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IT Skills which are In demand

January 18, 2018 by ashish Leave a Comment

There have been lot of developments happening at the technology front in the recent years.Lot of new technologies have come up and its difficult to not get effected by these even if you are not a technical person.If you are working in a job which requires you to keep yourself updated in upcoming technologies then you should have good understanding about the technologies which are becoming popular and will only become more popular in the coming years.Also its always a good idea to learn new skills and keep yourself updated.

Here are some of these technologies.

Cloud computing

Consumption of computing resources as a service or utility.In normal scenario you are required to build and maintain the entire infrastructure from application to hardware.But in cloud computing you can use these resources without maintaing them yourself.You will be charged depending upon the usage.
Cloud services are broadly classified into:

IasS ( infrastructure as a service )
PaaS ( platform as a service )
SaaS ( software as a service )

Big Data

In today’s world data is getting generated at an ever increasing pace and from a wide variety of sources.There are large volumes of data getting generated from different sources such as :

Social media
Business records

Also data can be of wide variety. For example in the case of business records the data could be stored in the SQL database while the data for social media could be unstructured and can include images and videos also.

The increasing pace at which data is getting generated means that data should be processed faster or with greater velocity.

These requirements are solved by Big data which has the following characteristics:

large volume of data
wide variety of data
velocity at which should be processed

Artificial intelligence

Intelligence is a functions displayed by human minds.Devices or machines normally do not have intelligence.Artificial intelligence is used to simulate intelligence in computer applications.It is estimated that by 2025 Artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on sectors such as healthcare,transportation and home appliances.

As all the sectors wants the computers and devices to be intelligent there is a huge potential Artificial Intelligence.Today there are comparatively less people who have good knowledge in Artificial Intelligence.

There are different examples of Artificial Intelligence.One good example is Machine Learning.

Machine learning

This skill is already popular and will see increase in demand in the coming years.In traditional programming we cover different scenarios and you have to anticipate the different scenarios as computers can only do what we ask them to do.

Machine learning allows computers to learn from the interaction.

It is also used in big data analytics.Machine learning can be broadly classified into:

Supervised learning Give the inputs and expect the desired outputs for these inputs
Unsupervised learning Inputs are not mapped to the outputs and the learning system identifies the output.

Internet of Things ( IoT)

Internet of Things is a network of connected devices.The devices in IoT could be of variety of different types ranging from a electronic device such as Television having a sensor to an automobile with a sensor.These devices have the ability to send data independently over the network without any need for manual intervention.The devices in IoT have unique IP addresses.IoT allows devices to gather data based on their surroundings.

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Using Modules in Python

November 15, 2017 by ashish Leave a Comment

Python provides functionality using library of modules.This is known as standard library.Before you use any library use the import statement.

Importing modules

For example to import string library use:

import string

To import multiple modules use the following syntax:

import module1, module2

Accessing members of a module

to access a member of the module use the following syntax:

module-name.member-name

for example to get the current time you can use the datetime module.In the datetime module there is a datetime object which can be used to get the current system date and time.

to get the current date and time

datetime.datetime.now()

Help on any Module

to get the help on any module use the help() method and pass it the module name.For example to get the information about the
datetime module use the following statement:

help(datetime)

Similarly to get help about the string module use the following statements:

import string
help(string)

Shortcut for accessing members of a Module

Above we have used the following statement to display the current date and time
datetime.datetime.now()

there is another way we can write the above statment which is much simpler:
from datetime import datetime

We use the from module-name import member name syntax to directly use the member name without using the module name to access the member name.

There are different modules in Python for different functionality.There are modules related to the different functionalities such as the following:

string
datetime
files
data persistence
math

For example you can use the math module to perform different mathematical functions:

math.sqrt(9)

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Features of Progressive Web Apps

November 14, 2017 by ashish Leave a Comment

Progressive web apps (PWA) are web applications or websites that have the best features of both the web and native apps.For example native apps have more richness than web applications ,similarly Progressive web apps have the same richness as native apps.So Progressive web apps feels like native apps to the end user.Similar to web applications Progressive web apps can be accessed using the browser.

Progressive web apps uses the existing set of technologies to create a more rich and engaging experience for the end user.

Important features of Progressive Web Apps

Progressive web apps have the following features:

Progressive

as the name suggests Progressive web apps(PWA) enhance progressively over a period of time.Basic fucntionality should work from the starting but makes use of the device API over a period of time.

Responsive

PWAis responsive.It will fit on any device such as mobile or tablet.

Feels like Native App

feels like native app .Features such as navigation in the app feels same as the native app.

Offline

can even work offline or on a weak network.

Re-engageable

using the features such as the host OS and push notifications.

Discoverable

Progressive web apps are discoverable using browsers.

Fresh

Always up to data through background syncing using service workers.

Safe

because of HTTPS.

Installable

Can be added to home screen

So Progressive web app has the features of both the web applications and the apps.

Web features

PWA is accessed using only HTTPS
PWA is responsive.

Native features

Can add to home screen
App works even offline
Feels like native app

Background Syncing and Push Notifications are used in Progressive Web Applications:

Background syncing

Background syncing when you are offline you perform some action such as sending chat message on messenger.When the network is available the action is completed and the chat message is actually sent.

Push notification

Push notification is used for sending information to a device.Browsers have good support for push notifications.It is of 2 types:

persistent notifications interaction happens using service worker.
non persistent service workers are not used.notifications are sent without using service workers.Implemented through notification API.

Users are explicitly asked for permission to show notifications.

Web app manifest file

This is a manifest file which allows the web app to have capabilities such as:

Allows to run web app in full-screen mode and as a standalone application
Defines theme and background color of the app.

A web app manifest file is a JSON file.Web app manifest file defines things such as:

short_name is the name of the application
name this defines how the application will be listed
description general description of the web application.
icons defines an array of images

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Writing your first Python 3 Program

November 13, 2017 by ashish Leave a Comment

Packages and Modules are used for organizing python application.Packages are represented as directories and modules are represented as single files.To use a module you need to import it first.

Before writing your first Python program you need to download Python 3 as we will be using Python 3 in these tutorials.After installing Python you need to set up environment on your computer.

You can use any text editor to write Python program.Sublime text can also be used for writing Python programs.

To create a new module in python follow the below steps

1.create a directory

create a python file having the extension .py.You can name the file anything just make sure it has the extension .py

Copy the following contents to the directory

def helloWorld():

  print('Hello from Python')

2.navigate to the above directory using the command prompt

type “python” to start the python interpreter

import the module using the following command

import python_hello_world

instead of python_hello_world you need to use the name of the python file which you have created in step 1.

3.Call the function which you have defined in the above module

python_hello_world.helloWorld()

In this simple program we have used print() function.This is aa inbuilt function in Python.It just prints the string on screen.

To exit the Python interpreter on windows just press Ctrl+Z.

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Python tutorial-Working with REPL in windows

November 5, 2017 by ashish Leave a Comment

Python has a command line environment also called as REPL.REPL means read,evalutate,print and loop.You enter a command which Python interpreter evaluates and then prints the results of evaluation.Then it waits for another command.

You can start REPL by just typing “Python” at the run window

When we start REPL it prints the version of Python.

Python REPL is a interactive session.You enter commands and they are executed one at a time.For example you can type the following to print a simple message:

print(‘Hello world’)

print() is one of the functions in Python 3.

Below we are setting variables x ,y and assigning z the sum of x and y.We are then printing the value of z.

In the following example we are printing the values of variables of for loop.

python uses indentation instead of curly braces unlike c# or java.So after the for loop we give for whitespaces before writing the print() function.

for i in range(5)

(4 spaces are used instead of braces) print(i)

whitespaces are significant in python and also makes Python code easier to read.Four spaces is a convention in Python.So if different lines of your code are at the same level of indentation then they are considered part of same code block.

For example if you write the following code then you will get error:

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