In the fast-paced tech industry, a company’s success largely depends on the quality and dedication of its software development team. While it may be tempting to exclusively hire seasoned professionals, there is immense value in bringing junior developers on board. Here’s why your company should consider hiring junior developers.

Fresh Perspective

Junior developers can bring a fresh, innovative perspective to your team. Having recently completed their education, they are often up-to-date with the latest technologies, methodologies, and industry trends. This fresh knowledge and modern approach can prove invaluable when it comes to problem-solving or innovation, allowing your company to stay competitive in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Growth and Succession Planning

Investing in junior developers aids in building a strong talent pipeline for your organization. By hiring at the junior level, you’re essentially future-proofing your company, as these individuals can grow and take on more responsibilities over time. This strategy also ensures that you have a succession plan in place, allowing for a seamless transition when senior developers leave or retire.

Cost-Effectiveness

From a financial perspective, hiring junior developers makes good business sense. While senior developers command higher salaries due to their experience, junior developers are more affordable, allowing you to effectively manage your payroll budget. Moreover, these individuals are typically eager to gain experience and prove themselves, providing a high return on investment.

Enthusiasm and Motivation

One of the most significant advantages of hiring junior developers is their enthusiasm and motivation. Keen to make their mark and hungry to learn, they tend to display a high level of dedication and commitment. This can-do attitude can have a positive impact on the overall team morale, boosting productivity and fostering a positive work environment.

Mentorship Opportunities for Senior Staff

The presence of junior developers can also create mentorship opportunities for your senior staff. This not only strengthens their leadership and communication skills but also promotes a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous learning. It’s a win-win situation that benefits all parties involved and enhances team cohesion.

Increasing Diversity

Hiring junior developers can help increase diversity within your team. This can include diversity in terms of age, educational background, and life experiences. A diverse team offers a broader range of perspectives, which can lead to improved problem-solving, greater innovation, and a more inclusive company culture.

Adaptability

Finally, junior developers are typically more adaptable and open to new technologies or methodologies. They’re comfortable with change and often more willing to learn new skills or adapt to new situations. In an industry where change is the only constant, this adaptability can prove to be a significant asset.

Conclusion

In conclusion, hiring junior developers can bring a myriad of benefits to your company. Their fresh perspective, cost-effectiveness, enthusiasm, adaptability, and the diversity they bring are all significant advantages. Investing in junior talent not only contributes to the growth and future-proofing of your company but also fosters a culture of learning and innovation. Therefore, companies should seriously consider integrating more junior roles into their hiring practices, leveraging the immense potential these individuals bring to the table.

The Importance of Hiring Junior Developers in Your Company was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Knowledge is a valuable thing. People have been trying to learn something new for as long as humanity exists. That’s why teaching became such a necessary, complex and demanding profession. Over the years the methods of presenting the subject matter to ensure students’ mastery over it have been evolving. Their effectiveness highly depends on the subject itself and the learning abilities of your students. Many teachers prefer to combine several methods in their practice to broaden the spectrum of students’ perception.

There are different classification of teaching methods. So, we’ll go over the most common ones to give you an understanding and the field to choose from for your own class. This is the first article in the series, in which we’ll go over the basic instruction teaching methods.

Instruction methods:

Lecturing

Lecture is considered to be the oldest, easiest and the most used method of teaching. It can be applied to any subject, since it doesn’t requite many or any supplementary materials or activities. The teacher presents information for a large audience, he is the source of instructions. The students are more like passive listeners who have to pay attention and stay focused to acquire knowledge with minimal interactions with the teacher. It minimizes their involvement, but on the bright side, it might actually improve their listening skills.

The lecture method is the most inexpensive in terms of time and effort. Of course, it also depends on the teacher, how good and dedicated he is to elaborating the content. The teacher who wants to make the most out of his lecture might actually use audio-visual aids. Some of the teachers might just monotonously read (yeah, really just read) the whole lecture until students pass out from boredom.

Some of the students learn better through listening, so lecture is a good way for them to obtain knowledge. Also, lecture is good for making an into into the subject matter or to cover some large topic unit. It’s also not a bad choice when you already have some additional knowledge to build upon. An interesting lecture can motivate students and make them more excited about getting further into the particular subject. It can also be useful for filling some gabs and clarifying concepts. Mostly, lecture is an okay thing for creating a background for more deep understanding of the material.

As a teacher you have to make preparations for the lecture (especially if you are using additional materials, like presentation, slides, audio or video), figure out how are you going to motivate students, keep their attention and interest. The lecture has to be planned out the same way as any other lesson. (We’ve actually covered the importance of being prepared for a lesson). You should make introduction to captivate students and then present the body of the lecture in the most logical way. This means giving the information step by step, systematically relying to the already known or related data. Also, you always have to make a wrap up concluding and summarizing the main points. Even if students lost your trail of thought somewhere along the way, they can recover some crucial info and form generalizations.

To my opinion, there are two main disadvantages of this method. The first one is that students are mostly uninvolved, only with the exception of asking questions when teacher allows it. And the second is that individual differences of students aren’t being taken into the consideration, everyone should keep up with the teacher in the center.

Demonstrating

The demonstration method is usually used when students cannot connect theories with the practical usage. So, basically, demonstration is needed to ensure students’ ability to apply the obtained knowledge. It can be used for a group of students as well as for the individual lessons. The method itself is being carried our though examples and experiments. So, after presenting the information the teacher also shows it’s simple application. This way students can actually relate to what’s being explained, they can form connections to the real-world usage instances. We’ve went though the topic of why teachers should provide real-life examples.

When teacher uses this method, the students are more engaged in the learning process. Moreover, it’s more oriented on the students’ differences in perception and previous experience, so individual needs of students are more likely to be met. In contrary to lection, demonstration ensures personal relation which is easier to memorize, rather then a flow of impersonal data. Also, teacher can and should use various additional materials and aids to make the example more illustrated and understandable.

The pros of the demonstration teaching method are that it gives a much deeper understanding of the particular topic, it urges reflective thinking and makes students more actively involved. But still, it’s not the same as learning by doing.

Collaborating

The collaboration method implies that a teacher assigns a small group or groups of students to work together in order to complete a specific task, solve problems, research and create presentation on learning the new concepts.

This teaching method is great for team-work and determining the students’ ability to communicate, listen to each others opinions, form ideas, articulate viewpoints, and show leadership skills. It’s often being used to establish interactions and include different types of learning. Students have to process the information rather than simply memorize facts. They are able to take real-world problems and apply their practical skills by solving them.

Collaboration method is not only useful for team building, it’s has a lot of advantages for each person involved in it. A student in a group learn to organize his thoughts and present valuable and convincing arguments for them to be taken into consideration by a group of others. A student forms the ability to adjust when new ideas are being introduced, rethinking and correcting his arguments on the go. The diversity of thoughts and views gives the opportunity to learn from each other, from different perspectives. When other groupmates listen to a student’s idea, they are making suggestions for improvements, expressing criticism or support. It’s a very useful trait - to be able to take and even learn from accepting criticism. It also helps students to learn from approaching the topic from different angles.

There are a lot ways to approach this method and implement it in your class. For a collaborative learning activity a teacher can assign group projects, like giving the groups a problem to solve. If it’s a coding class, you can assign fixing some bug in a program or creating a particular future for an existing program. So that the group can work together and present their solution along with the elaborate explanation on how they’ve reached it and justify their approach to the task.

👋 Conclusion

We went though the first classification of the basic instruction teaching methods. Remember that the methods are often intertwined and several of them can be used simultaneously, so don’t limit yourself by trying to stick to one of them. Be creative and find what’s more suitable for you and your students.

What method are you using in your class? We’d be very interested in your feedback!

💡Choose the Best Method for Teaching Your Programming Course. Part 1📖 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In modern day and age more and more things are being replaced by the machines. Instead of asking questions to a person, we turn to asking Google. Same goes for learning. Now there are a lot of different online courses, where you don’t have to talk to a human. You can simply read the lesson, go though some test after it and then switch to practical assignments. In my opinion, tech cannot do everything as people can. Human interaction and connection are very valuable. And a person can really benefit from learning from a good teacher rather than from a book or online course. But to be a good teacher is not simply knowing your stuff…it’s much more than that.

In this article we’ll go over some key points why student don’t want to learn from you.

❌You have failed to understand what the student needed.

Every student looking for a teacher or a tutor have certain expectations of what they would get out of this experience. Many beginners even have certain misconceptions when it comes to learning programming, which can be easily dispelled. (We actually did that in one of the earlier articles on the programming myths). The student might have an idea in his head relating his learning needs and an image of what he’d be able to do with the obtained knowledge. Sometimes a person might think that after a first lesson he will be able to write code like a pro and do that thing that hackers in most movies do (tap on the keyboard like crazy and have cool things happen). Of course, oftentimes, those ideas differ from the reality and their wishful thinking might not be reachable in a way they have expected. Especially when it comes to customized lessons from the very start.

✔️As a teacher you understand that your students are not in the coffee shop and they can’t always get what they’ve ordered. Even though, have been a teacher myself, I know that sometimes using the same approach and basing your instructions on the assumption that they will work for two different students is not the best teaching strategy.

First of all, you have to ask questions and find out about your student as much information as possible. I’m talking about his or her level of knowledge (beginner, knows basics, intermediate, etc.), objectives, what he expects from this engagement, learning preferences, whether the information is better received aurally or in a written form, possible activities, the amount of homework. The more you know about your student in terms of his current abilities and expectations, the better you’ll be able to organize your lessons and know how to assist him in the best possible way.

❌You didn’t do any preparation for the lesson.

Different situations happen in life. You had an emergency and didn’t have time to prepare anything for your lesson. Some teachers just decide to wing it as they go. They don’t feel that any preparations are necessary, since they are so fluent in their subject. In any case, it’s bad. No matter how good you are or what happens in your life, you have a responsibility to your student. You must have a plan to organize your lesson in the best possible way to fit into a limited amount of time. So you don’t end up talking too much about one thing and forget to mention something else. It often happens when a teacher knows his material, but didn’t prepare the structure in which to present it. Unfortunately, I’ve made such a mistake in the past. After a lesson you start remembering all the things you should’ve said and all the things you could’ve done. If I had only prepared better…

✔️If something did occur which prevented you from getting ready for your lesson, better cancel it. It won’t do any good to your student if you came in without a plan and supporting material. You’ll be wasting both of your times. Believe me, I’ve also had such tutors…he got caught up with other work and came unprepared…we were doing a lot of scattered shit, which actually made no sense. As a result he got money for the lesson, I got the hell away.

As for those of you, who think that preparing is beneath them because they are so good. You are wrong! The best of teachers prepare before each lesson. It’s just a big sign of their professionalism. Every student requires a personal approach. Adjusting the lesson plan according to the student’s needs, using additional tools that he would benefit from are the right things to do. You can try adding more tests, quizzes, give more simpler examples or more complex exercises, make slides or even flash cards, try pair programming for a more advanced student. Be organized. Have just enough material, so the student could handle it. The better you are prepared, the more effective your lesson will be. Your student will definitely appreciate it.

❌Every lesson is nearly the same and the student is bored. No motivation.

Many teachers, me included, tent to get wrapped up in their lesson plans. They have a theory, then some examples, then exercises. And it’s like that every lessons. It’s not mentioning that simply writing code for extended periods of time can be mundane enough. Not including the variety into it will lead to your student’s boredom. When a person knows what to expect and the activities never change, he grew mentally tired of it and losses interest pretty quickly.

✔️To perceive information our brains have to be motivated, sometimes even excited, intrigued…hungry for knowledge. It may sound too idealistically, but your task as a teacher is not only to provide facts, it’s to also make your student want to learn more, to figure things out. It’s not always easy and full lot of teachers don’t think of this to be in their job description: “You wanted to learn, you came to me. I’m not here to dance around you making you learn. You know where the door is.” I’ve met the representatives of those kind, I’ve had the questionable pleasure of trying to learn from them…I didn’t have much luck.

Of course student has to do his part. He really did come to you. But as a teacher you must remember that learning is a process. And it’s not an easy one. Make your lessons more fun for a change. Think of some activities, even games. By the way, games can be useful in many cases. They put your students at easy, help them think in more creative ways, analyze the task at hand under different angles. You can reminisce to your students about some stories from your personal learning experience. What made you love this subject so much or what challenges have you faced. You can use other tech to your advantage. There are so many great resources online. We can even name 10 tools that will certainly improve your coding class. You want your students to be creative, be creative yourself. Inspire!

❌You are switching to sensitive personal topics during the lesson.

Being friendly is one thing, but being noisy and opinionated is the other. Some teachers would like to think of their students as buddies. It’s not the worst thing per say. But it makes it very easy to cross the line, which will make your students uncomfortable. Sharing your political views, religious beliefs, thoughts on gender equality, minority rights, racial differences, or even personal life is not appropriate during a lesson. Same goes for asking a student to do the same.

✔️Being nice and easy to talk to are great qualities for a teacher. That said, your personal opinions, which have nothing to do with education, are just that…your personal opinions. Keep them to yourself. And if you feel the urge to pry into your student’s life, resist it. There are very few exceptions, when asking personal questions or sharing an unrelated opinion is justified. In most cases, it’s just rude and intrusive.

❌You are hard to connect with and create rapport.

This one is a complete opposite to the previous point. Some teachers can be too strict and distanced. The student doesn’t feel connected and accompanied in the learning process. He might not even feel that he’s accomplishing anything.

✔️Students want to feel supported and understood. Make sure that your student knows that his difficulties is not uncommon and you know what he’s going through. Make it obvious that you as a teacher is close by and ready to explain an correct at any time. Be empathetic and kind. Rare person can absorb information or be productive under stress of disapproval or fearing to make a mistake. And learning programming is complex enough. You as a teacher might also not have all the answers and explanations. It should be okay. The valuable things are to continue trying, making efforts, encouraging your student to take chances and highlighting their wins.

❌You are a bad explainer.

It’s hard to admit to yourself as a teacher that you have bad ways of explaining the material. Sometimes you might not even know it. Some teachers are too smart for their own good. Others are just ignorant. The first type sincerely believes that if they understand what they are talking about, then everyone around must also understand it just as well. So many great minds are so self-absorbed in their greatness, that there are no place for others to make a point. The second type simply don’t care whether their students get anything. We won’t be highlighting those two extreme types of assholeness. But these behaviors are not uncommon even in the best of us. Some teachers might be simply unorganized. They don’t highlight key points, don’t try using simpler explanations or just explaining in a roundabout way.

✔️If your student isn’t getting anything, don’t automatically assume that he’s dumb. (That might be the case, but it shouldn’t be your first though😂). Try self-reflection. Maybe you are the problem. Try different approaches, find the simplest ways of explaining the topic, even if for you it’s ridiculously simple. Stick to this — take a complicated block of material, break it into the smaller ones, and then explain those little sections using mini examples and puzzles. After that analyze how clear that was for a student. Don’t show off how competent you are. It should go without saying, since you are a teacher. You’ll seem even better when your student will start showing results. Assuming that everyone around you are just stupid is arrogant. And not even trying to get your point across is lazy. You have a job to do, so be professional enough to exhaust every possible way to do it right. Engage your students, get them to come to conclusions, ask if they have questions. Don’t be a hardass who demeans a student because he admits of not understanding certain things.

❌You are switching topics and concepts too fast.

For an advance student who can keep up it might not be such a big deal. But the beginners who have little to no understanding of programming and code, it’ll present a problem. If you as a teacher continue this race, you’ll not only end you with a failing student who probably wants to kick you, but also you’ll have to come back to explaining same things all over again.

✔️Put yourself in your student’s shoes. Remember that he don’t have the same experience and isn’t so flexible with going from one point to the other in a blink of an eye. Take time and be patient. Baby steps will ensure that the particular concept is really understood. Little wins will later give better results than rushing to switch the topic when you’ve barely got your point through. Explain an idea at lengths, show examples, practice based on those examples, attack the problem from different angles. Only then move forward. Don’t try to explain all at ones, it’ll only confuse your student and exhaust him.

The minimalistic approach can be the key here, so you can check out more about it here.

❌You are not providing enough examples and practical usage cases.

Theory is just theory without the ability to apply it in practice. This is relevant for almost every subject. In computer programming a teacher can give a lot of concepts to remember, teach modules, functions, syntax. But it will mean squat if a student won’t have any idea on how to practically use it. The lacking of real-world usage cases will lead to your student’s incompetence. We’ve already highlighted that in one of our previous articles. Knowing the material is just 10 percent of understanding it. The lessons will be completely pointless if there won’t be any correlation between the concepts and how they actually work in real programs. Remembering functions by heart has nothing to do with knowing how to apply them in your code to get a specific result.

✔️You’ll know that you are a great teacher when your student will start solving practical tasks using various functions and concepts in just a right way, and even more, in creative ways. Always give real-world examples, especially for any new thing you teach. The more parallels between the given material and the usage cases your student can make in his mind, the more material will actually stick with him. After that give exercises which will be similar to those usage cases, so that the student can built-up some muscle memory.

❌There are too many distractions.

Very often during a lesson there a lot of distractions like ringing of the phone, buzzing notifications, messages that either teacher or a student is eager to answer. Also the surroundings play a big role. Many modern tutors like to hold their lessons in places like cafes or parks. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool! But not all students can concentrate in such environment when people around them are coming and going, everyone is talking, cars driving by, coffee machine making irritating noise and so on. It’s even worse when a teacher himself is constantly distracted, like talking to somebody, or picking up the phone, messaging…but that’s really about too unprofessional individuals, so we’ll skip the details.

✔️As a teacher it’s your job to set the ground rules and follow them yourself. If the lesson is in person, ask your student to turn off the sound on his phone (the possible emergencies aside) and do it yourself. Talking on the phone, checking out your mailbox or texting should be an exception in some rare cases. If you are teaching, your attention should be at your student and not home chores you forgot to do or arrange for.

If you are providing the place for meetings with your student, you have to know where it’ll be more comfortable for him to concentrate. Some can ignore the background noise, but for many it’s too hard. Especially if your student is a beginner.

In case, you have remote classes, remind your student to pick a quite place, warn his homies and loved ones that he’ll be busy during that time, and take all he needs before the lesson started.

We actually have some tips on how to make home education more effective. They can be useful for both teachers and students.

👉Conclusion

So, we’ve highlighted some reasons why your students choose to look for a different teacher. Remember, each person is an individual and what works for one, might not work for the other. Pay attention to your students. We really hope that these points will be helpful for you.

Have you ever had a student who left you as a tutor? What’s the story there?

📗9 Reasons Why Students Don’t Want You as a Teacher👩‍🏫 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Git is an amazing tool with rich open-source architecture used by almost every developer these days. But as popular and useful this version control system is, as hard it can be. You can easily make a lot of mistakes and get stuck figuring them out. Also, it’s always a good idea to have a few tricks up your sleeve to make your experience and work that much smoother.

In this article we’ve gathered some of those magical tricks. Of course, we expecting you to know git basics. Hope, you’ll find our list useful!

Aliases 🎭

I think everyone likes, when there are some things that can speed up your work. For developers, aliases are just those things. They allow you to save the commands that you use the most. You can try creating the alias for those tricks that you will consider interesting.

For example, you have liked the command git log --oneline.

git config --global alias.log1 “log --oneline”

Using the indicated above you will save that command as the alias log1 and you can use it as:

git log1

However, as we stop applying a command as frequently, as we have used to, the generated aliases tend to be forgotten. Forgotten, but never lost. J There is a way to see all those aliases by using the git config command below:

git config -l | grep alias

Make your own aliases and you will reduce the pressure on your keyboard.

Log tricks 📝

• graph

The --graph option allows you to see your log as graphs, which demonstrate the history of the commits and their addition to the branches.

If you would like to make a nice graph in the terminal for a git repo:

git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit

You can make it even more interesting:

git log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit

• shortlog

The command git shortlog shows you the grouped commits from the logs by their authors and headers.

You want to see the statistics of changes made to your project? No problem! Git can give you the number of commits by their author. Just run:

git shortlog -sn
852 Kassandra Newland
56 Phill
6 oduvan

• whatchanged

The command git whatchanged gives you the opportunity to see the logs of commits and the changes that they have added.

Using it you can simply and quickly see the changes that happen to your project in a specific period.

Example:

git whatchanged --since="2 weeks ago" -- path/to/file.py

• no merges

The--no-merges option helps you to see your logs containing commits with only one pattern.

No matter how important the merge commits might be, you are able to look at the history of your project without them. So, filter them out just use the following:

git log --oneline --no-merges

• reflog

The git reflog command administrates the data saved in the reference logs, which stores the history of changes to the references.

One of the most common way of using reflog is to see where the HEAD reference have been recently, in case you forget on which branch you were working.

git reflog show

• fsck

The command git fsck checks the completeness of the database and its objects.

If you deleted or lost the commits (like most of us must have done once or twice 😂), you can use this great command that can help you find them.

Example:

$ git fsck --full
Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done.
Checking objects: 100% (234/234), done.
dangling commit b1907246e8611138975c6b00af7d9430579616f0
dangling commit 9d02a4cf5e6c9166dd65ac2f661d631c202c0d11
dangling blob d0674d6ceac78697ee471d6564b9ebd296a19326

The--full tag will allow you to see all the unreachable objects from other objects. And you will see your lost commit after ‘dangling commit’.

• grep

The grep function of the git log command will present you with specific commits that include the indicated pattern in their commit messages. This way you are able to search for a desired phrase or words across the commit messages.

Example:

git log --grep="fixes things"

You will get a list of commits that have ‘fixes things’ phrase in their messages.

Command git log -S actually searches the code in the repository. So, if you want to find something specific in your code, just indicate it. The log will provide you with the exact commits that include your keyword.

Example:

git log -S"window.alert"

You will get a list of commits that had anything to do with the string ‘window.alert’.

Tricks with commits 📤

• undoing

Command git revert creates one more commit that reverts changes for one or more given commits:

git revert HEAD

It reverts the previous commit.

The other option here is using reset command. For example, you can undo last two changes using the following command:

git reset --soft HEAD~2

In that case 2 previous commits swill be removed, but changes of those commits will stay, so you can recommit those, or fix changes of those commits.

But If you want to delete changes together with commits use --hard option instead of --soft

• rewriting

If you have noticed that tip or comment for the last commit needs some improvement, it’s very easy to do with git commit --amend.

• safe overwriting

You can easily overwrite the remote branch with your local one with the git push --force command. But using the--force flag can be quite destructive. It can delete from the history all the commits that have not been fetched till that moment. So, the command does its work with no regard to the tracking branch state. You can do a lot of damage to other participates’ changes. To avoid that from happening, use a much better choice:

git push --force-with-lease

This way you will not overwrite nobody else’s code. The remote references will be updated only if your local copy is the most recent one. The remote-tracking branch should point to the same commit reference as the remote branch. You can even specify to which commit, branch or ref to compare to.

• reuse-message

Not to commit every little thing you have done to the remote repo, you can reuse the commit message:

git commit -a --reuse-message=HEAD --reset-author

The current changes with the updated author and time stamp will be committed.

When all is done, you can also squash the commits with the same message and push to the remote.

• squashing

When you have finished working on your branch, you may want to merge it with the main one via one commit. Go to the main branch and use the fast way of squashing commits together:

git merge --squash your_branch

• cherry-picking

Despite having a pretty cool name, this command can help you a lot. It allows you to apply a chosen commit from one branch into another. It is very convenient, when branch, you are working on, is not merged yet into the master, but you need to merge only one commit from it now.

Wrap up 🤗

These were the Git tricks we wanted to highlight for your handily use.

What are your favorite Git tricks that we might have missed to mention here? We’d be glad to here from you!

🐙 Git Tricks 😜 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The CheckiO team has recently made an informed decision and switched our JavaScript CheckiO portal to TypeScript. This action resulted in a complete renewal and restructuring of the js.checkio.org. We still believe that JS is an awesome programming language. Despite that, TS is rapidly going viral and offers a lot additional tools, while supporting all of the JS properties and functions.

In this article, we will highlight the main points why we have considered moving to this JavaScript superset a good idea, which will be very beneficial, whether you are a JS purist or an open-minded enthusiast coming from C# or Java.

Basic info 📑

Over the years of evolving, JavaScript code started to become messier and harder to handle. This was painfully obvious especially in the large projects. The requirement to compile the whole application in order to run it didn’t help the matter. Using JS on the enterprise level as a server-side tech was too inconvenient.

In view of this raising necessity to have a more maintainable and organized code, which can be effectively used in the expending front-end projects, TypeScript came to being. The project itself was created and led by Anders Hejlsberg (a software engineer who is very famous for various projects, like Delphi, C#, Turbo Pascal, etc.) at Microsoft. BTW, he is still very much involved in the TS open-source process on GitHub.

The main idea behind the TS project is to broaden JS features. To put it bluntly, TypeScript is, basically, a strongly typed JavaScript with tools embracing object orientation features. It’s much more efficient for application-scale development.

Benefits of TS over JS 📊

📌 Bug radar 😈

The tricky part of JS code is that it needs to be completed and run to determine whether it’s valid. Therefore, you might be stuck going through the various lines of code looking for what’s wrong with it. It will waste you so much time and nerve cells.

TypeScript’s transpiler, on the other hand, using static typing provides you with the particularly useful error-checking feature that will certainly catch any kind of syntax mistakes. TypeScript has a linguistic service supporting autocompletion, which is accompanied by the powerful editor integration. TS recognizes what’s available for a particular object in terms of methods and properties, so the editors sees it as well. All of it provides you with contextual tips while you are writing your code. Also, there are plug-ins for almost every editor you can think of at your disposal. You can instantly check your code right in the editor.

It’s very helpful, since you don’t need to wait and run the code. You’ll see the errors right away!

Besides that, typing allows you to keep everything in place, so there are fewer chances to have improper assignments.

📌 Dev friendly 🤗

For a long time JavaScript is considered to be the main language of the web, since just about any web app (even mobile and desktop apps) use it to some extent. But JS has certain shortcomings (components, objects, modules), which makes it not particularly useful in large scale projects.

TypeScript possesses all that lacking in JS. It’s much better for working on complex applications. TS simplifies the JavaScript code, hence to maintain a vast codebase in it is a piece of cake in comparison. Additionally, any developer will appreciate the variety of included tools.

📌 Trial by combat 🔥

Of course, JavaScript had a long time to prove its strong sides and usefulness. Nevertheless, TS is a great choice for projects where there is more than one person managing a significant codebase. If you check out some of the projects where TypeScript has been used (Angular, VS Code, Dojo 2, Notable, Aurelia, Asana, Slack), you’ll see its worthiness.

Angular2 presents one of the projects written in TypeScript. Victor Savkin claims that the biggest selling point was the advances TS tooling (like navigation, refactoring, autocompletion), which is a must-have for large projects. Also, TypeScript interfaces make it possible to explicitly define abstractions, which may help avoid a lot of errors. Not to repeat ourselves with the advantages already indicated in other points, TypeScript takes the most useful things and adds it to the JS ecosystem without dismissing JavaScript itself.

Same benefits considered choosing TypeScript as the development language for Aurelia.

Currently, many frameworks are using TypeScript, like Ember and Glimmer, Ionic and NativeScript to some extent.

TypeScript is quite credible and it has a lot to offer to any substantial project.

📌 Stronger team 💪

You no longer have to depend on other developers too much. And it’s actually a good thing. The strictly typed language like TypeScript gives the opportunity to concentrate on individual tasks and bring in new team members much faster. It’s not that hard to understand what code is about anymore. You no longer feel the urge to bother your co-workers with various questions and they aren’t wasting time trying to explain what code does and how. You can find out all you need from your complier and IDE.

Even when you have the need to consult with somebody relating your code, it won’t cause them hours of frustration and possible further resentment. I’m kidding, of course, but with the confusing JS code, it will certainly distract your co-workers from their tasks for quite a while. Therefore, time lost, energy levels dropped, productivity reduced.

Another road it all can go with a messy code is if you can’t figure things out on your own and you don’t want to distract anybody. Not considering the time you gonna put in to make sense of things, you can end up being the sole reason for various bugs emerging on production. You probably already guessed what it’ll cause you and your team.

All of it shows that having understandable and organized code really saves your time, your team members’ time, and increases the performance of each developer on the project, as well as the whole team.

📌 Switching is simple 😊

There is no need to blow your brains out learning the intricacies of a new programming language. TypeScript is just JS with a type system layered on top. Nothing too fancy. So, going from one to another shouldn’t be very difficult.

Conclusion ⚔

The CheckiO Team, considering our portals to be a practically learning environment, is always trying to keep up with the latest updates and developments. So, why not to use all the advantages Typescript provides for the JS programmers? It won’t diminish your JavaScript skills, but actually expand the things you can do with your code, making it ea§sier not to get mixed-up in silly errors and slowed-down by large unorganized code structure.

Besides, you can always get support from the TS community and get involved in the quickly moving open-source process of adding new features and trends.

💻Why TypeScript⚡ was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Psychology is quite a fascinating science. It gives us insight into the mysterious ways of how our brains work and what makes us who we are, like our behavior, intelligence, curiosity, determination or learning capacity. But as much as it can be useful and interesting, it can be very misleading. Many concepts and theories have no actual scientific verification. This means that many of those things you believe to be true and you blame some of your failures on are actually wrong or at best just partly correct.

So, let’s take a look at some of the most widespread myths that have to do with our brains and education.

➡️ #1. Games make you smarter 🎮

Brain can do a lot of things. It can even be trained. But to believe that brain-training games would actually do the trick is quite naive. Of course it might sound plausible, but in reality the only thing that you become good at when playing those games is — playing those games.

Research shows that there is no correlation between the improved thinking and smarts and brain games. They in no way facilitate attention, focus, memory or any other improvements. It’s just a nice marketing move and nothing more. The only thing you can take from playing is to have some fun and pass the time.

➡️ #2. Different people have different learning styles 📖

The myth is that everyone has a preferred learning style that ensures the better comprehension of the presented material. You’ve most certainly heard about this. You either a visual learner (understand the material better when it’s given in a visual form), an auditory learner (when you better comprehend the information presented verbally) or kinesthetic (your perception is better when having a hands-on experience). This notion is so widespread that the majority of teachers and students believe it to be true. And it’s understandable, since we are all different and unique. Honestly, I myself considered it a known fact. But what a surprise, it has no scientific evidence whatsoever.

The controlled experiments showed that the material wasn’t absorbed better by the students to whom it was presented in their preferred learning style. So, matching material to the person’s learning style is pointless. The format depends not on the person receiving the information, but on the material itself. You won’t be able to learn coding by simply listening to the explanations of what functions do. Or you won’t learn the correct pronunciation of a foreign language by simply looking at the words. To ensure better comprehension, the material should be presented in a variety of ways, making emphasis on those that better suit the type of the given material.

➡️ #3. Women are better at grammar and men at math and orientation 🚶 💃🏼

Gender differences is a long standing topic. We tend to believe that men and women are so dissimilar in the ways our brains work and how we think. But it’s mostly a stereotype that we really need to get rid off, since we are more alike than we think. This was proven by the recent analysis of differences between genders across all kinds of psychological functions.

Believing that men are better at math and reading maps, when an average woman does it better than almost 40% of men, is as wrong as believing that women are better at learning languages and grammar, when an average man is better at it than almost 40% of women. If these numbers stated 50%, the similarity would’ve been absolute. This slightly over 10% inequality is the biggest difference found by the psychologists.

It’s the same for how men and women communicate. We don’t speak different languages, as many might think. American Psychological Association published an article that said that people tend to act in accordance with the gender roles presented in their environment. If we remove the expectation of behaving in such a way, men and women communicate and think quite alike.

➡️ #4. Left-brained and right-brained people 🧠

Did you ever consider yourself to be a left or a right-brained person? Have you ever tied your practicality or creativity to having one or the other leading part of your brain? If so, you can stop this nonsense.

The idea of people having a prevailing right brain hemisphere, which results in them being more artistic, intuitive and creative, or left brain hemisphere, which makes them more analytical, objective and logical, is completely false. (Same as the offshoot of this theory — that left-handed people are more inventive). Nevertheless, 91% of teachers considered it to be correct and sound explanation for students’ differences.

At this time and age, the brain has been examined quite a lot (for example, study in 2013 by the Utah University scientists who have analysed over 1,000 brains), but no evidence supporting the theory of a dominant part of the brain has been found. The brain regions are all connected and involved in the process of performing any action, even the smallest routing one. This is supported by the research which showed that even though the abilities are based in different regions, their performance requires the connection to other parts of the brain.

The drop of truth that can be found in this myth is that some parts of the brain can become stronger during the adaptation to the same occurring conditions for a long period of time. It all has to do with the particular lifestyle.

➡️ #5. The rule of 10000 hour practice 🔨

This particular myth states that 10000 hours of practice are enough to become a rockstar in any new chosen field. Quite a claim! This was based on the research of Anders Ericsson, a Swedish professor and psychologist.

Nobody says that deliberate practice isn’t important. On the contrary, it’s essential to improving your skills. But this number means absolutely nothing. You can practice for those 10000 hours and it won’t ensure your greatness as a newly proclaimed programmer or musician. Some fields just never stop evolving, so there’s no way that after this set number of practices you won’t have to continue learning and practicing again in order to keep up. For example, programming languages constantly presenting new functions and improvements, so developers have to adjust and implement new things in their code. If they’d stopped at 10000 hours, the stars would’ve never been born, sidekicks at best.

Although, we can find at least something plausible in this myth. As it turned out, the proficiency can be predicted. This was found by the Princeton study. But it can only be possible in those fields that have stable rules and structures that never change (like football, running, chess).

➡️ #6. Only 10% of our brains is being used 🤯

This one I’ve heard the most often. It’s an intriguing idea (especially after watching the movie “Limitless”) that our brain has potential that is still to be uncovered. But this dormant potential is nothing more than an appealing myth. There’s nothing in neuroscience that would support this theory in the slightest, since each one of our actions activates the whole brain. Of course, different parts are responsible for different functions. Some of them have to be active non-stop, so we wouldn’t suddenly stop breathing, while others activate when needed, like when you need to solve a problem or respond to something scary.

The thing is, the brain is very energy-consuming, even being a considerably small part of our body. Its neurons (approximately 86 billion of them…have no idea how they are being counted 😅) are programmed to self-destruct if they can’t properly connect to active circuits. If someone actually used only 10% of their brain, it would’ve caused such significant damage with neural destruction that would be non-survivable. Not mentioning that the brain would’ve also shrinked. Not a pretty picture, but certainly brings us back to reality in which our brain is fully used and active.

Many of us might not use it very effectively, and most certainly not all 100% at once. Also, certain lifestyles of some people can make their brains more active than others, but it has nothing to do with uncovering hidden brain resources.

➡️ #7. Brainstorming in groups makes people more creative 🤝

Today collaboration is an extremely popular thing in almost every company. For some reason people took the phrase “two heads better than one” so literary that implemented this idea in various spheres of life. I’m not saying that sharing information and learning from one another is a bad thing, but it has nothing to do with the increased creativity in groups who brainstorm together.

Many researches have found that, in fact, group brainstorming actually interfere and limits creativity. It happens due to various reasons. First of all, it puts a lot of pressure, especially if you want to impress your colleagues and superiors. Secondly, very often people are fixating on one good idea somewhere at the beginning and fail to deliver or consider other good ideas that are being voiced later. Basically, it’s very hard to get a unique idea out of such brainstorm meetings. People need to get in a zone, think individually or with those they feel comfortable connecting. It’s better to give this space and collect the ideas later on.

➡️ #8. There are shortcuts to better learning 📈

We all from time to time stumble upon some app or a method that suggests much quicker and better result in learning something. Sometimes we even look for one. It’s a nice idea that the information could be faster absorbed by our brains and stick in memory, so all of us want to believe it. The sad truth is that every learning requires hard work. It’s a process that necessitates time, and there’s nothing that will make you good at something new without you putting in an effort.

The only thing that can be partially true in this myth is that there are ways to improve your learning and study more effectively. Knowing how the brain works and understanding your needs will certainly help you to spend time more usefully and make your efforts count. But don’t believe everything you read online or hear from others. Check for supportive data of actual studies and make sure that you won’t be wasting time switching learning methods and fads.

☑️ Conclusion 🤗

We went through some of the psychological myths about brain and education that are the most popularly defined as the known facts. Now you can easily throw them into the trash and free your mind of those misbeliefs.

Hope it was refreshing information for you. Share in the comments your thoughts on the topic. Did you find here myths you’ve believed? Are there any other psychological “facts” you know?

😲 Myths About Brain And Learning 🤔 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many companies dedicate specific time and resources to increase their employees motivation and productivity. They hire a person to deal with such things, involve workers in certain activities and teach some techniques that supposedly must make their work more effective. For a long time for me it sounded somewhat ridiculous and, as I’ve done more research, I found out that there really was a sound reason for my skepticism.

To be fair, I’m not saying that it’s completely pointless, but the fact is, even though companies’ leaders invest in boosting their employees efficiency at work, they don’t even consider eliminating those things that are most probably destroying that so desired productivity. So, we’ve conducted a list of things that keep developers from doing their best job. And, if you’ll consider the cumulative amount of money spent on developers’ salary and time wasted on motivating them, you might find this information worth your time.

№1. Interruptions, loud colleagues and media alerts 😡

You’ve probably noticed that to do some quality work you have to get into a zone. It’s a specific state of mind when you are 100% focused on the task at hand and the solutions, ideas, alternatives are coming almost effortlessly. You caught a wave and you are riding it. It’s a great place to be, but it’s not that easy to accomplish, if you are constantly being interrupted.

Developers need their space and piece of mind to think and create. That’s why they like headphones so much (I personally can’t do anything without them😂). Each time a co-worker wants to tell a joke or talk about their weekend, it snaps you out of your zone. Each loud discussion involuntarily forces you to listen to it and lose concentration. As well, as when each time you find out about yet another meeting. It makes you feel like you won’t be able to do anything in this period of time, so you never do any actual work.

These disturbances can be avoided. Some by the developers themselves by setting boundaries and informing colleagues, when you’ll be available for discussions that have nothing to do with the work you are currently involved in. Some by the management by scheduling meetings with consideration to the working process of their employees (before or after the lunch break, or first thing in the morning) and keeping them right to the point (more deliberate organisation meetings can be done on Friday during weekly or monthly assessments).

There might be a lot of other interruptions, like e-mail pop-ups, phone notifications, personal calls, social media distractions (you know, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.). Some companies even cut-of the access to those resources through their computers. I’m not in the liberty to judge those restrictions, since they do nothing to your phone. And noone can refuse you the usage of your mobile, since there’s always the possibility of an emergency call or work related contacts. The only thing that comes to mind is to request switching on the silent mode, so you wouldn’t distract anyone at your workplace with your ring, and switching off the social media notifications, so you wouldn’t be tempted to check them out every few minutes.

№2. Lack of specificity and clearly defined priorities 📢

Every one of you at some point has probably heard from their employee or a manager something, like: “Why have you been working so much time on this task and not the other?”, or “Why did you make this feature like this, when I’ve requested it to be doing a completely different thing?”, or “Why haven’t you fixed that bug yet, since I’ve pointed it out earlier?”. These could’ve been somewhat reasonable questions, but more often than not, they lack specificity.

Management frequently highlights each task as the number one priority, so you can’t clearly understand what to put on top of your to-do list. Everything is important and everything is on fire due yesterday. So, it only adds to the constant stress and irritation, which tanks productivity big time. It can be easily avoided by the leadership itself figuring out the priorities and making them clear to their employees. This way the developer will be more able to organize his time and put more efforts working on the most urgent matters.

The tasks themselves require even more specificity. The feature must be described in more detail, so that the developer wouldn’t have to start all over again each time a new piece of information gets revealed to him. If you want a feature to be doing certain things, be sure to precisely describe it to the developer, so he didn’t have to work blindly playing guessing games. Same goes for the requests, like “there’s a bug, fix it”. Well, yeah, OK. Can you be more vague?!

If the leadership of the company really wants to have more productive workers, they have to ensure that work is being correctly organized on each level with strictly defined priorities and the developers are being given enough information to actually do their job.

№3. Technical Debt Limit🔧

Technical debt refers to a decision of implementing not the best code to release the software faster. These days business has to be competitive and rapidly evolving. If a company cannot deliver products in the shortest possible periods of time, it might not survive on the market. There’s always a need for experiments and fast solutions. In most cases, there’s no time to look for a perfect solution. If you can spend 14 days writing “perfectly good” code, but you can also spend 3 days writing the “good enough” code, then the preference will fall on the latter one.

Note, that writing “good enough” code doesn’t imply writing horrible code not taking into account the possibility of future implementations. But the sacrifices still have to be made. In terms of a good business strategy, it can be a reasonable way to go, especially considering that not all the technical debt will have to be paid back. Anyway, no matter how hard you try to minimize the impact of such decisions, the complexity of code inevitably increases. All of these cost developers their productivity, since they always have to compromise and later deal with a lot of complications, which slow them down, since refactoring is never among the priorities.

Here the compromise has to be made. It’s absolutely understandable that technical debt has to be sometimes leveraged in order to gain an upper hand in the competitive industry. But non-programmers must understand that always moving forward is not the best solution. Sometimes additional time for improvement and development is a justified course of action, if the company wants to save developers productivity and product quality all at once.

№4. Multitasking 📉

If someone will ever tell you that multitasking is the best way to increase your productivity and you must be able to do more in a shorter span of time, don’t listen. Just don’t. They are either superhumans or they have no idea what they are talking about. Various studies have already proven that a human’s brain cannot focus on several things at once. The worst thing you can do for your productivity is to try multitasking. And if your management requires that from you, they won’t be too satisfied with the results.

By multitasking you can create the illusion of archiving a lot of things simultaneously, but the quality of your work will certainly be lost. Trying to do several tasks at the same time is actually interfering with certain types of brain activity, since when you are switching your attention to something else, the process of gathering and absorbing the information gets disrupted.

So, if you really want to be the most productive at work, divide and conquer. Determine which task you are working on at the moment and devote your attention to it. Don’t jump from one thing to the other. If you are running tests, just run tests. If you are working on a solution, work on that solution. By doing this you’ll give your brain the time to concentrate and process what needs to be done much better, and, as a result, your effectiveness will drastically increase.

№5. Relevant Hardware and Good Tools 💻

If the company needs to have the job done, it has to provide resources to those doing it. Of course, a hole can be dug by hand, but the more reasonable way to dig a hole is to use a shovel. (The example is right to the point 😁) Every day developers have to deal with the code, sitting behind their computer screens conducting a lot of different operations. The tools and the hardware that they are given for the job can influence their productivity quite a bit. The better the tools, the more chances that a developer will be able to do his work effectively and in a shorter time. Same goes for the hardware.

If a company asks for better results, it has to provide better resources. The development team has to have the tools they feel comfortable working with. And given the salaries, it’s not the investment that won’t pay off in terms of better productivity.

№6. Seagull Management 🐤

I’ve come across these productivity suckers quite a few times during my research. It’s an interesting phenomenon that appears in more and more companies, but the aftermath of it is not that great.

The concept is very simple. An upper-level manager who has certain authority suddenly appears when he spots a problem and starts to dump all over. Even worse, he doesn’t propose any particular solutions or try to actually manage people. His ultimate goal is to make as much noise as he can and make everyone feel like shit (well, it most certainly seems like it).

This type of management has occurred due to the shifts in the competitive environment caused by changes in the industry regulation and the growing global trade. The companies are unable to react appropriately. The number of managers has decreased, but the number of people they have to overlook increased. So, the managers left cannot keep track of everything that’s happening and be present to deal with situations as they appear. They just swoop-in once in a while and add to the wreckage.

Seagull management, though very popular these days, proves to have a lot of negative effects. The disruption left in the wake of such a manager is huge and the employees are left cleaning the mess he makes. This behaviour brings a lot of stress, frustration and, as you’ve guessed, the productivity goes down the toilet.

The companies have to pay attention to such matters. If they really want to have actual problem solvers and not the angry, depressed and unappreciated developers who can’t get into a flow, because they are being treated like delinquent girls, they have to organize better management.

№7. Unrealistic Deadlines 🔨

Deadlines are part of the development process in every company and they are, undoubtedly, needed. But having a deadline has a dual effect.

Deadlines can have a positive influence, like motivating developers to work faster, produce better results, control the amount of work done in a certain period of time. But it happens only if the deadline is reasonable. It can be tight, but still r-e-a-s-o-n-a-b-l-e. And there the problem lies. Very often developers present estimates that the manager requires to lower as much as possible. Then those estimates are being presented to the company leadership as the agreed deadlines. As a result the development team is being pressured to meet those deadlines. This creates a lot of unnecessary tension and stress. If this pressure is constantly present, productivity drastically lowers. Developers can’t concentrate when they are overwhelmed all the time. There’s no need to mention creativity under these circumstances, ’cause it’s nonexistent.

Putting pressure on employees isn’t a problem. Development team needs a little kick from time to time. But when the pressure is too high and the deadlines are borderline insane, it won’t do any good. Let your developers freedom to create and function. If you want to actually have a reasonable deadline, ask the developers to track their activity and calculate what time on average they need to finish particular tasks. Based on those results they can create a schedule and analyze their performance against it. If there’s a need for improvement, make amendments.

Conclusion 😯

So, we went over the reasons that I believe are the most common destroyers of the developer’s productivity. Companies and their leadership have to consider the human factor and attention to the needs of their employees.

What do you think is the worst thing killing productivity at work?

😈TOP 7 Reasons Why A Developer Can Kiss His Productivity Goodbye✋ was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It seems so convenient and cool to be able to study new things and become good at something without even leaving your home. You don’t have to lose time getting to a place where the course is being taught or to stick to hours set by somebody else, or even to miss out on new experiences just because you can’t make those hours. It might not fit your work schedule or your personal responsibilities. There are a lot of things that can get in a way. That’s why a lot of people, especially beginner programmers, are using CheckiO as a part of the self-study process. But there are certain pitfalls when it comes to home education. You get distracted…a lot. It can be hard to find time, concentrate, you can start to procrastinate, remember some choirs you have to do or your homies are quite noisy.

So, acknowledging all that, we’ve decided to pinpoint some things that can help you make your learning more effective and help you achieve your goals.

#1. Create your own schedule and set up a routine 📄

You’ve got to have a plan. Yeah…yeah… Plans went out the window every time you try sticking to them. I know what you mean. Nevertheless, the idea of structure isn’t pointless. Especially when juggling work, family and social life. Find the time when you are the most productive. Curve out one hour (or more) per day to study. You can also add your learning to other parts of your day. Get up one hour earlier you read a book or review what you’ve learnt yesterday. Download an audiobook and listen to it during your commute to and from work, while cleaning, preparing dinner, doing laundry…whatever. You have a spare few minutes during your lunch break — go over some of your notes or watch a relative video on youtube. Integrate learning into your life as much as possible and manage your time to actually study.

If you have a lot on your mind and you can’t concentrate, write everything you need on a piece of paper (like adding tasks to your schedule) and set it aside. This way you won’t be thinking about them anymore and can get back to doing those things after you finish.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Pick up manageable chunks of information for each day and take small breaks. Just set aside all of your friend talks and phone distractions until you are done.

We’ve previously published an article concerning the creation and influence of the daily timetable for programmers. You can check it out and find useful tips even if you aren’t into programming.

#2. Set up your study space 🎧

Find a place where you can feel comfortable and won’t be distracted by strange noises or other people living with you. It should be considerably quiet, have good lighting and all the necessary study supplies. But don’t lay on the bed pretending to read, ’cause you’ll definitely pass out. Being too comfortable is a thing!

It might be a good idea to create a suitable background noise. For some people it’s the best way to concentrate. Like, play some music in your headphones or a certain melody, a noise of some kind (like ocean waves helps to fall asleep, some types of noises helps people focus). This is the only way I can work at home. Just hit play and you have your comfort zone without other distracting sounds.

Also, don’t forget to keep your space clean and organized. Believe me, if after your daily study session you’ll put everything in its place, it’ll be more pleasant to continue learning the next day. Plus, you’ll have a certain sense of accomplishment.

#3. Highlighter, associations, written notes and flashcards ✍️

Different people get information better in different ways. But there are a few generally effective things for most.

Like, highlighting important things while reading a book. If you don’t have a hard copy, there are many programs and devices that have highlighting function, among other things.

When you’re trying to remember something, make it more fun. Create silly associations, find something that sounds similarly and is close to you, like a familiar song lyrics, pictures, movie scene, video clip, etc. Also, you can come up with a funny dance or a stupid song on the topic. It doesn’t have to make a lot of sense. The funnier and sillier it’d be, the more chances that you’ll remember it.

Taking notes is sacred. I would’ve never graduated from anywhere, since it’s the only way I can learn stuff. This way you can put in writing what you’ve understood, make it simpler, shorter, in your own words and with needed explanations. It’s much easier to review later and refresh your memory.

Leave yourself notes. Write some points on small colorful notes and place them around the house or wherever is suitable for you. This way you’ll be subjected to this information more and your brain won’t have the opportunity to forget it.

Flashcards are actually very cool thing for studying and self-control, especially when you’re learning a language or new terms. You can make them yourself. On one side you write a certain question, on the other — the answer. Take them with you and study when you have a spare minute.

#4. Practice as much as you can 💃🏻

Practice makes perfect. Who doesn’t know this saying? And even though perfection is not the thing I want you to focus on, practice really is the best way of actually becoming good at something.

I don’t think that this point has to be explained further. It’s quite obvious.

If you are able to find time for the theoretical part, you most definitely have to find time to apply your knowledge. Just think about it, you’ll never be able to speak another language if you’ll be simply learning words and grammar, but won’t actually start applying it in real conversation. (As my English teacher used to say: “No matter how good your English is, you have to speak, use it, practice as much as possible. It’s the only way.”) Same with coding, you won’t be able to code if your sole focus will be on learning the functions and syntax, but not on writing actual code. Same with everything else. Half an hour here and there might seem like not that big of a deal, but that’s half an hour more than nothing.

#5. Get the support of your family and friends 👫

To make time for studying you sometimes have to sacrifice some other things. Sometimes it’s just watching less TV or spending time on Facebook, but sometimes it’s missing some parties, drinks and movie nights with friends, or family gathering. It doesn’t have to be drastic, like missing someone’s birthday, but certain adjustments have to be made. You need to make sure that your close ones understand and support you.

The outside support is very important for many reasons. Firstly, you’ll feel less pressured to go or do something when you actually have to spend quality time studying. There will be fewer interruptions and miscommunications, if everyone knows about your busy schedule. Also, you won’t feel so lousy and lonely when your loved ones are there on your side believing in you.

Of course, your can always modify schedule and make small exceptions. You aren’t in a prison. Just set some priorities and notify your family and friends about your decision.

#6. Find a study-buddy or a group 🤘

Social interactions are very important and you can benefit a lot from other people’s minds and ways of thinking. Two heads are better than one. Well, if those heads are willing to actually put in some work.

It’s like creating you team. Find some team members who you are comfortable with and who want to learn as much as you do. There are a lot of interest groups out there which you can join. Even better, those groups might hold different events, organize meet-ups or weekly gatherings for brainstorming and collaborative practice. If you are not a fan of such things (many people aren’t comfortable in groups), you can simply find a partner or even better a mentor to guide you. It’s a great way to gain moral support, share ideas, test each other and solve difficult problems together.

#7. Talk to your employer 😎

Yes, you can definitely share your aspirations with your boss. These days many companies and employers are very understandable to such matters and even encourage their employees on the road to self-improvement. Especially if it’s related to their current jobs and can elevate their performance at work. Not many people are willing to put-in extra hours to learn new things. Some are very cozy where they are doing what they do. So, it might make you a very valuable part of a team and leave a positive impression in the head’s eyes. Who knows, maybe it’ll land you a promotion in the future.

Either way, any learning in any field is valuable. Even if your pursuit has nothing to do with your job at the time, it can still be beneficial to it. Expand your horizons! For instance, you’ve decided to learn programming, but you are actually working as a school teacher. You can ask your boss whether he’ll be interested in you working on a school’s website or creating a school’s record system. And if that requires certain changes in your work schedule, you can ask to make it more flexible or figure out a way to make up for missed hours here and there. It’s absolutely doable.

In case you have a less sensible direction, don’t get upset. There are other options. Some people are attending night schools, working during the day and have families. Anything is possible!

#8. Set realistic mini-goals 💪

Don’t start panicking if your pace isn’t very fast and you aren’t doing as much as you’d wanted to. There are a lot of different factors in each person’s life and nobody can do absolutely everything.

By setting smaller goals there are more chances that you’ll be able to reach them without draining yourself or feeling like a loser if you hadn’t. It’s not selling yourself short! It’s being realistic and effective taking into account the load from other parts of your daily life. This way you’ll have something you know you can and have to accomplish, and you won’t burnout in two weeks of the crazy overloads. For example, the person who wants to run track isn’t gonna start running 10 miles first thing in the morning. Especially if that same person was working till 1 am and hasn’t exercised for a long time (or never).

Set some priorities and strategically do manageable amounts of tasks. Sometimes it’s better to make baby steps, but to reach your goals, rather than to drop everything altogether.

#9. Get a good night’s sleep and wake up earlier 😴

Night is a great time. It’s quiet and nobody bothers you. It’s so tempting to stay up late and do your thing. But…If you have to get up for work the next morning, you won’t be so happy about your decision. Or if you pull something like that a few nights in a row. You’ll be sooooo unproductive and useless. This thing just doesn’t pay off. Even more, you won’t actually learn anything this way, because your brain will be too tired.

When you sleep a considerable amount of time, you are giving your brain a chance to process obtained information, digest it and recharge for the next day. So, when you think you are wasting your time for sleep, you are actually storing everything to make better use of it later.

For your work, education, health, and life’s sake, just get enough quality sleep. You’ll function much better, will be able to focus and will have enough energy to actually remember what you’re learning.

#10. Go somewhere 🌄

It’s not mandatory to stay at home in order to study effectively. You can go to your favorite cafe or park bench and enjoy a change of environment as an inspiration. Fresh air never hurt anybody.

New location can work wonders when it comes to finishing an assignment or solving a problem you’ve stuck upon. Also, many studies have shown that our brain makes subtle associations when we’re studying. Those may be the street noises coming from the outside of your apartment, or the color of the walls in the room, or the smell from the kitchen…many different things. And the more varied those associations are, the less we forget. So, if you are changing locations more often and getting various sensations during your studying, you may actually absorb more information than would be possible if you’d stayed in one place all the time.

Find your spot or several places that are pleasant and comfortable and do some of your studying there.

#11. Try SQ3R technique 👀

There are many interesting learning techniques that can benefit you a lot. This one is just a simple and memorable way to improve your studying process.

SQ3R — Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review.

This is an active reading method, when you first survey — look though the presented information, then question — converting each heading into a question, after that read the information attempting to answer those questions. When that’s done, you’ll have to recite the information you’ve remembered as the answers to the previously created questions. And, finally, review everything making sure that you’ve grasped the main ideas and included all important details.

Conclusion 😉

As you can see, in order to get things done, you have to actually start doing something and be creative at that. We’ve presented those points that we believe can be the most beneficial when attempting home education. But these are more like preferable advice rather than strict rules to success. Find something that suits you and work around it. We believe that anyone with enough desire to try can achieve great things!

What techniques are you using when studying at home! Don’t hesitate to share them in comments!

🤓 #11 Ways How To Make Home Education More Effective 🎓 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Guido van Rossum created something that became widely used, liked and supported by the rapidly growing community. Python now is one of the most popular programming languages used in a variety of fields and for different programs. Furthermore, it was ranked as the most popular programming language in 2019. This results were shown by IEEE Spectrum (after combining data from various sources) and PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language Index (after analyzing the frequency of language tutorials searches on Google).

Even though Python has its shortcomings (let’s be honest, every language has those), its online repository continues to be replenished by the new libraries that extend the language’s functionality. And all of it is being done by the passionate coders who are fond of Python and the possibilities that it provides.

So, let’s examine more closely, why really Python is so much-loved and holds number one positions in different domains, like AI programming, system tests, machine learning, scientific computing, web development, and even preferred to be taught in universities, among many other things.

1. Simplicity 😋

The first point that attracts more and more newcomers to learn and use Python is that it’s really simple in comparison to other programming languages. This is due to the Python’s quite readable syntax which reminds more of how the human mind thinks in English. It gives developers the opportunity to concentrate on the code itself and solve the problems at hand rather than to deal with technical complexities and confusements of the language’s syntax. The specific and straightforward rules ensure that code will be clean and understandable. All of it saves a huge amount of time and mental efforts, which makes Python very appealing for the beginners who are just starting to find their way around the programming world, as well as advanced coders who look to speed up the development process. This is also why this language was chosen as a part of schools and universities programs. (It became the official programming language for French schools.)

With Python you can do more writing fewer lines of code, and it doesn’t imply that you’ll lose in performance or scalability. The language is very strong and efficient. After familiarizing yourself with the basics you are already set to create something of your own. It’s versatile, has cross-platform compatibility and can be used for a broad range of applications. It’s no wonder why many companies, such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, Quora, Dropbox, etc. are also using it.

2. Libraries 📚

The other thing that adds to Python’s popularity is the extensive amount of packages and libraries that it provides. They can be quickly installed and inserted into a Python program without any hassle or obligatory payment. The number of available packages is over 200 000 and it only gets bigger. Brilliant developers that are part of the Python community from all over the world continue to create and share new bundles of code specifically for solving different problems.

These libraries make the development that much easier, since you no longer need to write all code from the ground up. Why waste time on something that already exist? It’s like solving the problem that has already been solved. You can just use someone’s library. You can also take advantage of its explanatory documentation to completely understand how to use it. This way you get a carcass and you can make whatever input you want to achieve the desired output.

The vast number of Python libraries and frameworks that are out there in your disposal can used for web development (Django, Flask, Sanic, Pyramid, etc.), creation of scripts, in data science for various mathematical and statistical operations (Numpy, Pandas, Quantecon.py, etc.), and so many others.

3. AI & ML 💻

Python is the number one choice when it comes to the rapidly developing and demandable technologies as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. These fields are trending so much because of the importance of work that they can do and insights that they can provide. AI & ML became a necessity in a world where there are large quantities of data that needs to be processed and analyzed intensely, conveniently and accurately in order to get the desired outcome. It can be deep research to improve user experience, or aimed at solving real-life issues, getting predictions to increase productivity, create effective strategies, etc. Basically things that cannot be done manually. Such technologies are very useful for businesses and for industrial development.

So, the fields themselves are quite awesome and many are interested in their growth. Consequently, the programming language prefered for their purposes gains a lot of interest as well. But why Python? The answer is easy. Python provides flexibility, stability, tools, community support and, again, libraries. Even though we’ve already stated just above that Python libraries are extremely cool and useful, still, we wanted to separately notice the specialized libraries for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. First of all, because there are a lot of them (like Keras, Mlpy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, Nilearn, etc.), and secondly, because they allow to access and handle data faster and simpler.

4. Community 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

Python’s popularity and its community are two interrelated things. The more popular the language becomes, the bigger its community, and vise versa. Due to the fact that Python has been around for quite a while, the number of its supporters is significant. And it continues growing by the day. This is an important factor for many reasons, like many of the existent libraries has been written by the programmers and groups from this community.

Pythoniasts (as some may call them) are very helpful. There are less trouble to find Python developers for a project or seek advice, share knowledge among them. This kind of support system extremely helps to improve one’s knowledge and the language itself, and of course makes it easier to learn it.

Thanks to so many supporters, there are a lot of online resources dedicated to learning Python and different aspects of its usage. A huge number of courses, tutorials, YouTube videos and articles, practically everything you need to know is out there available for you in a vast majority at any given moment.

5. Business 📈

Here you might think that for business Python is very useful due to the large number of developers that support it. And it’s partly true, since you can faster find the person to get the job done. But here what’s up. At the beginning I’ve already mentioned that every language has its challenges. For Python it’s execution speed. Python is considered to be slightly slower than many other languages. But why it’s still not that big of a deal?

We live in a world full of different companies that compete against each other and the development speed matters a lot more than the program’s performance speed. The last companies can deal with using horizontal scaling, so that the servers will improve the execution. Anyway, innovation moves forward, computing power gets higher and multi-core processors get cheaper. But companies cannot delay the development process. To get ahead of the competition, you have to work faster and deliver prototypes within the shortest feasible time-frames.

In addition, employee’s time becomes more expensive. Even now it’s considered nearly the most expensive resource. So, the companies are interested not only in reduction of the development time, but also in saving money by reducing the amount of time spent by the developers working on the project. And those are good money, if you know what I mean.

You can see for yourself that Python, when compared to other programming languages, is a great choice for those companies, since it requires less time for writing code and building programs.

Conclusion 😊

We’ve highlighted just a few points that in my opinion are ones that influenced Python’s popularity the most. Without a doubt, every programming language has advantages and disadvantages. And Python is no exception. But it gained such big support and usability in so many different areas that its power is undeniable. And we really don’t think that Python will be suppressed or eliminated any time soon. Quite possible, it’ll continue evolving and dominating as a high-level programming language that it is.

So, what do you think about these reasons for Python’s popularity? Can you suggest any other points? We’re very interested in your thoughts on the matter.

🐍 Why Python is the most popular programming language? 👏 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this modern day and age tech is something we can’t even imagine our life without. It’s intertwined with the simplest activities and now almost everything is being replaced by some kind of software. Programs are controlling our lives. But we have to understand, no matter how easy they might make or try to make our existence, they are still human creations and companies offsprings. Why it’s relevant? Well, because people make mistakes and where money is involved companies might not decide that some mistakes are worth fixing as long as not many customers, if any, knows about them.

Technology is so cool and very scary at the same time. How much we can achieve and how badly it can turn. Here are just a few recent examples from 2018–2019 when software failed.

#1. Facebook’s apps outage 👀

In the summer of 2019 Facebook users stopped being able to view or load images from the newsfeed. But it wasn’t just Facebook’s issue. Other of its apps had troubles as well. Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger had an inconvenient outage. Its users couldn’t send messages, media files or view instastories. The malfunction angered a lot of users and made the top of complaints on the rival platform — Twitter.

Facebook announced that everything was fixed and happened due to an accident during “routine maintenance”. But these days social media platforms are so popular that these kinds of things can affect a lot of people and cost the company a bad rep and ads refunds. And that’s not mentioning the major scandal with Facebook in 2018 when personal information of millions of users were gathered without their consent by Cambridge Analytica.

#2. CPUs flaw 💻

Google had shocked everyone in 2018 revealing CPUs vulnerabilities — Meltdown and Spectre, which can access private and sensitive data of other programs. They influence Intel, AMD and ARM chips. This hardware flaw makes stealing data, passwords and keys a piece of cake. Furthermore, there are new versions of these vulnerabilities, like the one of Spectre called SWAPGSAttack. This tricky thing provides an opportunity to monitor computers and take information leaving no trace. And computers (workstations and laptops) aren’t the only devices that can be affected. Smartphones, tablets, servers and others can also take a hit.

Microsoft worked extremely hard to create software solutions to these hardware problems. And it had some success. Now there are certain patches that help to secure your data against the initial flaws. You just have to update your systems and they will take effect. But the work isn’t done yet. The patches might help with protecting your information, but they might also influence the device’s performance and not in a good way. So, pay attention to new updates (software and hardware) to get the best way to guard yourself and your privacy.

#3. Crashed lunar lander 🌑

On April 11th 2019 the history wasn’t made, but it came pretty close to it. Israel almost became the fourth country making the landing on the Moon surface (after the Soviet Union, USA and China). The small robotic spacecraft called Beresheet created by the SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) failed just moments before landing. When attempting its final descent to the surface and firing the main angine, something went very wrong and the last completely shut down. The mission control center tried to reset it, but communications with the craft were lost. It’s painfully obvious that the lander crashed with all of the equipment on its board.

Despite the unsuccessful conclusion of its trip, lunar lander have made it really far. Scientists that have been working on it still feel that they’ve achieved a lot and will continue their mission.

#4. British Airways glitch ✈️

When the busiest month for airways came along, computer system completely went down. On the 7th of August 2019 over hundred flights of British Airways (BA) were cancelled and near to 300 delayed. Thousands of passengers had to stay behind and wait crazy long hours in the packed airports. The check-in procedures had to be switched to manual which made the queues starting to slightly resemble Dante’s “Inferno”.

And it wasn’t the first time when the system screwed up. The pattern of software failures over the last couple of years suggests poor computer management and calls for concern. Investors are already pretty worked up, since the financial risks with such issues are too high.

#5. Self-driving killer car 🚗

On March 18th 2018 a self-driving Uber car that was being tested on the roads of Arizona hit and killed a pedestrian. The backup driver couldn’t react in time to prevent the accident. It was a great tragedy that shook the state and whole industry of autonomous vehicles. Who’s at fault here? The woman pedestrian who was crossing the road with her bike came out of the dark and it’s possible that in any kind of mood the collision couldn’t have been avoided. But maybe the driver could have paid more attention to the road? Or the Uber company could have done a better job when creating such a car and didn’t deactivate its emergency braking system? Or maybe even the state should have not allowed this kind of technology to be tested on the streets? The only conclusive thing is that after the incident Uber haven’t applied to renew its permit for testing vehicles in Arizona. The community is still very angry and isn’t ready for self-driving cars on public roads. It’s still too dangerous and not trustworthy.

But, nevertheless, other companies continue testing their tech — autonomous vehicles — on the roads and there are no regulations that can ensure their safety. A year passed and even Uber plans to resume their tests in some of the cities.

Conclusion 😵

Though not every IT failure is life threatening, many of them can potentially be. And I haven’t even gone to the accidents with medical records and equipment due to some bug, when a lot of people who have expected treatment were killed or affected in a harmful way. And there have been a lot of different incidents over the years. So, please, be careful and don’t completely rely on technology, ’cause there’s always a chance that it’ll fail you.

Hope this article can raise some additional awareness in your minds and hearts. If you want to share other cases of software mistakes or discuss this issue, we’re waiting for your comments below.

❗️ TOP 5 Software Failures of 2018–2019 ❕(#5 is pretty alarming) 😧 was originally published in CheckiO Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.