DEV Community: Shakeeb Sheikh

How do animation libraries affect SEO in the Next JS?

Shakeeb Sheikh — Fri, 10 May 2024 03:57:05 +0000

OpenPilot - Poor man's Github Copilot - Part 2

Shakeeb Sheikh — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 23:44:54 +0000

Recap

So earlier this week I posted about the idea of OpenPilot with a little teaser and promise to release the extension later this week. So what is OpenPilot? Well in simple words it's Github Copilot powered by Open AI. My goal is to create something that every developer can use in a meaningful way.

If you're interest checkout the the part one

Progress Report

I showed generating comments from code in my last update and now we are able to generate code from comments. At the moment, how it works is that we select the comment and run the command to generate code. Check it out here.

Future Plans

Well we all know, the best feature about Github Copilot is the real-time recommendations. Although I sometimes find them annoying, it's hard to argue against them so my main goal is get the real-time predictions working before the official launch.

Collaborations

As mentioned in my last post as well, this is my first VS Code extension so I'm learning as I go but if someone's interested in collaborating. Feel free to hit me up

Check out the Repo, I'll be pushing the updated code soon

Poor man's Github Copilot - Part 1

Shakeeb Sheikh — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 23:02:49 +0000

Couple days ago Open AI released ChatGPT and the game of AI changed forever. The abilities that ChatGPT has shown are exceptional. It was able to generate, explain and comment out code like no other AI and this got me thinking, why not create a VS Code extension similar to Github Copilot.

So I started my journey with no actual experience of creating a VS Code extension. Which in simple terms just means that I opened youtube and searched How to create a VS Code extension. Thankfully enough I found a really helpful guide by Ben Awad and it gave me a solid start.

Long story short, I created an open source extension OpenPliot. I tend to release the extension later this week as I'm still building it. At the moment I'm just able to generate comments by the selected code.

Check it out in action

Check out the repo here

If anyone want's to collaborate, please hit me up at ShakeebAftab

You need to start reading documentation now!

Shakeeb Sheikh — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 11:27:27 +0000

You are inspired and enthusiastic to learn some new technology so you pull out one of your media-consuming devices and crank up a new tutorial to learn the technology you're passionate about. There's nothing wrong with this approach as there is a huge amount of media resources that can help you but have you ever stopped, and wondered what will you do if you are working with a less common technology?

Reasons to read the documentation

When you start to learn programming through video tutorials, you get addicted to them and whenever you find yourself in a problem it's natural to pull up another video and start watching it but if you come across a library that isn't widely used you will fall into a lot of problems because you have never actually read documentations before due to which you have no idea what you're doing. In most cases, it is difficult to quickly pick up on the docs and work effectively with them.

Benefits of reading documentation

There are a number of benefits of reading documentation. One being the most sensible is that no matter what, you'll be able to understand and work with a library that does not have a big community, but the hidden benefit of reading the docs is that you'll be able to distinguish between good and bad documentation. Honestly, this is a blessing in disguise because sooner or later you'll be the one writing the documentation either for your next big thing or for your job but one thing is certain every developer ends up writing the docs and when you have enough experience to distinguish between good and bad documentations, you can write good and effective docs that will help you and any other developer that's going to use your code.

Don't become a full-stack developer in 6 months

Shakeeb Sheikh — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 19:12:54 +0000

For the past couple of years, most of the courses and tutorials promise a fairytale of becoming a full-stack developer in 2, 4, or 6 months but no one mentions the flaws with this strategy. So let's get into it.

Skipping Core Concepts

Even though many of the courses offered online do try to teach the fundamental concepts of the ongoing topic. These concepts are hurriedly explained, and they directly try to move the learner to a framework because of which many developers have no idea about how things are working. The issue on hand might not seem like a problem at the time, but later on, while developing complex applications these concepts can/will come in handy, and not knowing these concepts cause many developers to lose faith in themselves and straight-up quit programming.

The Tutorial Hell Circle

Before discussing this problem let's just define tutorial hell so we are on the same page.

Tutorial hell is when you continuously keep on watching tutorials one after another and so on and you feel like, you are learning a lot of things and building some good projects. As soon as you start doing something on your own, you get to know that you don't know anything.

So, why do these courses cause a tutorial hell circle? Well, because these courses are pushing the learner to learn multiple things at once and skipping multiple core concepts while teaching these technologies, moreover, the project-based courses convince the learner that he is doing well and learning new technologies at a good pace all while they hide a real-world element from the learner causing the said learner to overlook the complexities that they might face while building an application by themselves. Therefore, when a graduate of any of these courses tries to implement something by themselves, they find that they do not understand or are unable to do so, hence, causing them to go through more tutorials about the same thing.

Solution

I'm not discouraging anyone from taking these courses I just want you to take your time, pace yourself, and make sure the thing you're trying to learn is as clear to you as water, even if you have to do additional research and put some extra work into it. If you think that you completely understood a topic then force yourself to do a mini-project or give yourself a scenario in which you have to use the thing you learned. Hence, allowing yourself to be in an unpredictable situation so you can counter any problem you face while developing applications on your own. In this manner, you will develop debugging skills while learning new technologies that you want to learn in an effective manner.

Disclaimer

Don't get me wrong not all people learn at the same pace or style so it might be different for you, but in my experience, most beginners are affected by this problem. Furthermore, I do want to clarify that I have nothing against any course free or paid I just want to point out some of the problems that I have seen over the years.