Built in classes of YOLO for object detection)

Practice on datasets, there are ample of datasets available over the internet, choose any of it and start the process (For beginners: dataset is a collection of image or textual or even csv data that is used in training the ML model).

Answering my previous question of why ML is one of the simplest areas to learn, ML has lots of prebuilt models and libraries that can easily be used in numerous applications.

You need NOT go deep into the math behind the algorithms to explore each of it, what you need to do is apply the ML algorithm first and see how it works. Observe the results, further improvements can be made through analysis of the real code and it's math.

Try this out, this method has helped me and will certainly help you too!😄

And yeah, if you have read this blog till end, it shows your interest in learning ML and you can definitely fulfill your desire through consistent learning and implementations.

All the best!

C pointers all you need to know

quest!on mark — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 18:29:24 +0000

C is one of the most powerful, efficient, and widely-used language in today's world even though it is one of the oldest(since 1972 -Dennis Ritchie), it is still used in

Building operating systems - Microsoft Windows kernel
Embedded systems
Compilers and video games.

In the world of C, pointers are an essential tool for developers. These pointers directly deals with our system's memory which is a great advantage and this gives us strong foundation like literally how the program and storage works together.

But now modern programming languages takes away the function of pointers from the developer's direct control(as advancement!) which makes them to lose fundamental knowledge of programs in memory management.

BEFORE YOU START

If you are a beginner then you must know about variables and data types before commencing otherwise you can skip this part.

VARIABLES

In the layman language variable means something it tends to change which is not constant always.

In a rental house the person who lives there are variables similarly here the rental house is a memory unit and the person who lives in it are the data which will vary as user changes.

Definition: Variables are containers for storing data values. A variable is a name given to that memory location which stores the data.

A variable has four attributes

name.
address
value
type

DATA TYPE

In C the variable's data type should be given to allocate the memory.

If we save the age in a variable it's data type is integer(INT). If my mark 81.5 is stored then it's data type is float…if the decimal points is way too longer then it's data type is double.

What if the user store his grade 'A', then the variable's data type is character(CHAR).If user name is stored which is a group of characters for example "Rowan Atkinson" then it's stored as character array, where array is a data structure in which we can store same type of data.

example:
int arr[] = {1, 2, 3}; ✅
int arr[] = {1, 'A', 1.2};👎

To store different data types we use structures.

STANDARD LIBRARY

<stdio.h>
Standard Input Output library has the input and output functions.

input function : scanf() getc() etc

output function:printf() putc() etc

To use printf()function in our code then we should include the below code in the beginning by convention.

#include<stdio.h>

The #include preprocessor directive is used to paste code of given file(here stdio.h) into current file.

Now let us uncover the magic of pointers in c.

POINTERS

Pointer is a special data type where it can only store the address of the variable i. e, address means the location of the variable in the memory.

Declaring a pointer:

char *charPointer; This charPointer is a pointer to a char data type variable.
int *intPointer; This intPointer is a pointer to a int data type variable.

In the number variable
data stored: 22
address of number variable: 2000

In the intPointer which is a pointer to a int data type variable
data stored: 2000 //address of the number variable
address of intPointer: 5000

Note:
int data type variable can hold integer(10) value only, not float(10.0).
charPointer and intPointer are the variable names which can be changed as per user needs.

Now we are ready to tackle any type of pointers💪.Let us dive into the code…

Read the code with the below explanation

 #include<stdio.h>
 int main(){
         int number = 18;   

         int* numberPointer;
         numberPointer = &number;

         printf("\n%d", &number);
         printf("\n%d", numberPointer);
         printf("\n%p", numberPointer);

         return 0;
 }

output:
6422036 6422036 000000000061FE14

Here 18 is stored(initialised) in the number variable and the address of the number variable is stored in the numberPointer using & operator.

numberPointer = &number;

%p is one of the format specifier where it is used to print the value in the variable as hexadecimal format(base 16). By convention, memory address is represented in hexadecimal format.

To access the value in the number variable using numberPointer the below statement is used. Here the * (deferencing operator) operator uses the value in the numberPointer(the value present in the numberPointer is the number variable's address) and goes to that address then returns us the data present in that address.

printf("\n%d", *numberPointer);

output:
18

WHY WE SHOULD USE THESE POINTERS

This can be used to change/update the values of many different variables of the same type. Execution time is also faster in the usage of pointers

The name of the two important operators used so far is

& -Address of operator

* -Indirection operator

THE MOST CONFUSING DOUBLE POINTERS IS CLEARED NOW:

Read the code with the below illustrative image

#include<stdio.h>
 int main(){
    int number = 18;
    int* numberPointer;
    int** doublePointer;

    numberPointer = &number;
    doublePointer = &numberPointer;

    printf("\n%d", &number);
    printf("\n%d", *doublePointer);
    printf("\n%d", *(*doublePointer));
    printf("\n%d", **doublePointer);

    return 0;
 }

output:
6422036 6422036 18 18

*(*doublePointer) = *(6422036)
while looking into 6422036 address 18 value is accessed.

Conclusion

This article is done with the basics of pointers

pointers definition and usage
pointers and addresses
single pointer
double pointer but you shouldn't be done with pointers. Play with them. Best Wishes. Before I leave, I would like to leave you with the following comic!

NEVER STOP EXPLORING!!

The Productivity Hacks that’ll Make You the Best Teen in the World

quest!on mark — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 18:17:54 +0000

Introduction: Unproductive Teens? The Truth about Teen Productivity

We all think as teenagers that it’s not important to take life seriously because everything is available in front of us. We also think that we don’t need to work for it.

But at the same time, we have an immense amount of physical and mental energy with which we can experiment. We can do anything with that energy! We have to understand how great this is!

What is the Definition of a Productive Teen?

The definition of productive teens is not just those who are working all day. It’s about knowing their energy levels and taking advantage of them. If you are able to master this in your teenage years then it will definitely help you to reach greater heights.

How To Use Your Energy levels Better As A Teenager

To understand the energy levels properly you have to understand yourself first i.e., you have to analyse yourself like when you will be at your maximum energy and this completely depends on the individuals like some persons may feel motivated and excited to work at night.

On some days it completely depends on you. Once you figure it out, start designing your day according to your energy levels.

Steps To Designing Your Ideal Day As A Student or Teenager

The main things to note down while designing your day is

Calculate your free time after school
Properly plan your work one day before
Audit your time properly
Improve gradually don’t be hard on yourself

Don’t overdo the calculation if you only have 4 to 5 hours after school, It’s completely fine, make sure you utilise all of that time properly and remember it is always quality over quantity.

Next one is to make sure you do the most creative thing in the time at which you have most of the energy because you don’t want your energy to go waste on the repetitive task like doing some random homework, copying work and you can do this kind of work in the time which you don’t have any energy left in the mind.

The hidden secrets of time management are only known by properly auditing your time. Create an excel sheet in your phone and make sure you note what you do for every 1 hour in a day, I know it is a tedious task to note down all the 24 hours a day but believe me this is going to be a game changer in your time management.

After auditing for a week don’t be hard on yourself it is okay to spend time on something which doesn’t improve your life like surfing social media and make sure you improve the time you spend on productive works.

Conclusion For Improving Your Daily Routine & To Be More Efficient As A Student or A Teenager

As a teen don’t be over stressed about life and it is completely okay to spend time on useless things but make sure you’re aware of the time you’re wasting and whenever you have any problem in time management it is not only about time it is about energy how you distribute you energy on the different work is the major factor on this productivity game.

“The key to productivity is energy management, not time management.“

Have a great journey my friends the whole world is yours 👍