Coding

JavaScript provides different kinds of operators which enable us to perform actions on given values or variables used in our code. As you develop more complex code, you will come to rely on operators for performing the various functionally you are building. Before we dive into operators, let’s clear up a couple of fundamental programming terms, statements and expressions. A statement is a line of code or action that consist of values, variables, and operators. In the last lesson you created several statements that assigned values to variables using the assignment = operator. Statements can set values but do not become values themselves. Statements end with a semi-colon. In contrast, an expression is a piece of code that resolves to a value, i.e. values, calculations resulting in other values, variables, and groups of variables. ...

JavaScript is one of the three core technologies used to build websites and web applications. Alongside HTML and CSS, JavaScript provides the interactive functionality commonly used throughout the web. In this lesson you will be introduced to some of the core concepts of JavaScript. To follow along, you will need a modern web browser, such as Google Chrome or equivalent with developer tools. You will also need a capable text editor. I highly recommend Microsoft Visual Studio Code. The first concept we are going to cover in this lesson is variables. Variables are spaces of memory where you can store information of a certain type, that can be retrieved later in your code. ...

Beyond Bias provides an excellent overview of the five different categories of biases, similarity, expedience, experience, distance, and safety. As someone who has worked in the software development field for a number of years, I have witnessed accounts of poor decision making and its ramifications within the organizations I have worked for. Specifically within software development I have witnessed poor decision making during proposal efforts, architectural decisions, and delivery. Bidding on work, especially within the federal space, can be a time consuming and involved effort by many parties. On technical proposals, it is essential that the correct mix of people are part of the proposal team. I have observed how biases within the expedience domain can often come to play within business development. One project I was recently involved with in the last few years suffered from lack of technical input during the proposal phase, and availability and confirmation bias led the team to under bid the work. This had negative consequences on expectation of scope and delivery efforts later on. The situation could have been prevented by ensuring more technical expertise was placed within the team and those making the decisions affecting scope did an objective evidence. ...

So you are an individual with a passion for doing something big or someone who wants to share his ideas with the world. For both reasons the best way to make your name would be building a website. Perhaps, there could be many reasons you want a site. Maybe for your small business, an art website to lighten up the world with a fire inside your soul, create amazing ideas or just to spread positivity. ...

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the blog and allows me to continue to make free content. Thank you for your support! One of the benefits of working at a large organization is the opportunity to work with a considerable number of very bright and talented individuals. Recently I went through a role transition from traditionally supporting web based content management systems to supporting large interconnected systems. I was fortunate to connect with a colleague during that transition time who was well versed on the latest technologies and approaches in software development, specifically with a focus on distributed systems and modern systems integration. This post highlights five main areas that are worth research and understanding if modern-day systems integration projects is something you might be involved with in your current work or in the near future. My disclaimer is that I am not an expert in any of these domains, however I want to pass along good material that I will be studying further and is hopefully of benefit to others. ...

PHP is a scripting language that powers over some of the busiest websites on the web. Several languages have been introduced since 2005. None of them have affected the popularity of PHP. Before IDEs were launched, seasoned developers and beginners used vi or notepad to write PHP code. Once the code was ready, developers moved the PHP file to the webapps folder of the web server to check whether their code is working as expected or not. If the browser didn’t display error, developers used to check log files. ...

The AI domain extension was launched in 1994/1995 for the use of companies and individuals based in a Carribean country Anguilla. Google, the world’s largest search engine doesn’t display the information of Anguilla when you enter the search phrase as “AI”. Even Bing displays Artificial Intelligence search results for the search phrase “AI”. In computer science, AI is an abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence. AI programs are self-learning applications that can be used for various purposes. ...

A project I was recently working on had in place a cloud-based infrastructure that was designed to support a single installation of the Drupal CMS running in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This infrastructure included an auto-scaling setup with load balancers hosting a ‘cache’ layer and an ‘application’ layer that hosted the Drupal CMS. On the backend tier, an AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) provided the MySQL database needed for the application. There were other components of the infrastructure such as our shared services for continuous integration, monitoring and development tools. ...

I was recently notified that one of the sites I support was getting a ‘C’ rating on SSL Labs. It turned out that there were three main issues that needed to be resolved. Two out of the three were relatively easy to find via the SSL Labs documentation, which required simple fixes to the ssl.conf file. This server is vulnerable to the POODLE attack. If possible, disable SSL 3 to mitigate. This was relatively easy to fix. I resolved it by modifying ssl_protocols in the ssl.conf file - thank you Digital Ocean for your comprehensive write-up on this! The server does not support Forward Secrecy with the reference browsers. Again, more simple changes in the ssl.conf file. In case you run into a similar issue, be sure to read this helpful article, Configuring Apache, Nginx, and OpenSSL for Forward Secrecy. The third issue, however, was not quite as straightforward: This server accepts RC4 cipher, but only with older protocols. I found a number of helpful articles on this stating that by adding !RC4 to exclude RC4 in SSLCipherSuite, will result in mitigation of this vulnerability. I spent quite a bit of time trying different cypher list combinations and always including !RC4, however no matter how many times I tweak this, restart httpd and revisit SSL Labs, I kept getting the annoying ‘B’ grade and RC4 complaint. For anyone facing similar issues, I highly recommend reading Hardening Your Web Server’s SSL Ciphers. ...

Because of erroneous PHP and Java extensions, I’ve switched from Atom to Microsoft’s VSCode aka Visual Code Editor for writing applications. VSCode is a powerful editor. With the help of some extensions, you can use VSCode as a replacement for RAM hogging Integrated Development Environments. If you’ve just installed VScode and you’re searching for extensions that will improve your productivity, you’re at the right place. Below, I’ve shared the list of best Visual Code extensions. ...