DEV Community: SalladShooter

BIG phyal Update

SalladShooter — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 18:28:25 +0000

Hey I’m SalladShooter 👋, the creator of phyal my open source Python Web-framework that allows you to quickly build websites without the hassle of HTML.

The biggest update to phyal is here 0.3.0 🎉 (and maybe 0.3.1)! You can now use phyal for bigger projects with ease. If you do come across bugs or problems, or even ideas, please leave them here -> https://github.com/SalladShooter/phyal.

Make sure to give my Repo a star to support me, and happy coding!

Website Makeovers

SalladShooter — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 19:39:32 +0000

Hey I’m SalladShooter 👋, the creator of phyal my open source Python Web-framework that allows you to quickly build websites without the hassle of HTML.

I’m here to introduce Website Makeovers (make sure to hover things on the landing page for some extra fun)! At Website Makeovers I remake popular websites that I feel are lacking in something or could be redone entirely to elevate it's appeal. Here I will present those remade websites for you to view and enjoy. And as an early special, I’m allowing, you, the community to decide on some websites I can remake to get the ball rolling. I’m hopping in the future to have an extra paid membership where those members can help with ideas. But currently, it’s free! So check out the website here -> https://websitemakeovers.replit.app/ and leave some great ideas below!

Why AI Won’t Replace Programmers, Probably

SalladShooter — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:47:00 +0000

AI will doom us all! Or not?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. New developments seem to pop up overnight. Programming seems like it will get replaced by AI, as it is writing better (and more correct) code as AI continues to evolve. AIs like Devin have been able to produce more AIs like it, so it seems like the world will end with AI obliterating us because of our bad manners.

Our World In Data - Artificial Intelligence

This graph shows the scary way AI is starting and rapidly improving on beating human benchmarks (or the average human) on many levels (though, still lacking most common sense). But, AI is still a tool that needs human intervention to perform properly. ChatGPT and other AI creators have all explicitly agreed that you can’t use AI in your ventures of making your own AI, so we’re safe in some ways. Although more laws are needed to protect ways AI can and should be used, they haven’t been put in place as AI has been a more recent development.

AI will take programmers’ jobs! Or will it?

AI has spooked everyone and their grandmas (I don’t know if they would be too invested) in taking away programmers’ jobs. Many AI companies are trying to reduce the amount of staff they need and supplement it with a never-sleep, really efficient robot that doesn’t need to be paid, but there will always be jobs for programmers.

Let’s talk about a Sigmoid Function/Curve for a moment. A Sigmoid Function can show how technological advancement evolves. If you look at the bottom leftmost part of the curve, it starts to slow with not much vertical (y-axis) height, this can be shown as the amount of people that know or use a certain product. As you start moving right, the curve shoots up fast (like an exponential curve), this can be shown as a product catching on and many people are advancing that thing fast and making it better. Finally, as you keep moving right, the curve tapers off and the tops go higher, this can be shown as the product becoming as advanced as it will be, and not much improvement can be accomplished.

AI can be described using this very method. Even just a few years ago, AI was mostly unheard of, and when it was talked about it wasn’t really anything impressive and mostly reserved for far-off Sci-Fi movies. But recently in the past two years, AI has taken off, and with increased funding rapidly accelerating companies rushing to put AI in everything to catch the computer nerds of the internet and generate profit. The one scary thing is, for AI we don’t know where we are on the Sigmoid Function (nothing is) until after it tapers off at the end. The best outcome is it finishes off soon and is just a helpful tool for programmers to be more efficient, otherwise, it might result in a loss of jobs if people aren’t smart enough.

Our World In Data - Artificial Intelligence

What can we do?

Closing Notes

In any advancement, whether it be cars or factories, people were always scared of losing their jobs to these new things, but in the end, it has always created new and exciting jobs around these things. The same will probably happen for programming, companies and corporations will always need somebody to tell the AI what it needs to do, or someone to train the AI. Whatever it is, there will be something for us to do, who knows maybe there will be competitions for the best and fastest humans to go head to head against AI as a sort of human test.

While AI might seem scary (even more so with media coverage and the crazy fast advances) you shouldn’t need to worry, programmers are here to stay as long as computers stay (otherwise we’ll have to touch grass!), someone will have to guide and help the AI, others will help teach it, and more. So, in the end, you can rest easy not worrying about your job… or can you?

— SalladShooter

Credits:

Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/artificial-intelligence' [Online Resource]

What is Hexadecimal?

SalladShooter — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:07:42 +0000

So, What the Heck is Hexadecimal?

Hexadecimal also known as Base 16 is used for a variety of things, such as CSS colors, Minecraft Redstone, and more. The main one we will focus on today will be using it in CSS.

You may have seen numbers and letters within a CSS color tag before #A1B2C3, this is using Hexadecimal to generate colors for CSS, it is used as modern computers can visualize around 16 million colors and Hexadecimal happens to be almost perfect (16^6 = 16,777,216). Hexadecimal begins like common Base 10, (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and for reference Binary: 0, 1) it is very similar it counts up from 0 to 9, after that is gets a tad bit strange, it starts using the English Alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F) you can think of these letters like playing card values (J: 11, Q: 12, K: 13, etc.). In ascending order A starts at 10 and F ends at 15. In Base 10 each column to the left of the 1’s place multiplies by 10, Binary multiplies by 2, so Hexadecimal (Base 16) therefore multiplies by 16: 4096 | 256 | 16 | 1 or Base 10: 1000 | 100 | 10 | 1.

With this newfound knowledge we can easily convert Base 10 to Hexadecimal and vice versa. For example take the number 312 and convert it into Hexadecimal, we can do it with only three place values: 138.

To use it in CSS you initiate the color with a hash symbol # and then type in Hexadecimal, each space for R(red) G(green) B(blue) uses two values, so 16 | 1, they can simulate up to 256 different values (0 to 255), so you can think of a color as #R(_ _)G(_ _)B(_ _), and each value you add in each color space adds or removes that color from the total.

I hope you found this helpful in someway. Like clearing up misnomers or learning something completely new (I know this completely changed the CSS game when I learned Hexadecimal and could better visualize the color outputs). Go teach someone else you know who would need this.

Have a good day!

— SalladShooter

Glam Up My Markup: Beaches - Beaches and More Beaches

SalladShooter — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 12:36:10 +0000

This is a submission for [Frontend Challenge v24.04.17]((https://dev.to/challenges/frontend-2024-05-29), Glam Up My Markup: Beaches

What I Built

I built a sort of minimal modern website. I hoped to free up space and condense it down into a small carousel to make it easier to navigate. I also wanted the gradients to feel like sunsets, as when most people think of beaches, sunsets go along with them.

Demo

Journey

In the beginning I played around with what HTML was given, and planned out what I sort of wanted it to look like. I focused on the CSS for most of the challenge, but used a little JavaScript to add a little bit of styling to the HTML elements without editing it. During this process I learnt a lot about clipping masks and radial gradients in the CSS, as that was something I had never done. I am proud of the header looking like a sunset to a beach. I hope to take these skills and apply them to upcoming projects, and revise current ongoing ones.

I hope you like what I have made for the June DEV Frontend Challenge!

4 Tricks to Actually Finish Your Programming Projects

SalladShooter — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 19:55:09 +0000

4 Tricks to Actually Finish Your Programming Projects

Intro

I assume most programmers yourself and myself included struggle to finish projects, whether it be from too large of a scale, procrastination, not enough time, or just another reason entirely. Today this guide will walk you through 4 tricks to actually finish your programming projects so you can feel like you’ve done something. Most of these tricks can be applied to more than just programming but still work in the programming world. These tricks are also not proven to work for everyone you just have to find the right mix and style of these to make it work for you. So without further ado let’s jump right in.

Trick #1 - Tell Others

It’s been proven that telling others that you will do something, whether it be exercising, or making something like a painting, improves the probability that you will do it. You will feel like you need to please the people you told and that you have to meet the expectations. This also holds you accountable so if you don’t complete it there will be more of a consequence than just not finishing it.

The more people you tell the better, family and friends are great people to tell, it doesn’t matter if they are into programming either. You can also tell people online, like on forums, or other places.

Trick #2 - Enjoy It

If you are making a project you should enjoy it, otherwise your mind tries to find excuses to not work on it as you strive for dopamine (Dopamine is a neuro-transmitter that makes you feel like you can do things and feel excited), so if you work on something you like you will have more dopamine and want to do it more.

So pick the type of project you enjoy making, web development, games, etc. but also pick programming languages you enjoy working with.

Trick #3 - Timing

Sometimes you can feel stressed with a deadline you put on yourself.

Maybe you are working on a commercial website to give to somebody on Fiverr and you have one day to work on it, but there is a lot to do in that one day.

A little stress can be good to prevent procrastination and get things done, but too much can make you shut down and try to get away from doing it - relating back to Trick #2 - Enjoy It.

Give yourself a reasonable time to complete your project, if you are making a small game treat it like a game jam and give yourself a week or two. However giving yourself too much time can also cause problems, it can make you procrastinate thinking you will always have time to do it later and you just end up forgetting about it and moving on.

So, you need to strike a balance between the two, making sure you don’t procrastinate but also don’t shut down from stress.

Trick #4 - Milestones

Make milestones to break down tasks into smaller bits to make it seem less daunting. This can reduce stress and give you that good ol’ dopamine when you finish tasks. This can easily be done with many different softwares, or even a MarkDown file in your programming application, like README.md. You can set it up like this ->

# Project Name

- [ ] Large Task Name
    - [ ] Small Task Name
    - [ ] Small Task Name

- [ ] Large Task Name
    - [ ] Small Task Name

Note: You can fill out the check boxes by putting an x in them -> [x]

This builds it up as you complete the project. Have fun with it, it doesn’t need to be boring as you will keep coming back to it.

Make sure the smaller tasks aren’t too difficult, they are supposed to be simple and quick to do, like a hero section on a portfolio. A good option to make nice looking milestones/to-do’s with more customization to your needs is -> https://monday.com/.

Hopefully these tricks can get you setup for a successful time programming or anything in general and actually getting things done, remember to find a balance of not making it too stressful but not procrastinating. If you find some tricks work better when paired with others, go for it, not everyone is the same.

If you have any tricks make sure to post them as I can add them to this guide for future help.

Hope you have a nice day 👋!

New Here, What to Do?

SalladShooter — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 23:31:21 +0000

So I am new to Dev.to, and I wanted to know what kinds of things should I know or do on this platform?

I like Web Development (graphic design and programming portions) and I like to make mostly small projects, but I am working on building and maintaining an open source Python Web Framework named PHYAL -> https://github.com/SalladShooter/PHYAL

If you have any more questions feel free to ask!