You’ll get a complete step-by-step path for how you’ll achieve that goal. 

Enjoy your 15-step software engineer roadmap!

Is this you? 

You love to crack tough problems…

As a software engineer, you’ll use your intelligence and creative ability to tackle difficult problems and provide a ton of value by solving them for your employer or client.

You enjoy immersing yourself in the study of a topic…

To become a software engineer, you need to learn a number of complex skills. You’ll also never stop learning after that. If you’re all about expanding your knowledge and bettering your skills, this could be the perfect career path for you.

You want to work with others to achieve ambitious goals together…

The basement-dwelling developer working on coding problems all on his own is a myth. Most of the time you’ll have to lead others or collaborate with them on a solution. You’ll also actively take part in meetings and do presentations about your work.

And you’d like to make more money than most of your peers by doing that…

Then why not become a software developer or engineer?

What is a software engineer, exactly?

A software engineer is a computer expert who uses engineering principles to design, create, debug, test, deploy and maintain the systems and code of software applications.

Working in tandem with a team, software engineers create effective software solutions to costumer’s problems in various fields. 

Software Engineer vs Software Developer

Most use Software Engineer and Software Developer interchangeably.

In fact they’re very similar.

Software Engineers analyze and shape (read: engineer) a project from a wider point of view. They’re highly involved in planning and directing, on top of the software development tasks.

What do software engineers do?

What software engineers do in a nutshell: As a software engineer, you’re engineering all parts of the software development life cycle.

Defining problems and objectives. Implementing code. Assessing and measuring the deployed software programs. Changing systems and improving programs. Providing ongoing management and support.

15 examples of what you’ll do:

1. Identify a customer’s problem to solve through a new software application
2. Run a test of new or existing software
3. Correct problems with systems or applications
4. Build new programs from scratch
5. Manage software engineering projects – often multiple at the same time
6. Use models to understand and present a project in detail
7. Create overview diagrams of a project
8. Iterate new versions of code
9. Perform quality control on your team’s output
10. Document your team’s processes
11. Research information and tools to help complete your tasks
12. Communicate with customers or clients
13. Write efficient code yourself
14. Be a mentor to younger developers
15. Offer help to anyone on your team who needs it

What’s it like to be a Software Engineer from day to day?

If you become a software engineer, your working day could look like this:

• You prepare your schedule. Whether you’re working at an office or remotely – you want to have your and your team’s tasks for the day all scheduled out.
• You start working on a software engineering problem. You’re outlining and modeling a software solution to a customer’s problem – complete with guidance for your team on how to implement this solution.
• You attend a meeting. As a software engineer, you’re working with programmers and testers who assist you in realizing the solution you’ve modeled. You need to hold frequent meetings to coordinate this work.
• You fix issues with the application you’re working on. By way of testers’ feedback, or your own assessment, you’re constantly facing new challenges. You spend parts of your work day troubleshooting: Fixing ineffective code, debugging and resolving security issues. 
• You launch a new piece of software. While closely watching how it performs, you’ release a finished application to the world. 
• You service a live product. In your work for customers or clients, you keep measuring the performance of your finished products. You provide technical support, fix any issues that come up, and continue updating the software. 

How hard is it to become a software engineer?

It’s hard to learn software engineering from scratch, go through the challenging interview process and manage the varied, intellectually demanding tasks on the job.

But if you’re willing to do what it takes, you’ll overcome these hardships and enjoy a fulfilling career as a software engineer.

Here are the top 3 challenges you’ll face:

1. You have to have patience & persistence to finish your education

There’s much to learn for an aspiring software developer / engineer. Basically, if you choose to become a software developer, you’ll be a student forever, and you’ll have to be constantly improving and keeping up with your education.

As you learn your first programming language, you might feel especially challenged. You can’t get discouraged if everything doesn’t click right away. 

Sometimes you have to work through a learning problem many times over. You also can’t get complacent after you’ve successfully added a skill to your repertoire – there’s many more to be acquired! 

But if you keep at it day after day, you becoming competent enough to start applying for your first developer job is inevitable.

2. You’ve got to work hard on your communication, team work, and leadership skills

Against all stereotypes – as a software engineer, you’re not a lone basement dweller! 

• You’re taking responsibility at work 
• You’re coordinating with and delegating to team members
• You’re communicating with customers

If you haven’t honed your communication, presentation and public speaking abilities much until now, you’ve got your work cut out for you. These things can be a challenge for personality types that are attracted to coding. 

But let me tell you, it’s exhilarating once you get better at these skills – and that’s what they are, learnable soft skills any developer can acquire. Not only can you now engineer solutions to your customers’ problems, you can communicate them well and lead your team to a successful implementation. 

Your life as a software engineer will be 10x easier and more enjoyable. 

3. You need mental rigor on the job 

First off, the ‘systems thinking’ that you need for any project takes a lot of brainpower. But, it’s what sets you apart as a software engineer, so you have to invest that energy again and again.

Secondly, you must be able to battle through challenges. Whether you’re self-educating (takes the most willpower), or getting your degree (deadlines loom), or taking a course or bootcamp (long hours and peer pressure) – you’re choosing a hard path here. Interview prep is hard. 

Juggling multiple projects on the job and solving problem after problem on the job is hard, too. You have to have the mental strength to push through all those obstacles. But maybe you’re the kind of person who thrives when challenged?

Should You Become a Software Engineer? The Pros & Cons

Cons

You’ll spend hundreds of hours relentlessly studying

It’ll take you months to learn the programming language(s) you’ll need to work in this profession. And it’ll take months to prepare for your job interview.

If this sounds too daunting to you, maybe you shouldn’t become a software engineer. 

You’ll invest thousands into your education

Especially if you go to college, you’ll be spending tens of thousands to become a software engineer. And while you can go the completely self-taught path (we’ll talk about this later):

Even if you opt out of going to college, by spending some money, you’ll be able to speed things up, and get a deeper education in less time. 

You’ll work a decent amount of hours

But, this is normal for any higher level job. Unless you work as a freelance software developer and only take on a limited number of clients – you should expect to work full-time hours at your software engineer job.

You might end up paying the opportunity cost of ‘having a great job’

This is if you consider the long-term outlook of becoming a well-paid software engineer vs. starting your own business(es). It’s easy to stay in that cushy job forever instead of taking the chance to make even more money in business.

Pros 

You’ll be in high demand

The demand for software engineers has doubled in recent years, and it’ll continue to increase. The amount of jobs is going to grow by 22% until 2030 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics – which is a lot higher than average. This means you’ll have an excellent chance of snatching an good job in this field.

You’ll make good money

Salaries for  software engineers ranke between $36k and $265k per year. The average is $120k in the US – that’s over $50 per hour for a salaried employee. Depending on the client, freelance software developers can earn $100+ per hour. This will put you in the upper rank of professionals working in the US. And it’ll afford you a lifestyle most can only dream of!

Software developer salary

Software Developers made a median salary of $110,140 in 2020.

Entry level salary

The average salary for a Entry Level Software Engineer is $73691 per year in the United States.

Lead software engineer salary

The estimated total pay for a Lead Software Engineer is $150,667 per year in the United States

You’ll do exciting work and help a lot of people

If you like a challenge and you love being a high-level problem solver, you’re choosing the perfect profession. What’s more, you’ll be helping your customers get their projects off the ground. 

In many cases this means you’re improving the lives of tens of thousands of users – either directly by them using a software you wrote, or indirectly by your code facilitating a product or service they benefit from.

How to become a software developer from scratch with no experience: 15-Step Roadmap

1. Find Your Why & Set a Goal

First and foremost is to have a clear and ambitious reason for your goal of becoming a software engineer or developer. Ensure that your reasons are strong enough to keep you going.

Maybe you hate your current job as a salesman, or accountant and want to become a developer. You want to work for a cool new tech company and get the nice salaries of a software engineer.

I’ve seen a number of people stop programming because they felt it was too hard to continue, but if you have a strong “why,” it’s easier to keep pushing than to simply give up when you face an obstacle. 

Otherwise, you’re actually just not going to do it. It’s difficult. It’s difficult to go from knowing nothing about anything and becoming really good at it.

It doesn’t mean you don’t have to love every minute of coding.

But you’ve got to love tackling and solving difficult problems.

You also can’t be turned off by working with and leading other people.

If you really want it, and you’re willing to go all in on this career – you’ll be able to make it as a software engineer.

2. Pick Your Career Path

There’s different specialties of software engineers. As a specialist you’re more likely to get hired for a job. And you’ll be able to command an even higher salary, because your expertise is rare. 

So pick a field you’d like to specialize in, and start working towards becoming excellent at it.

Here are some career path specializations for software engineers:

• CRM engineer
• Software integration engineer
• Quality assurance engineer
• Game engineer
• Security Engineer
• NLP engineer
• Machine learning engineer
• Blockchain engineer

3. Pick Your First Language

Before we can run, we have to learn to walk. 

You walk by learning how to program in a single programming language. You don’t learn to walk by trying to learn 50 million things all at once and spreading yourself way too thin. 

Here’s 4 steps to succeed with starting to learn your first language: 

1. Start with the language most useful to you

Pick a single programming language that you think you would be likely to base your career around. The programming language itself doesn’t matter all that much, since you should be thinking for the long term here. What I mean is you shouldn’t try and learn an “easy” programming language to start. 

Just learn whatever language you are interested in and could see yourself programming in for the next few years. You want to pick something that will have some lasting value.

2. Start your learning journey properly

Once you’ve picked the programming language you are going to try and learn, try and find some books or tutorials that isolate that programming language. 

What I mean by this is that you don’t want to find learning materials that will teach you too much all at once. You want to find beginner materials that focus on just the language, not a full technology stack.

Expect to go through a book or tutorial three times before it clicks. You will not get “programming” on the first try–no one ever does. You need repeated exposure before you start to finally get it and can understand what is going on. Until then you will feel pretty lost, that is ok, it is part of the process. 

Just accept it and forge ahead.

3. Start coding right away

As you read through the material or go through the tutorial you have picked out, make sure you actually write code. Do exercises if you can. Try out what you learned. Try to put things together and use every concept you learn about. 

Yes, this is a pain. Yes, it is easier to read a book cover-to-cover, but if you really want to learn, you need to do.

When you’re writing code, try to make sure you understand what every line of code you write does. The same goes for any code you read. If you are exposed to code, slow down and make sure you understand it. Whatever you don’t understand, look up. 

Take the time to do this and you will not feel lost and confused all the time.

4. Start building your first small project

Now that you have a basic understanding of a single programming language, it’s time to put that understanding to work and find out where your gaps are. The best way to do this is to try and build something. 

Don’t get too ambitious at this point–but also don’t be too timid. Pick an idea for an application that is simple enough that you can do it with some effort, but nothing that will take months to complete. 

Try to confine it to just the programming language as much as possible. Don’t try to do something full stack (meaning, using all the technologies from user interfaces all the way to databases)–although you’ll probably need to utilize some kind of existing framework or APIs.

For your first real project you might want to consider copying something simple that already exists. Look for a simple application, like a To-Do list app and straight out try to copy it. Don’t let your design skills stand in the way of learning to code.

The Languages You Need to Become a Software Engineer

The top languages used by software engineers are Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, C++, Go, HTML, Ruby and Kotlin. They are of varied difficulty – as mentioned, pick the one you’ll need for your desired job. You can find this out by looking at job postings, for example. 

You could even call in to companies advertising jobs and ask them exactly which skills you’d need to be considered for the role.

4. Understand programming fundamentals & best practices

You need to learn how to write good clean code that is easy to understand and maintain. In order to do this, you’ll need to read a lot and see many examples of good code.

Beef up your library with the following books on coding fundamentals:

• Code Complete
• Clean Code
• Refactoring
• Working Effectively With Legacy Code
• Programming Pearls – (do the exercises)

And language-specific structural books like:

• JavaScript: The Good Parts
• Effective Java
• Effective C#

At this point you really want to focus your learning on the structural process of writing good code and working with existing systems. 

You should strive to be able to easily implement an algorithm in your programming language of choice and to do it in a way that is easy to read and understand.

5.  Learn a database technology

Most software developers will need to know some database technology as most series applications have a back-end database. So make sure you do not neglect investing in this area.

You will probably see the biggest benefit if you learn SQL–even if you plan on working with NoSQL database like MongoDB or Raven, learning SQL will give you a better base to work from. There are many more jobs out there that require knowledge of SQL than NoSQL.

Don’t worry so much about the flavor of SQL. The different SQL technologies are similar enough that you shouldn’t have a problem switching between them if you know the basics of one SQL technology. Just make sure you learn the basics about tables, queries, and other common database operations.

I’d recommend getting a good book on the SQL technology of your choice and creating a few small sample projects, so you can practice what you are learning–always practice what you are learning.

You have good knowledge of SQL when you can:

1. Create tables
2. Perform basics queries
3. Join tables together to get data
4. Understand the basics of how indexes work
5. Insert, update and delete data

In addition, you will want to learn some kind of object relational mapping technology (ORM). Which one you learn will depend on what technology stack you are working with. 

Look for ORM technologies that fit the framework you have learned. There might be a few options, so you best bet is to try to pick the most popular one.

6. Decide how you’ll become a developer

Choose one of these 5 ways to be a software engineer:

1. Get a college degree
2. Take an (in-person) coding bootcamp
3. Earn a certificate
4. Complete an online course
5. Learn entirely on your own

Degree

This is your longest and most expensive option. 

You’ll go deep on mathematics and fundamentals like data structures and algorithms. Coming out of college, you’ll have more knowledge about fundamental computer science concepts than someone who chose a more DIY path. You’ll have studied computer architecture, databases and source control.

But you might not have as much practical coding skill as someone who’s gone through a bootcamp, for example (which is 90+% hands-on practice).

Even if you go the traditional college route, keep building things in your free time on your own. Applying those theoretical learnings is where real growth happens. It’s how you make sure you’re more than prepared to work a software engineering job ‘in the real world’.

What degree you need to be a software developer

When you study to be a software developer / engineer, you can do an associate degree, bachelors and masters, or even a doctoral degree. 

The most popular fields of study for developers are computer science – a more theoretical line of study – and software engineering, which is a bit more practical with more time spent actually coding.

Courses

Today there’s hundreds of online courses teaching you aspects of software engineering within a timeframe of weeks or months. Courses are great if you are someone who can learn individually, but still wants guidance and resources in an easy-to-consume online format.

What’s missing is the community aspect of college or bootcamps. On the other hand, online courses are often more affordable and easier to complete successfully.

Certificates

If you’re not sure you want to commit to an expensive multi-year degree, you could opt to earn a certificate in software engineering first. These are cheaper and you only need six to twelve months to complete one.

Coding bootcamps

Go all out for one to six months and be ready for your first job. That’s the promise of coding bootcamps. 

Along with other like-minded aspiring software developers, you immerse yourself in studying and coding – for 8-12 hours per day. 

Because they’re so focused on having you execute everything you learn right away, you can expect to become a competent coder after only a few months of bootcamp.

Self-Taught

Can you really become a software developer without a degree?

It’s absolutely possible to become a software developer or engineer without a degree.

You could argue that skipping college puts you at an advantage: The time and money you’re saving can be put into your self-start projects, practical intensive courses, and interview prep. Some employers do require you to have a degree, while others are focused only on which skills you can demonstrate. 

Again, as a self-taught developer, you’re often ahead when it comes to practical application – though you might not be as well-versed in computer science concepts, math problems, data structures and algorithms.

7. Get Experience with an Internship

I’d recommend that as soon as internship opportunities are available to you that you start prepping and applying for those, so that you can be ready and get your foot in the door. 

Because one of the most difficult things is even if you have the knowledge, even if you understand how to program and programming language and how to use the tools and technology: No one is going to give you a chance. 

It’s hard to get your foot in the door without experience and internships are a good way to do that.

8. Stay Informed

Never stop learning. Never stop reading. Always be working your way through a book. Always be improving yourself. 

Your learning journey is never done. You can’t ever know it all. If you constantly learn during your career, you’ll constantly surpass your peers.

These are the top ways you can stay informed about trends and developments in the software engineering profession:

• Events and conferences
• News
• Podcasts
• Books

9. Work on all software engineer Skills

Make sure you’re improving on all the hard and soft skills it takes to be a great software engineer. 

These are the most important ones you need:

Software Engineer skills

• Critical Thinking & Attention to detail
• Communication skills
• A cooperative mindset
• Time Management
• Multitasking
• Troubleshooting
• Testing
• Designing and developing databases
• JavaScript
• C#
• C++
• HTML
• Python
• OOP
• SQL
• .NET

Lead developer skills

• Responsible
• Motivated
• Highly technical
• Humble
• Has conviction
• Good communication skills
• Trustworthy

10. Build your Portfolio

Start building up your portfolio as you’re on your way to becoming a software engineer to increase your value to the marketplace. If you can show that you’re already applying all your learned skills in the real world, it’ll make you that much more attractive to your future employers or freelance clients.

Do coding projects

Start with small projects and move up to more challenging ones as you grow your skills. All the while, document everything you’re doing so you can show it off and use it to build your authority and personal brand as a developer.

Create your developer website

Starting your own developer blog is low barrier to entry and it’s extremely effective. If you blog regularly and consistently, it’s almost guaranteed that someone searching for your name on the internet will find your blog.

Think of a blog as an advertisement for you that works all day and night without you having to do anything other than feed it every once in awhile.

Aside from the external opportunities blogging offers you, it offers some great personal development opportunities as well. I don’t think there is any better way to improve your communication skills than writing.

Blogging also helps you keep track of your own career and progress, as well as provides some historical documentation and reference material which you can look back on to see how you solved a particular problem in the past.

Every software developer should have their own blog: it’s like a lightsaber for a Jedi.

Learn to market yourself

I think this is so important that I built an entire course around the idea. Learn how to market yourself as a developer and continually do it throughout your career. 

Figure out how to create a personal brand for yourself and build a reputation for yourself in the industry and you’ll never be at want for a job. 

You’ll get decide your own future if you learn to market yourself. It takes some work, but it’s well worth it.

11. Create your Resume

When it comes down to it, resumes are more about advertising than anything else. You can think of a resume as a one-page advertisement for you. In fact, if you want to have a good––nay, a great––resume, you have to think of it that way.

The simple truth is, for most jobs you apply for, the only thing anyone will ever see is a quick 15-second glance at your resume. It’s in those 15 seconds that the course of your life literally can be determined. Interview or rejected.

Like it or not, a good programmer resume is important.

Ultimately, you want to portray very clearly what your skills and expertise are, how you’ve used them in the past to achieve great results, and how those skills might be transferred to the future position you are applying for.

12. Apply for your first software engineering Job

There’s another hurdle that you’re going to face – and that’s actually getting a job.

This might even be the most difficult thing out of everything I mentioned today. Even if you follow everything I’ve talked about and are truly a great programmer, no one’s going to give you a shot unless you position yourself properly.

13. Master Interview Skills

Whether you like it or not, interview skills are a big part of the puzzle if you want to get a job as a software engineer. Being a great interviewee is a whole game in itself.

Get ready to prepare for months in advance, studying coding problems and holding mock interviews with your friends.

Practice interview questions

At your software engineering interview, you’ll be asked questions about different topics:

• Computer science fundamentals
• Coding problems
• Behavioral questions

To excel at your coding interview, prepare for those questions months in advance.

14. Teach

The whole time you are learning things, you should be teaching them as well. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or expert, you have something valuable to teach and besides, teaching is one of the best ways to learn.

Document your process and journey, help others along the way.

15. Continue your Education

I’ll say that no matter how you learn how to become a software developer, it still requires taking action, writing code. Just reading academically – going through the motions – is not enough.

You need to be creating some real applications and there’s opportunities today in the mobile development world. It’s easy for someone to create their own mobile application. Even web applications are fairly easy compared to what they used to be in the past. 

You could actually create a working application that you could actually sell and make some money,and build a business off of.

How long does it take to become a software engineer?

It could take you three months to four years to become a software engineer. With courses or bootcamps, you could be ready to start applying for jobs after 3-6 months. College is going to take 2-4 years to finish. Being self-taught software engineer takes months or years depending on your effort.

Can you become a software engineer when you’re older?

Yes, it’s absolutely possible to become a software engineer when you’re 30 or older. You can go through the same steps that someone younger would. After investing a few years into your new career, you can be exceptional at it – even if you’re not so young anymore!

The post How to Become a GREAT Software Engineer (Without a Degree?) appeared first on Simple Programmer.

With millions of mobile applications already present on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, it is indeed tough for a designer to choose the right inspiration.

But have you ever wondered what hooks a user on one particular application despite the various other mobile apps available to them? Flawless user interface (UI) design and intuitive user experience (UX) design are two of the key factors.

The first impression of a mobile application is always related to UI/UX design. Hence, mobile app designers must closely track the latest and best UI/UX design trends. Here’s a glance at some of the best practices to design mobile apps in 2022.

How Can Mobile UI/UX Design Be More User-Friendly?

UI/UX design is the process of creating apps and software that can be seamlessly navigated and smoothly configured across various mobile screen sizes.

So, let’s learn more about the mobile UI/UX design best practices that will prevail in 2022.

1. Air Gesture

When mobile phones are integrated with amazing UX, using them becomes engaging. This example involves using body gestures to perform an action; the hand can be swiped in front of the screen to take a screenshot (as shown below).

It is quite simple to use. A lot of Android phones manufactured by Samsung, Xiaomi, Google, and other android mobile manufacturers have integrated this feature into their flagship phones.

A significant advantage of using air gestures lies in its intuitiveness. Different gestures like swiping fingers left and right or up and down are integrated for controlling various navigation on the device. In short, gestures are here to stay.

2. Scrollytelling

That’s not a typo—you’re reading it right! Scrollytelling is a fusion of ‘scrolling’ and ‘storytelling’, wherein designers use techniques such as parallax scrolling to eliminate the monotony of static images.

The dynamic interaction of text, audio, and visuals creates a rhythmic flow. Moooi is one such example that uses parallax scrolling. The effects on the website give a pleasing visual tour as if the contents are exhibited in a museum.

3. The Rule of Thumb

When the UI design ideas are boggling your mind, and you don’t know where to begin, pay attention to the thumb zone. Many mobile users operate their devices single-handedly, with a vast majority using one thumb.

The ‘thumb zone’ is the area of the screen where your thumb can easily reach for scrolling, swiping, and reaching tab bars.

The heatmap above clarifies the natural positioning of the thumb along with “ow” and “stretch” zones. You can see that the percentage of the area of reachability decreases with increasing mobile screen sizes.

4. Voice Search

“Hey Alexa, play MONTERO by Lil Nas X!”

People often use voice commands to simplify their search or when they want to take a break from typing.

Voice search shows the result just by the individual’s voice command. The feature of voice search was integrated after heavy user research by brands.

Although it was introduced a decade ago, people became familiar with its convenience more recently. Hence, voice search is a fresh addition to the list of UX design best practices. Several e-commerce websites and mobile applications have integrated the feature for consumers to use.

The graph predicts the expected growth of the use of voice assistants across the globe. By 2024, the number of users is projected to rise to 8.4 billion!

5. Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) is a technological revolution. Globally renowned brands like IKEA, Apple, and BMW have integrated VR for a surprisingly seamless experience for their consumers.

This is because the VR market is expected to grow from five billion to 12 billion dollars by 2024. Previously, the IKEA app allowed its users to place their furniture virtually. But with the new update, users can capture the whole room plan and redesign it accordingly.

6. Emotive Interaction

Humans are emotional beings. Injecting emotion into mobile applications is a clever mobile UI design trend. Many brands like Duolingo and MailChimp have been using this trend in their respective applications.

Animations and other visual effects, like the ones you see above, mimic human interactions. Similarly, Duolingo has characters that applaud the user when they complete a task and reward them with points.

7. Concise UX Writing

If users are not able to find what they are looking for, they’ll simply exit the app. So, how can we avoid this? The answer lies in microcopy—the tiny bits of copy on buttons and input fields that guide users through their experience within an app.

Microcopy is a vital aspect of mobile UX design—if the microcopy does not guide the user seamlessly through the application, they will find the experience frustrating. Put simply, instead of decorating the content with fluff, it is always better to deliver the message as concisely and informatively as possible.

Google stated that their engagement rate rose by 17% when the microcopy was revised from “hotel rooms” to “check availability” for better reservation results. Even the smallest copy matters in UI/UX design!

Bonus Tips

Read on for a few extra tips to avoid committing design blunders!

• Avoid aimless revamping

When you do not have a clear goal for injecting something new into the app’s UX design, abort the mission! Your needless update may have the opposite effect you want; you may shock the user instead of delighting them.

• Don’t forget to prototype

Another blunder that you must steer clear of is not performing adequate testing. Multi-stage tests on an app ensure that you are heading in the right direction. Never skip the prototyping stage!

• Keep it simple

It is always better to declutter instead of stuffing unneeded elements into the design. If you think there is something that can be removed from the design without sacrificing functionality, remove it.

That’s All, Folks!

You now know all the latest UI/UX design trends that will prevail in 2022. These modern trends are about creative scrolling, visualizing the data, and offering a seamless experience to users. However, keep in mind the UX design blunders that are mistaken for trends.

All these trends will work for mobile app designers; however, you must figure out the proper requisites for the business and users before implementing the changes. Now, go forth—the world of UI/UX design awaits!

The post Best Practices for Mobile UX Designs appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Research has shown that unmanaged stress leads to various health problems, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, and accelerated aging. So, your focus should be on protecting your physical and mental wellness, especially during trying times.

But even if you’re not going through a difficult time at work right now, keeping your health in check is essential. Studies have shown that IT professionals tend to score lower than average when it comes to their well-being. In fact, a 2015 study surveying 1,000 IT professionals revealed that:

• 56% had musculoskeletal symptoms
• 22% were diagnosed with hypertension
• 10% suffered from diabetes
• 36% had high cholesterol levels
• 54% suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia; and
• 40% were obese.

And, if you look at more recent data about employee well-being, you’ll find that the top three causes of long-term absence in the UK in 2021 included mental health issues (affecting 50% of respondents), musculoskeletal injuries (48%), and stress (48%). Minor illnesses and COVID-19 also contributed to employee absenteeism over the past 12 months, but their impact was felt mostly on a short-term scale.

The good thing is that people (and employers) are beginning to realize the importance of staying healthy. The wellness market is rapidly growing (valued at $4.37 trillion in 2020 with a projected growth of $7 trillion by 2025). Additionally, more than 50% of people are looking to prioritize health-related issues over the course of 2022.

But what, exactly, does it take to maintain (or even improve) your overall health in challenging times?

Well, it could be argued that the best way to go about it is to make gradual changes and address each of the six aspects of your well-being so your body and mind are prepared to deal with the stressors life keeps throwing at you.

This post includes suggestions for how to do just that—optimize your wellness in a way that will help you mitigate the consequences of stress, whether you know you’ve got a challenging period ahead of you at work or just want to be prepared for whenever life decides to throw a curveball your way. Moreover, it provides some helpful tips for assessing your overall wellness, dealing with large amounts of stress (both at work and home), knowing when to push or take it easy, and achieving a work-life balance while working a high-stakes job.

Physical Wellness

The first step toward making positive changes to your overall well-being is getting a clear image of the current state of your health.

Generally, the recommendation is to have a routine checkup once every three years, increasing the frequency to once per year after age 50.

Every time you go in for a checkup, your doctor will run the necessary tests to determine your overall state of health. And more importantly, they will give you recommendations regarding what areas of your physical well-being you need to address (along with prescribing any necessary therapy or medication you may require).

However, if you regularly encounter high-stress situations, your priority should be safeguarding your well-being. And there’s plenty that you can do yourself in case you don’t always have access to quality healthcare or simply prefer to stay on top of the state of your physical wellness.

Practice Self-Assessment

The best way to improve your overall health is to become actively involved in your physical well-being.

• Measure your BMI with freely available online tools.
• Set up your wearables to track your heart rate and alert you of any irregularities.
• Track your blood pressure (with a home blood pressure monitor or at your local pharmacy).

These activities will only take up a few minutes of your time per day. Yet, they’ll give you valuable insights into the state of your well-being, allowing you to take better control of your physical wellness.

Track Health Issues

The second easy thing you can do to get a better idea of your overall physical well-being is to set up a health tracking system. This will give you an in-depth database regarding the state of your physical health and, more importantly, will help draw attention to recurring symptoms, allowing you to track their root cause and seek any necessary medical attention on time.

Notion has a few detailed health and wellness-oriented templates you can use to track your well-being. However, any note-taking app (or the generic health app on your phone) will work equally well for recording daily health metrics.

Be Open to Acknowledging Your Body’s Limitations

Lastly, as you endeavor to invest time and energy into boosting your physical well-being, don’t forget to account for the fact that you’re only human. And that means your body is not perfect.

Yes, most of us will deal with some acute or chronic health issues (especially as we pass the age of 30). Accepting the fact that the third cup of coffee after lunch, a three-hour training session, or that extra glass of wine aren’t doing us any favors is crucial in ensuring that our physical condition is the best it can be.

Fitness

Physical activity is essential for health and well-being. Yet, have you noticed that the moment you start experiencing high amounts of stress, the first thing that seems to go is your fitness regime?

If you have, you can rest assured that it’s not just you. In fact, a literature overview that looked at the results of 168 studies examining the influence of stress on physical activity concluded that “psychological stress predicts less PA (behavioral inhibition) and/or exercise or more sedentary behavior.”

But even though putting exercise on the back burner to allow yourself time to cope with life’s challenges may seem logical, science suggests that it’s the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

Physical activity is an excellent way to de-stress; research suggests that some forms of exercise might actually be the key to properly managing stress.

According to Harvard Health, aerobic exercise reduces adrenaline and cortisol and stimulates the production of endorphins—the hormones making you feel relaxed and optimistic.

So, if you’re dealing with overwhelming situations at home or work, why not put on a good pair of walking shoes and go for a 30-minute stroll around a nearby park during your lunch break or after work? Even a short stroll will get your creative juices flowing.

Plus, a study from 2018 discovered that walking in nature was one of the most effective ways to lower cortisol levels, more helpful than just exercise or viewing nature scenes through a screen. So, if you’re looking for ways to de-stress, perhaps you should put down your phone and choose to go to a nearby park instead. Or, better yet, incorporate walking in natural settings into your weekly routine and reserve the weekend for a fun hiking adventure.

If walking, running, or a HIIT session doesn’t feel appealing while you deal with life’s challenges, you can still reap the benefits of physical activity while taking things a bit slower.

A quick way to slow down during high-stress situations and soothe your anxiety is to do a few minutes of breathing exercises, which you can even do at the office. If you have an Apple Watch, make sure to check out the stock Mindfulness app that was introduced in the 2021 software update. Or, if you don’t use wearables, you could play around with an app like Endel, which uses neuroscientific data to create relaxing and focus-boosting soundscapes.

Finally, understand that physical activity isn’t just about preventing physical health issues or managing stress. It’s a key component in keeping depression and anxiety under control, which is crucial seeing as many programmers are affected by mental health issues. So, knowing that stopping exercise can result in increased depressive symptoms, according to a study from the University of Adelaide, do your best not to neglect your physical fitness, even when things get tough.

If exercise isn’t currently a part of your overall well-being routine, try to incorporate it into your everyday life by starting slowly and adding activities you enjoy.

Nutrition

Most people engage in some sort of unhealthy eating behavior when stressed or overwhelmed. For example, the American Psychological Association has found that almost 40% of adults overeat or eat unhealthy foods to deal with stress, and 30% skip meals due to the same factor.

This, in itself, is worrying enough.

Now, consider the stereotype of the programmer who lives off junk food. It may not always be true, but it’s—at least partially—rooted in real-life experience. So, it becomes evident that developers need to pay particularly close attention to their nutrition. Even more so, considering that their profession strongly encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

And remember, unhealthy eating habits aren’t just a symptom. They can also be the underlying cause of several physical and mental health issues.

For instance, we know that high sugar and fat intake comes with a list of severe consequences to our physical health. And one research article from 2016 discovered that eating a predominantly Western diet could lead to a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and heightened stress response.

So, as you explore ways to take care of your health and well-being during challenging times, don’t forget to pay attention to your nutrition.

• Start by determining exactly how much you need to eat. An online macro calculator can give you a good idea of what nutrients to look for in a healthy and balanced meal without limiting yourself to a specific diet.
• Track your calorie intake with an app such as Lifesum or MyFitnessPal. These will give you a good overview of the types of food you’re eating, stop you from eating too much or too little, and encourage you to take a more proactive approach to stick to a healthier diet.
• Prioritize foods that fight the negative consequences of stress. These include foods rich in Omega 3 fatty acids (nuts, avocados, and fish oils), vegetables rich in vitamins and minerals (like leafy greens), and high-fiber foods. For more information on this, we highly recommend you read The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition by Bonnie J. Kaplan and Julia Rucklidge.
• Limit your intake of stimulants such as caffeine and sugar, as these inhibit your body’s ability to relax. Moreover, when consumed in excess, they can cause you to feel overwhelmed even if you’re only dealing with small amounts of stress.

Appearance

Most people don’t view their physical appearance as an indicator of their overall well-being.

But if you want to holistically improve your physical and emotional health—and your ability to handle high-stress situations—you should consider all the ways you could invest in yourself. Even if that only includes something as “superficial” as how you dress, style your hair, or your skincare routine.

Now, the fact that stressful situations directly affect the way we look isn’t a new concept. For example, we know that long-term stress exposure makes acne worse and speeds up the process of skin aging. Similarly, a study from 2020 found that acute stress causes the depletion of melanocyte stem cells, which results in gray hair. And one research study even found that stress and depression impact people’s choice of clothes.

But what, exactly, does investing in your physical appearance have to do with maintaining your health during challenging times?

Well, one study from 2019 discovered that how people see themselves, i.e., their level of appearance judgment, directly impacts their cortisol response, self-assessed stress levels, and depressive symptoms. In other words, the worse we feel in our skin, the lower our chances are of being able to deal with pressure.

So, if you want to make sure that you’re doing everything in your power to prepare your body and mind to deal with stressful situations, invest in your appearance. Play around with skincare products you like, make salon appointments, or book a spa day every once in a while. As long as it makes you feel better about your appearance, it’s guaranteed to be beneficial in helping you handle life’s challenges.

Sleep

It’s not exactly news that going through trying times has a disruptive effect on sleep quality. Feeling stressed can make it more difficult to fall asleep. Plus, it can cause you to wake up during the night. And, sure, feeling groggy after a poor night’s sleep may not seem like that big of a deal. But because chronic sleep deprivation weakens the metabolism and disrupts endocrine function, it’s safe to say that ensuring you get plenty of rest makes for a super-important aspect of staying healthy during challenging times.

Unfortunately, most IT professionals aren’t that good at prioritizing sleep.

According to data published by Core in 2020, 74% of IT professionals get less than eight hours of sleep per night. And according to the APA, adults who sleep fewer than eight hours a night report higher stress levels than those who pay attention to healthy sleep hygiene. From this information alone, it becomes clear that prioritizing rest could be an effective strategy to help you stay healthy during high-stress life events.

But what does it take to get your sleeping patterns under control when dealing with work-related stress? Well, there are a few easy strategies you could implement to ensure you get higher-quality rest each night.

Blue light emitted from computer and smartphone screens directly affects your circadian rhythm, delaying your body’s natural production of melatonin. But, something as simple as limiting your screen time in the afternoon and at night can give you a chance to wind down and fall asleep more easily.

If you have to work late due to a looming deadline or an emergency, dim your screen. Furthermore, set the color temperature to be warmer, or even wear a pair of blue light blocking glasses to minimize the consequences of working before bed.

Another great thing you can do to improve sleep quality is to ensure your bedroom is a sleep-only zone. Many of us are guilty of bringing our laptops into the bedroom—especially when working from home. This lack of boundaries makes it more difficult for our brains to associate rest time with the bedroom, which is often enough to make it difficult to fall asleep at night.

You could also try to optimize your physical space for maximum sleep performance. Try to sleep on a comfortable bed to prevent body aches. Set your thermostat to somewhere between 60 and 67 degrees. Add a couple of plants to your bedroom to ensure better air quality. And invest in some blackout curtains to limit light and noise pollution at night.

Mindfulness

Finally, as you attempt to maintain your health during stressful times in your life, don’t forget that wellness doesn’t just relate to your physical state. Much more than that, well-being should also incorporate emotional resilience, which is crucial in allowing you to take on professional and personal challenges and get through them without becoming overwhelmed or burning out.

So, whether you’re dealing with tough times or want to prepare yourself for future trials, invest time and effort into building mental strength and developing healthy coping mechanisms for stressful situations.

One of the easiest ways to invest in your mental health is to make time for your hobbies. A recent scientific study examined the connection between long working hours and mental well-being. What’s fascinating about the results is that having hobbies helped workers mitigate the effects of a stressful work environment.

So, it’s clear that taking the time to do what you love like working on puzzles, practicing mindfulness while paddleboarding, or playing video games—represents an excellent strategy for safeguarding your emotional health. However, considering the fact that, as a developer, you probably spend the majority of your work hours sitting in front of a screen, try to choose hobbies that will encourage you to incorporate more movement into your day or spend some additional time in a natural setting.

Another excellent way to invest in your well-being during challenging times is to seek more opportunities to spend time with friends and family. According to Psychology Today, the benefits of having an active social life include longevity, a stronger immune system, lower levels of depression, and improved memory and cognitive skills.

When dealing with high-stress situations, our most common reaction is to push through. But while putting up with some stress may be necessary at times, doing it all the time takes a toll on our overall well-being. This is why it’s so important to know when enough is enough.

For one, do your best to limit how many hours you work. Block out hours in the afternoon to practice your hobbies. Enforce a hard-stop time at the office. And try to commit to viewing your free time as non-negotiable—without sacrificing your commitment to work, of course. Or, if you’re looking for a more advanced approach to work-life balance, take inspiration from Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. 

Secondly, take regular time away from work and, ideally, try to change your physical environment. A well-planned vacation is a great way to de-stress, become energized, and boost your happiness levels. However, to reap the benefits of stepping away from work, do your best to avoid travel stress by learning to find affordable flights, staying at a highly-rated hotel, and planning your visit in advance.

Finally, as you explore strategies that will help boost your emotional well-being, don’t forget that a lot of the pressure you feel comes from your own expectations. So, assess whether you could be more forgiving toward yourself. 

Do your best to prioritize what really matters in life. And consider whether giving yourself the freedom to take things slow most days might just give you the energy you need to push hard when it’s actually necessary.

Take Your Health and Well-Being Into Your Own Hands

At the end of the day, taking care of your physical and emotional wellness is a responsibility. But, it’s also an investment worth making.

Not only will being happy and healthy allow you to feel good in your skin, but it will also ensure that you are productive and satisfied at work. Plus, it will enable you to tackle any challenge without it becoming too much too soon.

The post The Programmer’s Guide to Health & Well-Being in Challenging Times appeared first on Simple Programmer.

According to IDC, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud infrastructure, including dedicated and shared environments, increased 13.5% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2021, to $21.1 billion. For the entire year 2021, cloud infrastructure spending totaled $73.9 billion—an increase of 8.8% over 2020.

IDC also predicts the global “whole cloud” spending to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025.” The likely reason is that enterprises are increasingly using cloud services for new initiatives or to replace their entire existing systems. As a result, spending on traditional IT solutions is being reallocated to the cloud, resulting in a cloud shift due to a growing preference for “cloud-first” solutions.

Nevertheless, organizations are struggling to control their spendings, and public cloud spending sometimes goes out of budget. This makes it more critical than ever to handle cloud cost optimization. 

As the number of cloud services increases, having a team of professional DevOps and following DevOps practices can do wonders, resulting in less cost for software development, deployment, and maintenance.

In this blog post, I’ve compiled a list of some key DevOps practices that can help you to prevent unnecessary expenses and cloud costs.

Key DevOps Practices That Can Reduce Cloud Costs

A 2020 report by Flexera states that cloud cost reduction has become a priority for 73% of businesses. Moreover, the report also mentions that organizations usually exceed their budget by an average of 23%.

Cloud bills are skyrocketing due to multiple reasons, such as over-provisioned resources, unnecessary capacity & poor visibility into the environment.

DevOps and cloud computing play key roles in building standardized and consistent build-test deploy environments. These practices help businesses reduce overall cloud costs by eliminating waste, identifying mismanaged resources, and reserving capacity for higher discounts. This way, they help strike a balance between cloud performance and speed.

With the above in mind, let’s take a closer look at some key practices to help you reduce cloud costs.

Tip #1: Leveraging Third-party Services

Once you analyze the project requirements, you can go with third-party services, if they are affordable for your business. Doing so helps reduce operational overhead and save hefty money. Here’s how your third-party service provider can help you to achieve this.

Several cloud providers, such as Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, offer services that can be leveraged during the development process. For example, Amazon RDS provides a managed database service that offers excellent features, such as:

• Monitoring
• Multi-regional Setup
• Backup
• Scaling
• Reliance

It takes a significantly higher budget and even more time to build such a service from scratch. If the project is already in progress, then the DevOps team will audit infrastructure resources and services being used. After that, if there is still a way of reducing costs, there can be some suggestions regarding adjustments or use of new services.

Pro Tip: When it comes to the cost-benefit analysis, you can start using third-party services to save costs and reduce operational overhead.

Tip #2: Resource Code Optimization

The main objective is to use optimal pricing types of cloud resources, which allows users to get maximum efficiency for a lower cost. Now, the question arises: How can the DevOps team help you achieve this?

From fast delivery time to excellent customer experience and early defect detection, businesses can leverage multiple benefits from hiring a DevOps team. Cloud providers offer various compute and storage resources with different payment options and tiers.

For example, AWS-based services provide compute resources called EC2, allowing users to choose different types of instances. It includes dedicated, on-demand, spot, or reserved ones. Selecting the correct type of instance for a specific case significantly optimizes costs.

• On-demand instances: When using it, you pay per hour. This is perfect for apps with short-term, irregular workloads which cannot be interrupted. It is also suitable for usage while testing and developing apps on EC2.
• Dedicated instances: They run on hardware that is dedicated to a specific customer and they are the most expensive ones. You can choose this option if you deal with sensitive workloads and when security and compliance are crucial.
• Spot instances: They are low-cost options. It is best to use spot instances if the high availability of services is not required. One can use such cases with up to a 90% discount.
• Reserved instances: This option provides a significant discount, up to 72%, compared to on-demand instance pricing. One can invest in reserved cases if there is a need for a capacity reservation.

Furthermore, you can check some cloud cost optimization practices, which are as follows:

• Using discounts and deleting underused instances
• Setting alerts if there is a crossing of predetermined spend thresholds
• Searching if hosting in a different region or availability zone could reduce costs
• Moving infrequently accessed storage to cheaper tiers

Tip #3: Change Software Architecture

You can save big bucks by simply adjusting the architecture and software code, for example, by using PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), runtime, container management, and a serverless pay-per-execution environment rather than a virtual machine.

On the other hand, you can also use containers as they contain microservices that are activated upon request and unloaded from virtual memory when no longer required.

Tip #4: Get a Subscription

Though most cloud services are usage-based, some cloud service providers offer another usage option: a subscription for a specific period. It helps many businesses save money if they are used in the correct manner.

Tip #5: Infrastructure & CI/CD Process Automation

CI/CD automation eliminates the need to manually manage servers, OS, database connections, storage, and other infrastructure elements during development, testing, and deployment phases.

DevOps team can help you to achieve this by undertaking the infrastructure audit and planning to understand the needs, potential risks, and opportunities. The team prepares core infrastructure resources, such as configuration, compute resources, etc.

Once the infrastructure resources are ready, service integration generally starts with a preparation of a pipeline configuration. In most cases, the DevOps team analyzes the requirements and suggests the most suitable approaches to the service delivery—the Docker containers or Amazon Lambda are the most common.

Regarding cost benefits, Infrastructure as a Code enables its users to use template-based solutions and stop spending precious development time manually provisioning IT infrastructure. Moreover, engineers are more focused on the development of additional services and features instead of the way they are delivered and deployed, saving a lot of time and money.

Use These Tips to Reduce Your Costs

In this post, I shared with you some tips from DevOps that can help your organization to spend less and make the most out of its resources. By implementing these cloud reduction tips, you can expand the horizons of cloud computing with reducing cloud cost. 

Keep in mind, however, that potential savings will take a hit if you misuse resources. Therefore, companies need to realize the importance of having a team of DevOps engineers while migrating their infrastructure to the cloud.

To determine the strategy that is right for your needs, consider the size and individual requirements of your business. Outsourcing a team of DevOps engineers is often the best option, ensuring efficient management of your cloud budget.

The post How to Reduce Cloud Costs: Tips from DevOps Engineers appeared first on Simple Programmer.

As a result, cloud computing jobs are among the highest-paid in the Information Technology field. The specialists in cloud support, cloud architecture, and cloud software development bring a lot of value.

The tremendous rise in demand has been creating new cloud roles, which leads to a significant skill gap in the industry. Whether you’re starting out or you want to move on to the next thing, being a cloud computing expert will help you advance your career.

There are a lot of courses that can get you started with a certification. If you’re wondering where to start, the list below can help. We’ll look at what courses specific vendors offer, as well as some general courses, and give you some background on the test to help you make the right decision.

Why Certification Matters

If you are just entering the world of cloud computing, you should start thinking cloud. Certification might be the number one choice to get basic cloud knowledge.

If you consider becoming an IT pro, taking courses is less time-consuming and cost effective than a university education. Remote studying is convenient and up-to-date, and it also gives you a choice of what to learn and when.

Certifications do not guarantee you the job, but they are definitely door openers. Showcasing your cloud certificates on your CV, blog, or LinkedIn profile demonstrates your interest and inclusiveness in the topic. Not to mention, having cloud certificates gives your prospective employer the impression that you have spent time studying and faced examination challenges.

Indeed, employers seek IT pros with specific expert-level skills which can be obtained in the courses, such as:

• Cloud architecture and design
• Cloud concepts
• Cloud solutions
• Security within the cloud
• Automation and virtualization
• The public vs. private cloud
• Big data, Data science

Improving your expertise through certifications not only updates your experience in the cloud but allows you to get better and higher-paid jobs.

How To Choose the Best Cloud Certification in 2022

The choice of certification in cloud computing depends on your level of expertise and the job you are aiming for. Whether you are experienced in other clouds, changing IT specialization, or just starting a career in cloud computing, working in a new cloud environment might be challenging. Consider obtaining vendor-specific cloud certifications to get the necessary skills and understanding of the individual technologies and infrastructures.

Let us look at the most popular certifications, how much they cost, and how long it takes to master them. A quick note: All exam fees are listed in USD and may differ for your country or region where the exam is proctored. Please refer to the official certification provider to check the current pricing in your area.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certifications

Amazon Web Services offer a variety of certifications for foundational and expert level professionals. With 33% of market share and strong presence in the global network, AWS is on top of the list of vendors to consider when choosing your cloud platform, and therefore it generates the most demand in cloud specialists.

AWS certifications are a fast and affordable way to validate your cloud knowledge. High level certifications may be more difficult to obtain and require years of prior experience in cloud technology.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. This entry-level certification will check your understanding of basic AWS architecture, the value proposition of the cloud, and other core principles.
Exam length: 90 minutes
Exam Fee: $100

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate. Take it if you have some experience in designing distributed applications. You need to know how network technologies work in AWS, the design of performant systems, implementation, and deployment in AWS. Above that, the exam includes AWS-related data security and cost optimization practices.
Exam length: 130 minutes
Exam Fee: $150

AWS Certified Developer – Associate. The exam covers basic AWS architecture and the core AWS services. You will apply the working knowledge of applications that utilize AWS services. To pass the exam, you need to know how to write code that uses AWS software to access AWS applications from within your custom business application.
Exam length: 130 minutes
Exam Fee: $150

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate. The exam, specialized for system administrators, requires you to have both technical expertise and knowledge of the operational aspects concepts within the AWS platform. The test format is multiple choice, multiple select, and exam lab (a scenario composed of tasks to perform in the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI).
Exam length: 3 hours
Exam Fee: $150

AWS Certified Solutions Architect-Professional. That is the peak of general AWS expertise. The exam is intended for pros with over two years of hands-on experience designing and deploying cloud architecture on AWS.
Exam length: 3 hours
Exam Fee: $300

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Certifications

Google Cloud remains one of the three top cloud platforms, with 8% market share, rapidly expanding its global presence. There are currently ten certifications to choose from. GCP exams may be more difficult to pass, as some may have higher requirements for the candidates (e.g., developer background).

Associate Cloud Engineer. Google recommends taking the exam for those having over half a year of hands-on experience with Google Cloud. It ensures you have a strong foundation, allowing you to proceed with Professional certifications.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $125

Professional Cloud Architect. You should be proficient in cloud computing and have at least one year of working within the Google Cloud environment. The exam checks your abilities to design a cloud solution architecture and manage its infrastructure. Moreover, you need to be familiar with data security and cost optimization practices.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $200

Professional Data Engineer. According to Google, the data engineer enables data-driven decision-making by collecting, transforming, and publishing data. The exam evaluates your ability to design data processing systems, secure and monitor data processing systems, and operationalize machine learning models in particular.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $200

Professional Cloud Developer. This exam requires cloud developers to be experienced with cloud-native applications and design highly scalable, available, and reliable applications using Google-recommended practices and tools. In addition, the developer should be proficient with at least one general-purpose programming language to complete the exam.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $200

Professional Cloud Network Engineer. The successful examinees can design a Google Cloud network. They also should be able to implement Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) instances and hybrid interconnectivity.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $200

Professional Cloud Security Engineer. The exam assesses the ability to configure access and manage operations within a cloud environment and ensure network security and compliance.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $200

Microsoft Certified Azure Certifications

Microsoft Azure is right there on the leaderboard of the top cloud platforms with 21% market share. There are 12 cloud certifications that you can choose from. Microsoft-certified cloud specialists are in high demand.

Azure Fundamentals. Azure is the world’s second-largest cloud provider. Thus, it should be on your short list of cloud computing certifications for beginners. The exam is designed for those with technical and non-technical backgrounds. The Azure Fundamentals covers the basics of cloud computing and allows proceeding to more advanced Azure certifications.
Exam length: 45 minutes
Exam Fee: $99

Azure Administrator Associate. The candidate is recommended to have 6+ months of hands-on experience administering Azure and be able to implement, manage, and monitor an organization’s Microsoft Azure environment.
Exam length: 3 hours
Exam Fee: $165

Azure Developer Associate. The examinee’s core skills to be tested are: designing, developing, building, testing, deploying, performance tuning, monitoring, and maintaining cloud applications and services on Microsoft Azure. The candidate should have practical knowledge of PowerShell, Azure CLI, Azure portal, and Azure Resource Manager templates.
Exam length: 3 hours
Exam Fee: $165

IBM Cloud Certifications

IBM has its established Center of Cloud Training, where you can choose your learning path and prepare for the examination in one of 12 certifications. IBM regularly updates its exams and training. You can continue learning and retake exams every 1-2 years to keep your proof of knowledge up to date.

IBM Certified Advocate v2. The training for the exam provides essential knowledge to the cloud computing beginner. The certified Advocate can describe the history and nature of cloud computing and distinguish between cloud services and deployment models. The format of the test is multiple choice and multiple select.
Exam length: 90 minutes
Exam Fee: $200

Cisco Certified Network Administrator Cloud

Cisco offers two kinds of certifications, CCNA and CCNP. The exams are somewhat expensive compared to other vendors. However, Cisco provides role-based curricula, meaning the certification is practical, task-oriented, and aligned with in-demand skills of a cloud professional. Cisco certifications prepare you for the SME work environment, and even government jobs.

Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). The training course and exam build the foundation for implementing and administering networking and IT infrastructure. The certification is for associate-level network engineers and designers, cloud engineers, and cloud administrators. CCNA exam covers networking fundamentals, IP services, security fundamentals, automation, and programmability.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: $300

Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Data Center. The professional-level certificate might be the next on your shortlist after the CCNA. It asserts your skills with data center solutions. To earn the CCNP Data Center certification, you choose a core exam or a data center concentration exam, according to your technology area preferences.
Exam length: 2 hours
Exam Fee: Core exam $400, Concentration exam $300

Vendor-Neutral Certifications

Non-vendor-specific or vendor-neutral certifications are a way to validate your cloud knowledge and expertise without regard to the platform. These are foundational certifications for building your expertise in cloud technology.

However, there is generally a poor variety of certifications offered and they are comparably more expensive than vendor-specific certifications. You may want to opt for vendor-neutral certifications if it’s the best option for your specific field of work, e.g., cloud security.

Cloud Security Alliance: Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK). The CCSK certificate is a standard of expertise for cloud security. It is the necessary foundation for building your expertise in vendor-specific cloud services.
Exam length: 90 minutes
Exam Fee: $395

CompTIA Cloud+. As the non-profit association states, this “is the only performance-based IT certification that views cloud-based infrastructure services in the context of broader IT systems operations regardless of the platform.” Cloud+ is an entry-level exam. Still, the examinee is assumed to have hands-on experience with computers, networks, and cyber security.
Exam length: 90 minutes
Exam Fee: $348

CompTIA Cloud Essentials +. This certification utilizes business principles and fundamental cloud concepts required for IT and non-technical professionals.
Exam length: 1 hour
Exam Fee: $130

Cloud Certified Professional (Arcitura Education). The exams assess cloud computing concepts, models and business considerations, proficiency in fundamental technology, and security-related areas of cloud computing. You can choose workshops and exams relevant to your cloud computing job or career demands. Duration and pricing vary. For example, Cloud Technology Professional Combined Certification Exam lasts 90 minutes and costs $199.

Cloud Institute provides vendor-neutral and leading Cloud Computing online Certification programs. You can start with the Cloud Open Exam to test your cloud computing knowledge and prepare yourself for future assessments for free. If you want to test your knowledge in designing and implementing Cloud Computing services, proceed to Certified Cloud Architect certification.
Exam length: 1 hour
Exam Fee: $95

Which Cloud Certification Is for You?

Cloud certification can help you stand out and make yourself more competitive in the job market. It is proof of your knowledge and skill.

Whether you start a new career in cloud computing or expand the scope of your profession, choose the certification wisely. To narrow your choice, research which cloud platforms are more widely used in your target geographical region and industry. Know what certifications are relevant to your line of work and make sure to keep them up to date.

The post Best Cloud Certifications to Get Your Path into Cloud Development appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Angular is quite vast and difficult to navigate. Consequently, interview questions based on the Angular framework can be tough, as it is laborious to get familiarized with each part of it.

In this post, I will guide you through both basic and advanced Angular interview questions that you can expect if you have applied for a post as an Angular developer. So without any further delay, let’s proceed!

Top 15 Angular Interview Questions and Answers

Q-1. What Is Angular?

Angular is an open-source and free JavaScript framework created by Google in 2016. It allows you to build modern web and mobile applications by implementing various web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The primary programming language used by Angular is TypeScript. Basically, it is an open-source front-end framework suitable for creating enterprise Angular applications, as it allows developers to reuse its code and is easily maintainable.

Q-2. What Are the Various Types of Technologies Used in Angular?

Angular is a free and open-source JavaScript framework that is highly preferred by web developers. The popularity comes from the use of several technologies to perform specific tasks easily. Angular allows for a great experience while building applications. It uses TypeScript, which is known as a superscript of JavaScript.

Q-3. What Are the Advantages of Angular?

The advantages of the Angular framework are:

• Follows MVC architecture. MVC stands for Model-View-Controller, which is known as one of the best advantages of Angular. The Model is responsible for managing all the application data and the View manages the data display. The Model is said to be the lowest level of the pattern for maintaining data, while the Controller is a bridge between the View and Model layers.

• Dependency injection. The dependency injection of Angular makes the process of application development easy for web developers. It is used to fulfill these dependencies and allows you to divide the task among different services. This is the main reason why developers prefer working with Angular development.

• Two-way data binding. One of the leading advantages of Angular is its two-way data binding technique, which helps you to reduce the development time. The View layer represents the Model layer and remains in ideal synchronization. This way, users can see the changes in the View automatically when you modify anything in the Model.

• Allows you to add custom directives. We can use directives in Angular to change DOM element behavior for which we need to use the directive name as an attribute to the DOM element.

• Support RESTful services. The RESTful functionality in Angular is used to create APIs for a web-based application. It is provided in the ngResource module where it’s separately distributed from the core AngularJS framework. These RESTful services are highly-scalable and maintainable.

• Trivial code generation. Trivial code generation in Angular is a process of using specific tools to create metadata and get usable code output. This process allows you to reap all the benefits of handwritten code.

• Validations are supported. Angular runs validation, generates a list of validation errors, and displays the results. Through this, you can improve the data quality by validating user input from the UI.

• Support static and angular templates. Angular allows you to use TypeScript and editor tools so that you can statically analyze the components. Further, editors provide autocompletion feedback and detect which type of template is being used.

• Build CLI commands visually. We can use the Angular CLI command line interface tool to initialize, develop, and maintain the angular apps directly from the command shell.

• Offers excellent features like animation, event handlers, and much more. Angular can create high-performance, complex choreographies and animation timelines without much effort, and generate intuitive API with minimal coding. It also configures an event handler for the target event where it executes the template statement and performs an action in response to the event.

Q-4. What Are the Main Features of Angular?

The top features of Angular are:

• Cross-platform app development. Angular allows you to build excellent desktop-installed applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux using the modern web platform and deliver app-like experiences. You can also build mobile applications with strategies from NativeScript, Cordova, and Ionic.

• Code splitting. In Angular, code splitting is achieved by producing lazy-loaded modules, which deliver automatic code-splitting so that users can load the required code and render the view they request. To ensure that a module is lazy-loaded and divided into its own JavaScript chunk, don’t forget to create a lazy-loaded route.

• Animation support. Angular animations are built in a way that allows you to create high-performance and complex choreographies with little code, using the Angular intuitive API. The feature of Angular animation is built using the standard web animations API and runs on native browsers that support it.

• Angular CLI. Angular CLI is a unique tool that allows developers to build, maintain, and initialize Angular applications from a command shell. Without Angular CLI, you need to invest a lot of effort while setting up an Angular app from the beginning. Not only this, but you also have to add a package definition file, such as package.JSON, and some other configuration files.

• Declarative UI. The Angular framework uses the HTML language to define the application UI—when compared to JavaScript, this is a less complex option. As a declarative platform, you don’t have to spend your time maintaining program flows and deciding what loads first and what does not.

• Accessibility applications. Accessibility applications in Angular is a way of designing an app so that it can be accessible by those with a disability. Angular has the ability to build an app with good accessibility. It also uses attribute binding for ARIA attributes.

• CDK and Angular Material. The CDK is a standalone package that implements common interaction patterns and builds awesome components for the web. It is used for projects that need to reap the advantages of Angular Material without adopting the Material Design visual language, and represent an abstraction of the core functionalities without styling specific to Material Design.

• Differential loading. Differential loading in Angular development means sending fresh code to newer browsers and stable legacy code to legacy browsers, which helps you to translate two things: modern syntax and polyfills.

• High speed and optimum performance. The lazy-loading feature that comes with Angular development helps to boost the application’s performance and allows modules to be loaded only when they are required, so that files are not loaded repeatedly.

Q-5. What Are the Important Fundamentals of Angular?

Angular has numerous features that make it one of the most popular and useful frameworks compared to other front-end frameworks. These features of Angular are:

• Component. The Angular components are known as the basic UI building blocks that belong to a NgModule and make themselves available for other components. An application developed using the component capabilities contains a tree of Angular components associated with a template.

• Angular elements. Angular elements are Angular components known as web components, which is a web standard for identifying new elements based on HTML in a framework-agnostic way.

• Directives. Angular directives are classes that add more behavior to elements when it comes to Angular applications. Using the built-in directives of Angular, you can manage forms, lists, styles, and everything else that users see.

• Native mobile development. Angular also supports native mobile development and allows you to build amazing native applications by implementing strategies from Cordova, Ionic, or NativeScript.

• Module. The angular module defines an application and has its own modularity system known as NgModules. Basically, it is a container for the application controllers that belong to a module.

• Dependency injection. Angular dependencies are objects that a class requires to perform its function in the application. And dependency injection can be referred to as a design pattern where the class requests dependencies from external sources instead of creating them. This boosts the flexibility and modularity of your applications.

• Templates. In simple words, a template is an HTML form that tells Angular how to render a component and defines its host view. It allows you to modify and hide entire UI sections as a unit.

• Navigation or routing. Angular Router allows you to navigate from one view to the next when the user performs application tasks.

• Data bindings. The system of data binding in Angular allows your application’s components to share data with other components and update values between the child and parent components.

• Application bootstrapping. Bootstrapping in Angular is a process of loading the index.html page, app-level module, and app-level component.

• Services. Angular services are objects that are instantiated once during the lifetime of an application and increase the modularity and reusability to make your component lean and efficient. It is a broad category having a value, function, or feature that an app requires.

Q-6. What Is Data Binding in Angular?

Data binding is one of the most effective features of Angular development; it assembles a connection between application UI and displays the information.

The defining process of interactive software products is made simple because you’re not required to worry about data pulling or pushing between the template and component. If the binding delivers proper notifications and is configured in the right way, the data value is modified and the elements that are bound to the data are affected automatically.

Two-way data binding, string interpolation, property binding, and event binding are the types of data binding that come with Angular development.

Q-7. What Is DOM?

DOM stands for Document Object Model and is liable for illustrating the web page content and modifications done in the application’s architecture. All the objects included in it are managed in the form of a tree so that they can be easily accessed, modified, and manipulated using the APIs. You can use Angular directives to bind the application data to the attributes of HTML DOM elements.

Q-8. What Is the Difference Between Angular and AngularJS?

To better see the differences between Angular and AngularJS, I have included a comparative chart:

Q-9. Explain the MVVM Architecture

The MVVM architecture plays an important role in avoiding tight coupling amongst the components. There are three main parts included in this architecture:

• Model. The Model consists of an entity structure that has business logic, including repository, model classes, and local and remote data sources. In short, it represents the business logic and data of a specific application.
• View. The View is the app’s visual layer that includes the UI code. It sends the users’ actions to the ViewModel.
• ViewModel. The ViewModel abstract layer is the bridge between the View and the Model. Both are linked via data binding and make all the necessary changes to the Model.

Q-10. What Are Directives in Angular?

Directives are attributes that allow users to write new HTML syntax based on their applications. Its syntax is executed when the Angular compiler confronts them in the DOM. Angular majorly supports structural directives, attribute directives, and component directives.

Q-11. What Is Angular CLI?

The angular command-line interface (CLI) tool allows you to build, maintain, and initialize Angular applications from a command shell. Angular supports CLI tools to allow developers to add components, perform testing, and many other such operations, helping to make the Angular development workflow much easier and faster. Angular CLI also helps save time required to install essential dependencies.

Q-12. Explain Dependency Injection

In Angular, dependency injection is a software design convention in which a class requests dependencies from external sources without creating them. It allows Angular to improve the flexibility and modularity of the application, as it uses design patterns to fulfill these dependencies and divides tasks among different services.

We can say that dependency injection is integrated into the Angular framework so that the clients are not required to create dependent objects—rather, they will be created by the injector.

The Angular injector is responsible for building new components, solving dependencies, and providing them to other components who need it. Fundamentally, it is a service having a functionality that is required by various directives and components in an application.

Q-13. Explain Angular Authentication and Authorization

Forevery system concerning security, authentication and authorization are very important processes in the system. This is no different with Angular.

The user credentials are given to an authenticated API that is available on the server.  Authentication allows the user to access some resources in the system. When your application authenticates the user and receives a token from Auth0 for access, only then is the user allowed to access the token to your API as a credential.

Q-14. What Are HTTP Interceptors?

Interceptor is a trendy term for a function that accepts requests before processing them to the server. If you want to pre-process multiple types of requests in the same way, then you can make use of interceptors. For instance, you need to set the authorization header token for each request that is received by the system as shown below:

Q-15. What Is Server-Side Rendering in Angular?

Sometimes, if you have a large application with rich features and a huge bundle size, the loading speed of the page is automatically lessened as it has to download all the files and then execute them.

To overcome this issue, you can use server-side rendering to send a fully rendered page and then let the JavaScript code take over any ensuing interactions from the user. In short, the browser executes an Angular application and JavaScript endures all the interactions held among the users.

Knowledge Makes Things Simpler

As I mentioned in the introduction, Angular is quite vast and difficult to navigate. This makes interview questions appear complex and daunting. However, as they say, knowledge is power. Knowledge makes things simpler.

The guide I offered you should help you to crack your Angular interview and turn your programming into your profession. The topics I covered here are all part of preparing for an interview and are the most frequently asked questions by recruiters while hiring Angular developers.

Apart from this question bank, you’ll find numerous other Angular interview questions, but don’t forget to also go through the soft skills required for developers if you really want to crack the interview in the first go.

Have a question stuck in your mind? Feel free to ask me in the comment section below, and I will get back to you soon.

The post Top 15 Angular Interview Questions and Answers appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Project management is tedious, especially when you lack a project management workflow to set into action. Workflows not only allow you to better visualize the flow of different project elements but also to track the progress and report it efficiently.

However, setting a project management workflow comes as a challenge for most project managers. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back! Take a look at our project management workflow strategy guide and see how you can save time and money by understanding this concept and applying it to your projects.

Project Management

Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve specific goals within a specified time frame. It includes the identification, prioritization, and allocation of resources and tasks, as well as their execution and control.

In a nutshell, project management aims to produce a finished product or service that meets the client’s requirements and is delivered within the agreed-upon time frame.

Workflow in Terms of Project Management

A workflow is a set of activities necessary to complete a task or process. In project management, a workflow is the sequence of steps a team takes to complete a task or deliverable.

There are many different ways to create a workflow, but the most important thing is to ensure the workflow is clear and concise. Each step in the workflow should be clearly defined, and the team should clearly understand what needs to be done at each stage.

Creating an effective workflow is essential to the success of any project. By creating a workflow that makes sense for the team and task at hand, project managers can ensure that the project is completed efficiently and effectively.

Differences Between Workflow and Project Management

More often than not, project managers confuse workflow with other things. To get things started in the right order, first you need to understand a few critical differences between workflow and project management:

• Workflow is more concerned with the individual steps involved in completing a task or series of tasks, while project management is more concerned with the overall completion.
• Workflow is typically more linear, while project management can involve multiple concurrent tasks.
• Workflow is also usually less formal than project management and can be adapted more quickly to changing circumstances.

Similarities Between Workflow and Project Management

Similarities in workflow and project management help you find the points where you can synergize both entities for optimal results. Workflow and project management share many similarities that you can use to your benefit:

• Both are concerned with the efficient execution of a series of tasks. 
• Both seek to optimize the use of resources and minimize waste.
• And both seek to improve communication and collaboration among team members.

By understanding these similarities, organizations can more effectively utilize both to improve their operations.

Project Management Workflow

The project management workflow is the process by which a project manager oversees and coordinates the various tasks and activities involved in completing a project.

Project management workflow includes developing a project plan and schedule, assigning tasks and resources, monitoring progress, and ensuring that the project is completed on time and within budget. A well-managed project is typically characterized by clear goals and objectives, efficient communication and coordination among team members, and a high level of organization.

An effective project management workflow is essential for ensuring that a project runs smoothly and is completed successfully. By following a clear and concise workflow, a project manager can keep track of all the different elements of a project and ensure that everything is progressing as it should.

Importance of Project Management Workflow

There are many reasons why project management workflow is essential. Perhaps the most important reason is that it helps ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. 

A well-managed workflow also helps to improve communication and coordination between team members, which can result in a more effective team. Additionally, project management workflow can help identify and track project risks, which can help avoid potential problems down the road.

Project management workflow helps you break down and visualize the various tasks involved in project completion. It helps you meet bigger goals little by little. You can not only track your employee performance, but also reward the employees who have shown exceptional output. Moreover, workflow helps you save time, money, and effort. You can reuse the workflow by adding little tweaks depending on the nature of other projects that you take on. Boost your project performance, enhance employee satisfaction, ensure everything is in order for your stakeholders, and beat the competition with an organized project management workflow.

Step-by-Step Guide: Create an Efficient Workflow for Project Management

There are a few key steps to creating an efficient workflow for project management:

• First, you need to identify the tasks that need to be completed and break them down into smaller, more manageable steps.
• Next, you need to assign these tasks to specific team members and set deadlines for completing them.
• Finally, you need to track the project’s progress and ensure everyone is on track.

By following these steps, you can ensure that your project is completed efficiently and on time.

Methods to Create an Efficient Workflow for Project Management

There are a variety of methods that can be used to create an efficient workflow for project management:

• One method is to use a project management software tool to help track and manage the project. This can be beneficial as it can help keep all project information in one place and make it easier to track progress and deadlines.
• Another method is to create a project plan and schedule. This can help ensure that all tasks are completed on time and that the project stays on track.
• Finally, it is important to communicate regularly with all project stakeholders to ensure everyone knows the project status and tasks.

Using these methods makes it possible to create an efficient workflow for project management.

Best Practices for Using Project Management Workflow Systems Effectively

Here are a few key things to remember when using project management workflow systems effectively:

• First, it is important to have a clear and concise project plan. This will help ensure that everyone involved in the project understands the goals and objectives.
• Second, it is important to use the strategy to its full potential. This means utilizing all of the features and functions that the system has to offer.
• Last, it is important to be flexible and adaptable when using it. Things will inevitably change throughout the course of a project, so it is important to be able to adjust the system accordingly.

By following these best practices, you will be well on your way to using project management workflow systems effectively.

Signs of an Inefficient Project Management Workflow

Have you ever come across a poorly performing project manager? Poor project management is usually because of disorganized workflow. A few key signs can indicate an inefficient project management workflow:

• One sign is if projects regularly go over the allotted budget or timeline. This can be a sign that the project manager is not accurately estimating the scope of work or that there is too much wasted effort during the execution of the project. Extended time means less time for new projects and potentially dissatisfied clients, which leads to the likelihood of less revenue.
• Another sign is if there is a high turnover of project managers on a single project. This can indicate that the project is not well organized or that the project manager is not a good fit for the team.
• Lastly, if a project is constantly being put on hold or delayed, this can be a sign that the project manager is not prioritizing the work properly or that there are too many competing demands for the team’s time and resources.

Advantages of Project Management Workflow in the IT Industry

There are many advantages to using a project management workflow in any IT industry:

• Perhaps the most obvious benefit is that it can help increase efficiency and productivity by ensuring that all tasks are properly organized, and that team members know their roles and responsibilities. This is so important because project management is all about juggling limited resources in the most efficient manner to bring fruitful results on time.
• In addition, a project management workflow can help improve correspondence and collaboration among team members. Misunderstandings and potential conflict between team members can be avoided by keeping everyone on the same page and ensuring that everyone is aware of the latest updates. This is important because a harmonious team is a productive team.
• Another benefit of using a project management workflow is that it can help improve the final product’s quality. By ensuring that all tasks are correctly planned and executed, and that team members can give their input and feedback at each stage of the project, the chances of errors and problems can be significantly reduced. This is important because client satisfaction can bring you more business and help build authority among competition.

Overall, the advantages of using a project management workflow in the IT industry are numerous. Project management workflow can be valuable for any IT team.

Benefits of Using a Project Management Software for Project Management Workflow

Using project management software to manage your projects has many benefits:

• It enables you to keep track of all the different aspects of your projects in one place. This can be a great help when it comes to ensuring that nothing is forgotten or overlooked.
• The software can also help automate some of the tasks involved in project management. This can free up your time to focus on more critical tasks.
• Additionally, it can help ensure that tasks are carried out more efficiently and accurately.
• Finally, project management software can help improve your team’s correspondence and coordination. This is because all team members will have access to the same information and tools. This can make it easier to coordinate efforts and avoid misunderstandings.

Project Charter

A project charter template can be used to track progress and ensure that the project remains on schedule with a document that outlines the scope and objectives of a project. It is typically used to define the roles and responsibilities of project team members and to set expectations for what will be delivered. This can be particularly useful when you are about to sign the project with your client.

With a charter template, you can allocate responsibilities to team members and collaborate with them in real time. You can visualize the scope and other factors of the project with its useful tools—collaborate on an infinite canvas, import data from multiple sources, comment on specific aspects, and view the full version history.

Are You Ready to Set Up Your Project Management Workflow?

Project management workflow is essential for any project manager, by helping to plan, execute, and track the progress of their project. Using a project management workflow strategy, project managers can ensure that all stakeholders are kept informed of the project’s progress and that the project is completed on time and within budget. A project management workflow not only saves you time and resources but also helps you ensure internal and external stakeholder satisfaction. This helps you in attracting more business and managing everything effectively.

The post Your Complete Guide to Project Management Workflow appeared first on Simple Programmer.

With the increasing demand for chatbots, the same goes for you if you are a chatbot developer. As a result, you have little to lose and a lot to gain by leveraging chatbots in your skill set.

For companies that lack the technical know-how, and have a tighter budget in terms of chatbot pricing, the no-code bot builders that are easily available are likely the best option. Others who want a more custom solution will tend to lean toward chatbot development from scratch.

Let’s look further into what is involved in the process of creating a chatbot.

What Goes Into Creating a Chatbot?

Creating a chatbot that delivers positive results for a business—any business—is no small feat.

The creation of even the most basic chatbot will require a deep understanding of how human conversations work (of course!) and some insane programming skills. We will delve deeper into the skills required to be a chatbot developer momentarily.

For now, understand that the process of developing a chatbot from scratch is not going to be an easy one. It takes weeks, if not more, to strategize, design, and create a chatbot that hits the mark. And to do so within a predefined budget and timeframe to boot!

But worry not, if you have the right skill set for the job, the entire process will not only be rewarding but maybe even fun. That said, let us understand the most essential skills that every chatbot developer should have.

Top Skills for a Chatbot Developer

Chatbots have evolved over the years and have innovated conversations between customers and companies significantly. The skills required by chatbot developers are not all that different from those required by programmers.

A study by AIMultiple suggests that 65% of chatbot companies and customers believe talent shortage to be the primary challenge in the chatbot industry. Meaning, there are a lot of untapped opportunities for chatbot developers currently.

Now, without further ado, let us dive deeper into the skills you need to possess.

Expertise in Chatbot Frameworks

The first and foremost quality that every chatbot developer should have is expertise in chatbot frameworks. When you are into chatbot development, you will inevitably build chatbots from scratch. To do so, you need to be proficient in frameworks such as IBM Watson, APi.ai, Microsoft Azure Bot Service, and more.

While many businesses today turn to chatbot platforms for creating chatbots, you are going to need a working knowledge of these frameworks when you are developing custom chatbots. You should also have the ability to compare and choose the right framework for a specific chatbot.

Additionally, it is highly recommended that you get enough practice on open-source chatbot frameworks such as Wit.ai and Rasa, since practice is the only way to improve your skills.  Remember, if you are applying to small companies, you will need to choose a paid chatbot framework, as opposed to the open source ones. The latter requires you to have expertise in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) domain as well.

Proficiency in Programming Languages

This one is a no-brainer for experienced developers.

Along with the chatbot frameworks, developers should be proficient in working with several programming languages. If you have worked with chatbot frameworks to a large extent, chances are that you already have this part covered.

After all, these frameworks are based on specific programming languages. The common ones that you should add (or refresh) to your repertoire are Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby. Having these skills up your sleeve will help you customize your chatbot in ways that are best suited for your business.

So if you lack knowledge of these programming languages, or are out of practice, it’s time to start brushing up. Don’t hesitate to start learning some programming languages with the help of online courses and tutorials.

Knowledge of Emerging Technologies

Take a moment to remember what chatbots were like 10 years ago compared to now. The chatbots that you come across today definitely do not look like the basic chat boxes that we used to interact with just a few years ago, do they?

Chatbots today have evolved to incorporate some pretty awesome features.

Considering the transformative nature of chatbots, developers need to be up to date with the latest technologies and developments. To make an effective chatbot that can anticipate the possible conversational flow and seamlessly answer queries, you are going to need a deep knowledge of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and NLP.

Without the AI and NLP technologies, your chatbot won’t be able to tell the difference between a greeting and a customer query.

Apart from these technologies, Machine Learning also plays a pivotal role in defining the conversational flow and design of chatbots. If you do not have knowledge of these technologies and you are seeking out a chatbot development role, taking relevant courses (tagged above) might be a good idea before proceeding further.

Communication Skills

If you ask any major company about the skills they would like their chatbot developers to have, communication is probably going to be top of the list.

Why?

Well, what are chatbots if not another communication channel between companies and customers?

If the people developing the chatbots do not have the basic know-how of writing a human conversation, how will they design a chatbot that can replicate one?

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying you should delve deep into conversations like a conversation designer would, but you still need a basic understanding of how natural language should flow when you are working in chatbot development.

Experience Integrating Chatbots on Different Platforms

If you want to build chatbots for a living, you will inevitably need to have some experience in working with omnichannel chatbots. Simply knowing how to add a chatbot to a website just won’t cut it anymore.

In this day and age, businesses want to maintain consistent customer service quality across platforms. Be it WhatsApp, Facebook, or Skype, a chatbot developer should know how to integrate the chatbot.

After all, more than 55% of consumers prefer to get in touch with businesses through messaging apps.

Ability to Collaborate With Multiple Teams

Based on what you already know about chatbots, do you think all the elements are created simply by a chatbot developer?

The answer is a resounding no.

Many resources are utilized in the process of building a chatbot. The effectiveness of your chatbot, for instance, will heavily depend on its responses to customer queries, so you will need to develop good dialogues written by an adept conversation designer.

While as a chatbot builder, you will need to understand the basic conversational flow,  conversation designers will help you create more complex and advanced flows.

What’s more, you will need additional resources that focus on the analytics and deployment of the chatbot.

With all these aspects in mind, it is obvious that chatbot developers need to have the ability to collaborate with multiple types of resources. All the teams involved must be on the same page and communicate effectively to develop exceptional chatbots.

Could You Become a Chatbot Developer?

Being an excellent chatbot developer requires you to level up your knowledge of frameworks, programming languages, and communication skills. Along with these skills, having experience in creating and implementing cross-platform chatbots will only strengthen your profile.

And that’s it! If you are confident that you possess these skills and qualities, then you are well on your way to becoming a stellar chatbot developer. Even if you feel that you lack some of the qualities that we have mentioned here, it is never too late to hone these skills and improve your chances. After all, the demand for chatbot developers is only going to grow in the foreseeable future.

The post Must-Have Skills for Every Chatbot Developer appeared first on Simple Programmer.

The increasing pace of technological advancements has brought numerous expense tracking apps to the market. Forbes unrolled a list of the top money management apps for 2022 in the USA. Most of these apps have the ideal framework, features, and subscription plans to inspire Americans to make good use of them for managing their cash flow.

Expense tracking apps are perfect for people who need help managing their personal finances, especially since apps automate the process. (No rocket science required!)

If you are thinking of developing an expense management app, I’ve got you covered. Ahead, you’ll read about some top reasons for developing an expense tracking app along with some vital features.

Not to mention, you’ll gain insight into the overall expenditure for creating expense tracking app development software.

Why Expense Tracking Apps Are Required

You might be thinking, “There are so many expense tracking apps on the market that track real-time cash flow. How can my expense tracker compete?”

And I’m here to tell you, “That’s true!” But I’ve also come fully armed with some concrete suggestions for you.

There are numerous money management apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Most of them have thousands of downloads and ratings of three stars and above.

So, how will your app lock horns with its potential competitors?

This is a question that many app developers encounter. It is not easy to overpower competitor apps instantly. A good place to start is with something ‘extra’, like features that surpass the standards that have been already set. Breaking this barrier may reduce the competition.

But, application features are not the limit. Other factors like performance and stability also play key roles in determining the success of the expense tracking app.

Let’s consider the example of calculating expenses. Tracking the inflow and outflow of finances becomes simplified when done digitally. Manual calculations were curbed when expense trackers were introduced in the market.

The user can now synchronize data, add and delete as they please, and, above all, keep everything secure. Decorated with different features, the popularity of expense management apps in business has risen tremendously.

Prime Features To Include in an Expense Tracking App

Bankrate reports that 63% of Americans use at least one expense tracker for managing their budget. Users crave expense tracking apps with features that allow business and personal finance management to run smoothly.

People seek a budgeting app that offers free registration and includes all the essential features that summarize expenses.

Before proceeding to the list of the features that should be integrated in your expense tracking app, let’s look at some standard features that all money management apps include. Users need to be able to:

• Add new records quickly with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface
• See their spending distribution on an easy-to-read chart or get detailed information from the records list
• Safely synchronize using their own Google Drive or Dropbox account
• Access their spending tracker easily with handy widgets
• Backup and export personal finance data in one click
• Save money with a budget tracker
• Use multiple accounts

Apart from the common features above, there should be some unique features too. These key features will help your app stand out from its competitors in the market.

Existing fintech apps can give you some ideas. You may want to integrate a new feature that could be missing in the fintech apps that are currently active in the market.

Let’s take a look at some prominent features of a money management application.

Data Security

Expense tracking apps should always safeguard the data of their users. Since such an app usually contains details and information related to the user’s bank accounts and debit/credit cards, they are often targeted by hackers.

Thus, the security of a fintech app should never be compromised. Developers should integrate a multi-tiered authentication process, data encryption, firewalls, and smart cloud computing solutions to mitigate the risk.

When the risk factor is reduced, the user feels safe while using the app knowing that all their information will remain confidential.

Report Generation

Report generation is one of the key features of a money management app. Budgeting apps help to keep expense-related data organized with balance sheets, profit and loss statements, etc.

Also, the data remains safe on cloud storage. Be it bill invoices or payment receipts, individuals can retrieve them as required.

Credit Score Tracking

Another significant feature of an expense tracking app is tracking credit score. When a credit card is linked with the expense tracker app, it syncs the account information and provides the credit score of the user.

The expense tracking app provides weekly/monthly credit reports along with suggestions to improve the credit score. When users have a good or excellent credit score, they get rewarded when bills are cleared on time.

Monitoring the Budget

Wouldn’t it be amazing if your expense tracking app could tell you when you’re overspending? Money management apps with a budget tracking feature can help in gaining insights into income and expenses.

If the expense of an individual is exceeding the real-time set limit, the app will notify the user and suggest the expenses that could be reduced.

Biometric Recognition

Passwords and PINs used to be the common methods for unlocking an app, but with the technological upgrade, biometric recognition became popular. It is a method where an expense tracking app can be accessed using just a fingerprint.

Many expense tracking app developers are integrating the biometric feature in mobile applications. It is solely being done to enhance the security of the user’s data.

AI Integration

By integrating artificial intelligence (AI), future expense timelines can be predicted. Judging the expense behavior, a report on expense fluctuation, savings, and more can be generated, which can be fruitful for users with different expense behaviors.

Streamlining Tax Deduction

Budgeting apps are evolving as new features are being introduced. Since users need to file taxes, they need to maintain a surplus sheet. Expense trackers with a tax category feature can categorize the expenditure into a relevant tax category automatically.

The Cost of Building an Expense Tracking App

Developing an app that provides expense reporting and is pre-loaded with the various features discussed above demands both effort and time.

Since an expense tracker is built using different features, it becomes vital to consider different factors:

• App Features: Integrating new features or upgrading existing features
• Platforms: Is the expense tracker developed for a single platform or cross-platform (iOS/Android)?
• Third-party Integrations: The number of third-party APIs integrated for supporting the service
• Testing Stage: The number of phases of testing the app will go through
• Maintenance & Support: The annual maintenance and support charges for the app

Popular Expense Tracking Apps in 2022

Not every personal finance management app is suitable for everyone. Users have different requirements related to savings, expenses, and investment. To simplify the process of choosing the right app, we have compiled a list of some popular expense reporting and real-time money management apps.

Developers can assess these apps—right from the wireframe to the functionalities and loopholes—and create an even better version.

Mint

Mint is an expense management app created by Intuit. The app is equipped with budgeting tools and a credit monitoring service that can be used by investors, self-employed, and salaried individuals alike.

Mint can be linked with different banks and credit card providers if users have an account with a small financial institution. It has more than 10 million users worldwide.

Honeydue

Honeydue is a financial management app for couples. This expense tracker was acquired by Mission Lane and helps a couple to plan their budget as required. The couple is required to sync their bank accounts and credit card details for financial planning. As of May 2022, Honeydue has over one million global users.

Simplifi

Simplifi, by Quicken, is an expense tracking app. It makes the list owing to its budget cash flow tracking tools. It offers a personalized expense plan with real-time updates. Users can get the expenditure plan by adding their bank accounts within the app. Simplifi has over one million users globally.

Pocket Guard

If you’re a spendthrift and wish to cut unnecessary expenses, the Pocket Guard app is perfect for you! This app has an algorithm that tracks daily income and expenses. The app works when the user connects their bank account and credit card details.

The app generates a monthly report along with savings goals that help cut unwanted expenses. Pocket Guard has 10 million users as of May 2022.

The Bottom Line

Personal finance management app development is not rocket science. You just need the right tech stack and a list of features that will help the app stand out from the competition.

To compete with similar apps, expense tracking app developers are now focusing on the features discussed above. Those particular features are now seen in a handful of fintech apps and will soon become increasingly popular in the fintech world.

The post The Not-a-Noob Guide for Expense Tracking App Development appeared first on Simple Programmer.

That is why developers with an excellent mastery of time management are the most valuable in any industry.

Using time in an efficient way improves your work quality and requires self-discipline and competence.

You’ll face all kinds of challenges if you don’t organize your time properly.

For example, you’ll have to rush coding sessions if you spend too much time on unnecessary activities. In addition, poor time management also leads to overwork, burnout, and costly mistakes.

To help you avoid these challenges, I’ve compiled a list of proven techniques for establishing an optimal coding routine. They will ensure you feel balanced and content whether you’re building a simple website or a complex software program.

1.  Manage Your Time

There are a variety of time management techniques that use specific principles and formats to help you structure your day. We will go over a few of the most popular ones. Remember, you don’t have to choose just one technique and stick with it. Think of them as tools that you can combine and adapt to your needs. We suggest choosing a few techniques that appeal to you and testing them out to see how they work for you, then making your decision.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The first step to making a good to-do list is to prioritize. The Eisenhower matrix, also called the priority matrix, is a decision-making technique that helps you prioritize your tasks by dividing them into four categories:

Important and urgent: These are time-sensitive tasks that attract severe consequences if not executed before the deadline. For example, critical bug fixes in soon-to-be deployed programs.

Important and not urgent: Tasks without critical deadlines but crucial to your overall project. This category may include tasks for goals that you set for yourself such as learning a new programming language.

Not important and urgent: Time-sensitive tasks that you can delegate to others. These include essential client emails and progress report requests from your colleagues or supervisors.

Not important and not urgent: Tasks and activities that disrupt your workflow and don’t contribute to your project. These include unnecessary meetings and spam emails.

The Pomodoro Technique

Minor distractions can derail your entire workday and leave you achieving close to nothing.

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, found that you’ll likely take 23 minutes to fully resume work after an interruption.

The pomodoro technique can be used to keep you focused and manage these interruptions more smoothly.

The technique involves breaking down your work schedule into pomodoros also known as  25-minute time periods.

Fun fact: ‘Pomodoro’ means tomato in Italian, and this technique was actually named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer originally used to time work and rest periods.

Here’s how it works:

• Make a list: Create a list of tasks you want to accomplish (maybe using the Eisenhower method to help you prioritize)
• Timer: Set your timer for 25 minutes (this way you can focus only on work and not worry about the clock)
• Work: Focus on one task per pomodoro (if you finish a job before the 25 minutes is up, move on to another)
• Rest: Take a five-minute break after the 25 minutes are up
• Longer breaks: Take an extended break of 15-25 minutes after four to five pomodoros
• Rinse and repeat!

Time Mapping

Time mapping involves blocking out periods of time for tasks in advance. It gives you a visual map of your time. Usually this is done for a weekly schedule but can also be applied daily. A time map relieves the stress of making decisions regarding the next task to handle. It helps you move from task to task without pausing and thinking about the next thing to do.

For example, when you finish a coding session with time to spare on your calendar, you might be confused about what to do next.

Also, it helps you avoid Parkinson’s Law. The law states that tasks expand to fill the time allotted to them. This means you’ll find a way to keep working until you exhaust the time assigned to a particular task.

Knowing the next task to move on to gives you a sense of direction and urgency.

You can use a pen and paper to create a time map. However, using spreadsheets and calendars works best. There are plenty of calendar apps that have this function. You can use colors to code your activities according to type and priority.

The ABCD System

This priority system allows you to rank your tasks according to importance and urgency. The goal is similar to the priority matrix but the approach to categories is a bit different. You can try out both and see which one best fits your needs.

You will split your tasks into 4 categories:

• A: Task of the day: Your most important task that must be completed today. If needed, you can add up to 3 tasks here but it’s best to keep it to a minimum.
• B: Secondary tasks: Important jobs that would be nice to get done but are not as essential as “A” items.
• C: Not important: These are usually small and easy tasks that don’t really contribute to your goals but still should get done eventually.
• D: Delegate: These tasks should be handed over to someone else who can do them faster and better, or simply has more time on their hands.

After you’ve created your ABCD list, take another look and see if there are any tasks you can completely remove. Some people create an additional “E” list for these tasks, but you can simply erase them.

2. Plan Your Week

As we mentioned, time management is a significant part of your job as a developer. So, it makes sense that you allocate some time to it as well.

Sacrifice some of your off time to plan your days and weeks. For example, you can block out time in the evening to draw up your schedule for the next day.

You can also dedicate some time on a Saturday or Sunday to plan your week or even the coming month. Set aside an hour to first list your appointments, then prioritize your tasks for the week. After this, you can make a time map. Alternatively, you could just use your to-do list for the week and use the Pomodoro method while working.

Prioritize Your Tasks

Being productive and being busy are two different things.

Doing whatever you see in front of you is a recipe for rushing things at the 11th hour.

For example, postponing a critical bug update to reply to emails that flash on your screen is not an ideal way to work.

This behavior can leave you physically and emotionally drained.

Categorizing your daily tasks according to priority allows you to focus on what matters most. This way, you’ll beat deadlines and produce quality work.

You can use any of the time management techniques above to prioritize your tasks. Always ensure you make it a ritual to rank your jobs instead of simply listing them.

Break Up Your Day

The midday slump has become the bogeyman that almost every worker must confront. Some of us go through our fifth cup of coffee before 2 pm and struggle to handle any more work.

The secret to conquering this challenge is breaking up your day.

Working for hours without breaks is one of the reasons you lose energy and motivation before midday.

Breaking up your work schedule into chunks helps you recharge for the next task.

This way, you’ll get to midday and still feel fresh.

Sounding familiar? The pomodoro technique is especially effective in this case. Sticking to 25-minute work periods followed by five-minute breaks gives you the required structure to defeat the afternoon slump.

Schedule Time for Non-Coding Activities

Non-coding activities like client calls, meetings, and emails can consume a significant chunk of your time. If you end up focusing on them too much, they could leave you with an insufficient amount of time for coding, causing you to rush work and make mistakes.

You can do your best to minimize external distractions, but some responsibilities like meetings, calls, and emails are also critical to your success.

Meaning, you have to organize your time properly to accommodate these activities.

I recommend that you reserve these activities for periods when you’re least energetic and deal with lots of interruptions. Let your team members know when you’re available for meetings, and schedule client calls ahead of time.

Tackle Complex Tasks During Your Peak Productive Hours

Everyone has daily peak productive hours—two, three, or four hours when they’re most energized and focused. They’re also called golden hours or peak work times.

Identifying these hours allows you to allocate and prioritize your tasks properly. You can schedule the more challenging jobs that require critical thinking during your productive hours.

For example, if you’re struggling to figure out where a code has gone wrong, you need to do it when you have more clarity and focus. This may mean putting the project down and coming back to it in the morning when you’re in your most mentally productive state.

Finding your golden hours can be tricky, especially since they can fall in your lunch period or outside your regular work schedule.

So, to find them, change up your work schedule and record how much you get done. Try out working during your usual lunchtime or later in the evening and see how you feel. You can use a mood journal or even just a note app for recording your energy levels. There are also apps designed specifically to track work activity.

Split Large Tasks Into Smaller and More Manageable Pieces

When you look over your to-do list and see a giant 100-hour task, you may find yourself mentally exhausted before you even start. Often, this is how procrastination—the enemy of all project-based workers—starts. For this reason, breaking up large tasks into smaller chunks is important when planning your week or even month. This allows you to focus and get work done without procrastinating.

One way to do this is to work backward and make a timeline. What needs to be done before release day? What about the week before release day? Set time-based goals for small tasks that will add up to conquering that mountain of a project.

Splitting large tasks or goals in this way will end up saving you a lot of time.

3. Identify Time-Wasters

Time-wasters are activities that distract and interrupt you from your coding tasks. They can be social media engagements, domestic chores, emails, or meetings.

There are various ways to identify time-wasters. You can try to catch yourself when you find you are distracted and take note of what you were doing. Alternatively, you may use special apps both on your computer and phone if you suspect you are getting distracted by notifications and sites like YouTube.

Don’t only take note of distractions, but also of small tasks that often end up scattered throughout your day. How much time did you spend talking on the phone and answering emails? What about answering questions on GitHub? Track how much time is spent on all tasks for at least a few days. You may be surprised what you learn about yourself when you look at the data.

Use Time Tracking Apps

Time trackers allow you to monitor how much time you spend on specific tasks. The data you glean from these tools will help you optimize your work schedule.

One way to do this is to identify tasks you’re good at and those you struggle with. Then, you can reserve those challenging assignments for periods where you’re less distracted and tackle the more relaxed tasks when you’re just getting started or feeling tired.

A helpful way to figure out how to best manage your time is by using time tracking data to discover unnecessary and distracting activities. This way, you know what to avoid and can schedule those activities better.

Time trackers also calculate billable hours and automatically create pay sheets. Freelancers can use a time tracker that automates their invoice creation using tracked billable hours. This takes the dull and time-consuming task of manually calculating hours out of your hands so you can spend time on the things you’d rather focus on.

Companies, however, may opt for employee monitoring apps that can create each worker’s monthly timesheet, especially in remote work situations.

This saves you the time of manually calculating your billable hours and creating invoices.

Write a Script for Repetitive Tasks

Repetitive tasks can become tedious over time. If you find yourself doing many of these tasks, consider writing a simple script to automate them. This way, you can turn multiple steps into one—saving you both the time of doing the task and the mental energy of repeating a monotonous activity.

For example, you can write a script to launch another program or execute specific codes using keyboard shortcuts. You can also write a program that you can call up using a hotkey to perform mass file operations.

Task automation software is another option you can try out. Apps like ClickUp and Zoho allow you to automate meeting reminders, recurring tasks, and deadlines.

4. Use Collaboration Tools for Programmers

Coding-centric collaboration tools allow developers to work on projects, view each other’s work, and comment and edit in real time. In addition, these tools save time with reviews, bug-checks, and troubleshooting.

You can also use project management tools to streamline your workflow, especially when you work with a team of developers. Also, if you’re prioritizing your tasks using one of the methods we mentioned above, this is a great way to delegate tasks to others.

Cloud-based version control platforms like GitHub allow you to collaborate with other developers and store, manage, and track changes in your codes. In other words, you can work in real time with other developers and save time sending work back and forth.

Project management tools like Jira are designed for developers to manage design and coding workflows and allow developers to comment on tasks and provide feedback. The continuous feedback in real time saves time later on in quality assessments when it comes to bug fixes.

Carefully Document Your Process and Leave Comments in Your Code

When talking about working with others, we have to mention the importance of documenting your work. Many coders get a bit lazy and skip this step, however it is incredibly useful for time management. Use a technical document to chronicle and explain your technical process and decisions.

This way, you don’t have to field answers whenever you update a GitHub tree. It also reduces how much knowledge you have to transfer when you hand over the project. In addition, you can start using comments more proactively to explain specific lines of code and clear up any potential confusion. Finally, it’s still a useful rule to follow even if you don’t plan on sharing your work. If you take a break from a project, you may return to it and find yourself lost as you try to sort out what you were doing and how. Having the process written out will save valuable time by letting you jump right back in.

This method ensures your colleagues understand your decision-making and are able to provide appropriate feedback. Comments will also help other developers to find bugs in your code and fix them.

5. Feel Your Way Through It – Don’t Burn Out

Everyone has a different work pattern. Indeed, you should figure out the time management techniques that best suit your coding style. That said, you don’t have to force yourself into a strict process.

Test out different approaches to prioritizing and planning and take note of what works and what doesn’t. You can always tweak the methods to match your needs as well.

Tracking how you spend your time is a good starting point to figure out what wastes your time as well as when your golden hours are.

Overall, this process is not a quick one, so don’t rush or stress about it. It’s all about experimenting and learning what works for you.

The post 12 Battle-Tested Time Management Techniques for a More Productive Coding Routine appeared first on Simple Programmer.