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Flatiron Phase4

SheetsC — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:53:36 +0000

Introduction to Quantum Computing

Quantum computing is something that will evolve into the most efficient and large scale means of computation, it undoubtedly has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach many computational problems. The reason why its all the rage now (less so since the AI boom)is because unlike classical computers, which store information in bits that can be either 0 or 1, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in a superposition of states that allow for more complex calculations. A normal bit is like a switch it has an on and an off, qubits on the other hand have (arguably) a 3 dimensional possibility of positions to store data. Having this capability will allow us to optimize problem solving because a big aspect of solving many data structure errors we see involves searching for the best solution from all the possible solutions. Classical computing is a much slower at this than quantum.

Another area where quantum computing has the potential to make a big impact is in the field of cryptography. Quantum computers are amazing at handling large number inputs and data fields, which is a key part of many encryption algorithms. This could potentially break some of the most commonly used encryption methods, leading to a need for new quantum-resistant encryption methods.

Despite the potential benefits of quantum computing, there are still many challenges to be overcome. One of the biggest challenges is dealing with the effects of noise and other sources of interference on qubits, which can cause errors in calculations. This is due to something called quantum entanglement ( but this also is how quantum circuits are even possible) a single error can have major downstream effects on the entire system, leading to a loss of coherence and errors in calculations. This is one of the key reasons why quantum error correction is such an active area of research in the field.

"Entanglement occurs when two or more qubits become correlated in a way that cannot be explained by classical physics. This means that when one qubit is measured, it affects the state of the other qubit, even if they are physically separated by a large distance.

In quantum computing, entanglement can be used to perform operations on multiple qubits simultaneously, which can lead to significant speedups over classical algorithms. For example, the famous Shor's algorithm for factoring large numbers uses entanglement to perform many computations in parallel, leading to an exponential speedup over the best-known classical algorithms." - ChatGPT3

Flatiron Blog

SheetsC — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 13:11:57 +0000

Happy scrolling everyone, I hope that if you are seeing this late at night your dark-mode/nightshift is active.
Blue light... why is it so particularly singled out for eye strain and what are the some effects of long term exposure?
Thankfully Blue light is everywhere so it's not something that needs to be thought of as normally damaging. The reason there has been a stink made over one's nightly exposure is due a couple reasons. One argument deals with the harmful effects of the intensity of the screens light compared to the environmental light around us. A car's headlights do not seem bright during the day but once there is major decrease in the environmental light exposure at night the headlights now seem bright. You may be thinking okay great now I know that I should be careful to monitor my brightness at night, big deal... and yeah that is definitely a big part of it but its goes beyond that. The biggest detriment to you that blue light (or more specifically short wavelength light) will cause is a major shift in your circadian rhythm. Blue light exposure activates a compound in your brain call melanopsin. This sounds very similar to something that we all have probably heard of "melatonin", melanopsin inhibits melatonin. So not only does bright light add to eye strain, blue light can actually actively inhibit the sleepy pill you just took, but not in just one way. The melanopsin activation is an 'upstream' event, once it is active it will act in a comparable fashion as caffeine to inhibit not only the sleepy compound melatonin but it continues to positively affect your 'day-time' cycle and does not let your 'night-time' cycle efficiently start. This change causes people to take high amounts of melatonin to sleep. Taking high doses will in the short term, get you to sleep, because you take enough to rapidly kick start your night cycle and force it to the peak phases because it does not need to produce endogenous melatonin. A habit of doing this will effectively and permanently ruin your internal capabilities to regulate your night cycle. The companies that sell melatonin are no better allowing jush high concentrated pills on the market. A proper dose of melatonin is .5 mg... while its sold in 5mg tablets. The reason for taking a small amount is that it will allow you to healthy finish your day cycle while starting the rise to max sleepiness encouraging the production of endogenous melatonin. Pairing this with shutting your screens off before bed will produce major benefits to your sleep health.

Flatiron - Phase 3

SheetsC — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 15:25:40 +0000

In this rendition of blogs I will be going over something in python that was not utilized in our curriculum. Python has many capabilities and functionalities but one thing that i came across in my studies is that we have had the capability to integrate user inputs for specific functionalities in the code we write.
input()
is a function that will prompt the user to enter a desired value into the command line when running our code.
How it works:
When calling this function we must assign it to a variable
Name = input('What is your name? ')
I have seen the most examples that show the naming convention is to capitalizes the variable. When we run our code the it will be read top down, hit the input function, then stop and ask for the user to enter the asked prompt in our code. It is also a good idea to leave a single space before our question mark. Once the user enters their answer the code will finish reading and that variable is now useable in our code.

The function will take the typed in value and set it in a string, from there evaluate and use it however we see fit

Flatiron Phase-3

SheetsC — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:55:28 +0000

This instance of a blog has to do with the transition my cohort and myself are facing.
-The challenges of moving from JS to Python.

Object Orientation (OO) is something that is not unique to Python, it gives the programmer more functionality and the ability to cut down on repeated code. A simple way to explain OO is to think of the world as full of Instances like "Lights, Cups, Food" a LED light is an instance of something that belongs in "Lights" and has special attributes. LED light instances are LED light objects, meaning an Object that is a key: value pair in JS is now referring to a single entree of a more global term. This global term is referred to as a Class. To keep with the example a LED light is an object with the class "light".

Speculating on OO and that it can be applied to JS I find myself questioning the meaning of these objects in OO how to relate them to Objects of JS. With our LED light in our hand.. can this be thought of as a key of our LED light and a value that points to the class which it belongs to?

list = ["LED", "incandescent", "black_light"]

The instance LED has a class "str" is it wrong to think that this LED can be represented as LED: "str?
I probably have this complete wrong here and desperately need to rethink the concepts.

Anyway, with OO we are able to define the class "light" and its methods... this is extremely valuable when we have a vast list or dictionary of many instances of the same or even different classes. Something that is not unique to our LED light is that it can turn off and on... we want to be able to turn off/on all the lights that we are working with regardless if they are the LED in our hand. We can define the "light' class so that there is a turn off/on method for every instance we have of a "light".
This is all fine and dandy but when we are dealing with many, many classes and we are in different files days after initially writing the class is there a way to list the methods defined for the class? I was just found told the best practice is to search through the files manually to avoid inheritance issues.

Flatiron Phase-2

SheetsC — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 14:38:37 +0000

3-3-23:
Its Friday, and here at flatirons 1-30SE East cohort its Blog time!! Aside from it being required, I have heard first-hand that these can be extremely helpful in our career endeavors.
This blog post in particular (if my understanding is correct) is about the usefulness of the dependency array for the useEffect hook. I have found myself needing to iterate over the array of objects fetched based on their assigned IDs. This became an issue when the non deleted objects ID's were not reassigned in the array (4,5,6,7 and 6 is deleted now the array is 4,5,7 and not 4,5,new6). A way around this is to use the dependency array for the useEffect's second argument that refers to the state of the array you are filling with the data fetched.

const[arrayState, setArrayState] = useState([])

useEffect(()=>{fetch('api')},[arrayState])

this way, when arrayState changes the objects will be refetched. This could even be utilized when sorting data to have the order of objects in the array is reflected in the ID's as well

Flatiron Phase-1

SheetsC — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 19:18:14 +0000

howdy everyone! I just got passed the phase-1 of software engineering and i have been blown away of the progress we have made in two weeks!. the most interesting thing to me is all the different ways you can do something and how reading code really gives us a window into thought processes and mental organization. i cant wait to learn about react and become closer to a full stack engineer! cant wait to post again with more progress

Hello, World

SheetsC — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 21:44:33 +0000

First Blog post...ever. Excited for what my journey at Flatiron Coding School will bring me. Cant wait to learn and use new skills!