Tech Guides

Sometimes it seems like AngularJS is the only frontend game in town. There are reasons for that. It’s sophisticated, it’s a game-changer for web design that makes things better right now, and the phenomenal rate of adoption has also led to all kinds of innovative integrations. However, when all you have is a directive, every problem starts to look like an ng-, as they say. Now and again, we all like the novelty of change. As the first signs of spring emerge from the snow, our techie fancies lightly turn to thoughts of components. So, like a veritable Sam-I-Am, let me press you to try something you may not have tried before.* Today’s the day to take ReactJS for a test drive. So what’s the deal with React, then? ReactJS was developed by Facebook, then open sourced last year. Lately, it’s been picking up speed. Integrations have improved, and now that Facebook have also open sourced Flux, we’re hearing a lot of buzz about what React can do for your UI design. (Flux is an application pattern. You can read more about its controller-free philosophy at Facebook’s GitHub page.) Like so many things, React isn’t quite a framework and it isn’t quite a library. Where React excels is in generating UI components that refresh with data changes. With disarming modesty, React communicates the smallest changes on the server side to the browser quickly, without having to re-render anything except the part of the display that needs to change. Here’s a quick run through of React’s most pleasing features. (ReactJS also has a good sense of humour, and enjoys long walks along the beach at sunset.) Hierarchical components ReactJS is built around components: the new black of web dev. Individual components bundle together the markup and logic as handy reusable treats. Everyone has their own style when developing their apps, but React’s feel and rhythm encourages you to think in components. React’s components are also hierarchical – you can nest them and have them inherit properties and state. There are those who are adamant that this is the future of all good web-app code. Minimal re-rendering Did you catch my mention of ‘state’ up there? React components can have state. Let the wars begin right now about that, but it brings me to the heart of React’s power. React reacts. Any change triggers a refresh, but with minimal re-rendering. With its hierarchical components, React is smart enough to only ever refresh and supply new display data to the part of the component that needs it, not the entire thing. That’s good news for speed and overhead. Speedy little virtual dom In fact, ReactJS is light in every sense. And it owes a lot of its power to its virtual DOM. Rather than plug into the DOM directly, React renders every change into a virtual DOM and then compares it against the current DOM. If it sees something that needs to be changed in the view, React gets to work on changing just that part, leaving everything else untouched. Fun to write React mixes HTML and JavaScript, so you can refer to HTML elements right there inside your <script>. Yes, okay, that’s ‘fun’ for a given value of fun. The kind where dorks get a little giddy about pleasing syntax. But we’re all in this together, so we might as well accept ourselves and each other. For example, here’s a simple component rendering from an official tutorial: // tutorial1.js var CommentBox = React.createClass({ render: function() {    return (      <div className="commentBox">        Hello, world! I am a CommentBox.      </div>    ); } }); React.renderComponent( <CommentBox />, document.getElementById('content') ); This is JSX syntax, which React uses instead of defining templates within a string. Pretty, right? Reactive charts and pictures With luck, at this point, your coffee has kicked in and you’re beginning to think about possible use cases where React might be a shiny new part of your toolkit. Obviously, React’s going to be useful for anything with lots of real-time activity. As a frontend for a chat client, streaming news, or a dashboard, it’s got obvious powers. But think a little further and you’ll see a world of other possibilities. React can also handle SVG for graphics and charts, with the potential to create dynamic and malleable visualisations even without D3. SEO One last-but-not-least selling point: web apps built with this framework don’t scare the Google Spiders. Because everything’s passed to the client side and into the DOM having already had its shoes shined by the virtual DOM, it’s very easy to make apps legible for search engines as well as for people, allowing your stored data to be indexed and boost your SEO by reflecting your actual content. Give it a shot and do some experimenting. Have you had any wins or unexpected problems with React? Or are you thinking of giving it a whirl for your next app? We’re going to try it out for some in-house data viz, and may possibly even report back. What about you? *Do not try ReactJS with a goat on a boat without taking proper safety precautions. (With a mouse in a house is fine and, indeed, encouraged.)

Security has been a problem for web developers since before the Internet existed. By this, I mean network security was a problem before the Internet—the network of networks—was created. Internet and network security has gotten a lot of play recently in the media, mostly due to some high-profile hacks that have taken place. From the personal security perspective, very little has changed. The prevalence of phishing attacks continues to increase as networks become more secure. This is because human beings remain a serious liability when securing a network. However, this type of security discussion is outside the scope of this blog.  Due to the vast breadth of this topic, I am going to focus on one specific area of web security; we will discuss securing websites and apps from the perspective of an open source developer, and I will focus on the tools that can be used to secure Node.js. This is not an exhaustive guide to secure web development. Consider this blog a quick overview of the current security tools available to Node.js developers.  A good starting point is a brief discussion on injection theory. This article provides a more in-depth discussion if you are interested. The fundamental strategy for injection attacks is figuring out a way to modify a command on the server by manipulating unsecured data. Aclassic example is the SQL injection, in which SQL is injected through a form into the server in order to compromise the server’s database. Luckily, injection is a well-known infiltration strategy and there are many tools that help defend against it.  One method of injection compromises HTTP headers. A quick way to secure your Node.js project from this attack is through the use of the helmet module. The following code snippet shows how easy it is to start using helmet with the default settings:  var express = require('express') var helmet = require('helmet') var app = express() app.use(helmet()) Just the standard helmet settings should go a long way toward a more secure web app. By default, helmet will prevent clickjacking, remove the X-Powered-By header, keep clients from sniffing the MIME type, add some small cross-site scripting protections (XSS), and add other protections. For further defense against XSS, use of the sanitizer module is probably a good idea. The sanitizer module is relatively simple. It helps remove syntax from HTML documents that could allow for easy XSS.   Another form of injection attacks is the SQL injection. This attack consists of injecting SQL into the backend as a means of entry or destruction. The sqlmap project offers a tool that can test an app for SQL injection vulnerabilities. There are many tools like sqlmap, and I would recommend weaving a variety of automated vulnerability testing into your development pattern. One easy way to avoid SQL injection is the use of parameterized queries. The PostgreSQL database module supports parameterized queries as a guard against SQL injection.  A fundamental part of any secure website or app is the use of secure transmission via HTTPS. Accomplishing encryption for your Node.js app can be fairly easy, depending on how much money you feel like spending. In my experience, if you are already using a deployment service, such as Heroku, it may be worth the extra money to pay the deployment service for HTTPS protection. If you are categorically opposed to spending extra money on web development projects, Let’s Encrypt is a free and open way to supply your web app with browser-trusted HTTPS protection. Furthermore, Let’s Encrypt automates the process of using an SSL certificate. Let’s Encrypt is a growing project and is definitely worth checking out, if you haven’t already.  Once you have created or purchased a security certificate, Node’s onboard https can do the rest of the work for you. The following code shows how simply HTTPS can be added to a Node server once a certificate is procured:  // curl -k https://localhost:8000/ const https = require('https'); const fs = require('fs'); const options = {   key: fs.readFileSync('/agent2-key.pem'),   cert: fs.readFileSync('/agent2-cert.pem') }; https.createServer(options, (req, res) => { res.writeHead(200); res.end('hello securityn'); }).listen(8000); If you are feeling adventurous, the crypto Node module offers a suite of OpenSSL functions that you could use to create your own security protocols. These include hashes, HMAC authentication, ciphers, and others.  Internet security is often overlooked by hobbyists or up-and-coming developers. Instead of taking a back seat, securing a web app should be one of your highest priorities, especially as threats on the Web become greater with each passing day. As far as the topic of the blog post, what’s new and what’s not, most of what I have discussed is not new. This is in part due to the proliferation of social engineering as a means to compromise networks instead of technological methods. Most of the newest methods for protecting networks revolve around educating and monitoring authorized network users, instead of more traditional security activities. What is absolutely new (and exciting) is the introduction of Let’s Encrypt. Having access to free security certificates that are easily deployed will benefit individual developers and Internet users as a whole. HTTPS should become ubiquitous as Let’s Encrypt and other similar projects continue to grow.  As I said at the beginning of this blog, security is a broad topic. This blog has merely scratched the surface of ways to secure a Node.js app. I do hope, however, some of the information leads you in the right, safe direction.  About the Author Erik Kappelman is a transportation modeler for the Montana Department of Transportation. He is also the CEO of Duplovici, a technology consulting and web design company. 

The gaming industry is a crowded trade. After all, it's one of those industries where you can work on something you actually love; so a lot of people are trying to get into it. And with a lot from rivals being successful in the industry is a difficult thing to accomplish. Here are 10 tips to help you succeed in the gaming enterprise. Do note that these are general tips. That way, the tips should be applicable to you regardless of your position in the industry, whether you're an indie developer working on your own games, or a programmer working for a big gaming company. Tip 1: Be creative The gaming industry is a creative one, so it makes perfect sense that you need to be creative to succeed. And you don't have to be an artist or a writer to apply your creative thinking; there are many challenges that need creative solutions. For example, a particular system in the game may need some heavy computing, so you can come up with a creative solution that instead of fully computing the problem, you merely use a simpler formula and estimate the result.  Tip 2: Capable of receiving criticism Video games are a passion for many people, probably including you. That's why it's easy to fall in love with your own idea; whether it’s a gameplay idea like how an enemy should behave, or a technical one like how a save file should be written. Your idea might not be perfect though, so it's important to be able to step back and see if another person's criticism on your idea has its merit. After all, that other person could be capable of seeing a flaw that you may have missed.  Tip 3: Be able to see the big picture A video game’s software is full of complex, interlocking systems. Being able to see the big picture, that is, seeing how changes in one system could affect another system is a really nice skill to have when developing a video game.  Tip 4: Keep up with technology Technology moves at a blisteringly fast speed. Technology that is relevant today may be rendered useless tomorrow, so it is very important to keep up with technology. Using the latest equipment may help your game project and the newest technology may provide opportunities for your games too. For example, newer platforms like VR and AR don't have many games yet, so it's easier to gain visibility there.  Tip 5: Keep up with industry trends It's not just technology that moves fast, but also the world. Just 10 years ago, it was unthinkable that millions of people would watch other people play games, or that mobile gaming would be bigger than console gaming. By keeping up with industry trends, we can understand the market for our games, and more importantly, understand our players' behavior.  Tip 6: Put yourself in your player's shoes Being able to see your games from the viewpoint of your player is a really useful skill to be had. For example, as a developer you may feel fine looking at a black screen when your game is loading its resources because you know the game is working fine, as long as it doesn't throw an error dialog. Whereas, your player probably doesn't feel the same way and thought the game just hangs when it shows you a black screen without a resource loading indicator.  Tip 7: Understand your platform and your audience This is a bit similar to the previous tip, but on a more general level. Each platform has different strengths and the audience of each platform also has different expectations. For example, games for mobile platforms are expected to be played in small time burst instead of hour long sessions, so mobile gamers expect their games to automatically save progress whenever they stop playing. Understanding this behavior is really important for developing games that satisfy players.  Tip 8: Be a team player Unless you're a one-man army, games usually are not developed alone. Since game development is a team effort, it's pretty important to get along with your teammates. Whether it's dividing tasks fairly with your programmer buddy, or explaining to the artist about the format of the art assets that your game needs.  Tip 9: Show your creation to other people When you are deep in the process of working on your latest creation, it’s hardsometimes to take a step back and assess your creation fairly. Occasionally you may even feel like your creations aren’t up to scratch. Fortunately, showing your work to other people is a relatively easy way to get good and honest feedback. And if you’re lucky, your new audience may just show you how your creation is actually to a standard level.  Tip 10: Networking This is probably the most generic tip ever, but that doesn't mean it's not true. In any industry and no matter what your position is, networking is really important. If you're an indie developer, you may connect with a development partner that shares the same vision as you. Alternatively, if you're a programmer, maybe you will connect with someone who’s looking for a senior position to lead a new game project. Networking will open the door of opportunities for you.  About the author  Raka Mahesa is a game developer at Chocoarts: http://chocoarts.com/, who is interested in digital technology in general. Outside of work hours, he likes to work on his own projects, with Corridoom VR being his latest released game. Raka also regularly tweets as @legacy99. 

2016 will be the year of AngularJS 2.0 and it’s going to be awesome. AngularJS has been a known quantity to Packt for about 4 years, and has been around for 6. In the last 24 months, we’ve really seen it gain massive adoption amongst our user base. Conferences are held in its name. It will come as no surprise that it’s one of our best-selling topics. Thousands of apps have been deployed and created with it. People, do in fact, love it. So the decision to rewrite the entire project seems odd. A lot has been written about this already from developers who know their stuff. Some are for it, some against it, and some are a little more balanced. For a technically reasoned article, Rob Eisenberg’s blog about AngularJS 2.0 is the best of many I’ve read. For one that quotes Shakespeare, read on. At Packt I’ve been the commissioning editor on a fair number of products. You may remember me from such hits as MEAN Web Development and Mastering D3.js. While I may not have the developer nous, creating a product is the same process whether it is a good framework or a good book. And part of this process understanding when you’ve got a good product, and when you had a good product that needs ripping up, and starting over. What’s past is prologue AngularJS’s design was emergent from increased adoption. It started life as a tool to aid designers throw up a quick online form. It was an internal tool at Google. They didn’t realise that every Joe Web Developer would be using it to power their client’s not-so-SEO-friendly bespoke applications. It’s the equivalent of what would happen if people started using this blog as a template for all future blogs. I’d enjoy it for the first few years, living the blogosphere high-life, then people would start moaning to me, and I would hate it. I’d have to start again, for my own health as much as for the health of the millions of bloggers who were using my formatting to try and contain their vastness. So we’re agreed that they need to change things. Good. Oh brave new world/That has such features in’t Many frameworks change things whilst maintaining backwards compatibility. WordPress is a famous example of doing everything possible to avoid introducing breaking-changes at any major update. The result is, by now, a pretty bloated application that much like Angular, started out serving a very different purpose to how it now finds itself being deployed. It’s what gave rise to smaller, lighter-weight platforms like Ghost, designed purely for blogging. AngularJS however is not an example of developers maintaining backwards compatibility. It takes pleasure in starting over. In fact, you can just about rip up your old Angular apps now. It’s for your own good. By starting from a clean slate, the Angular team have the chance to design AngularJS in to what it should be rather than what it ended up being. It may not make sense to the developers who are using Angular 1.x at the moment, but to be frank Google doesn’t care. It cares about good products. It’s planning a product that will endeavour to remain relevant in to the future, rather than spending its time trying to patch up something that was a result of rushed 2010 thinking. Part of this attempt at continued relevance is TypeScript. TypeScript extends the capabilities of ES6; moving to AngularJS 2.0 before ES7 is released means that it’s recommended that TypeScript is used to make the most of what Angular offers. This is a big move, but it’s an attempt at moving the capabilities forward. Doing something is always preferable to doing nothing. The other headline act, and related to the ES6 features is the move to make Angular compatible with Web Components. Web Components will redefine what web development means, in time, and making sure that their framework is on hand to help deliver them safely to developers is again a smart product decision. The temporary pain of the rewrite will be rewarded by increased ease of use and longevity for the developers and clients who build and consume AngularJS applications. There are a whole host more features; a move to mobile-first design, which I understand, and lots of technical and syntax improvements, which I don’t; increased performance, and plenty more too. Every decision is being made to make Angular a better product for everyone who uses it. Gentle breath of yours my sails/Must fill, or else my project fails AngularJS 2.0 has been a divisive figure in the web development world. I’ve been at Packt for three years and can’t remember a time when such a popular and well-used technology completely ripped up everything they had and started again. It will set a precedent in software that will shape the future, either way it ‘goes down’. What we should focus on is that this wholesale change is designed to make the product better – not just now, but in to the future - and that decision should be applauded. It’s not unheard of for Google to stop/start/abandon high-profile projects (cough Google Glass cough), but they should be recognised nonetheless for their dedication in trying to make this a more accessible and useful platform long term. Ultimately though, it will be the users who decide if they won or lost. The team are bringing a different project in the hope that people see its advantages, but no matter the intent a product is only useful if the consumers find it useful. Through our ‘gentle breath’, the Angular project will fly or fail. Let’s embrace it.

IBM’s mission has always been to innovate and in the process, change the way the world operates. With this objective in mind, IBM Research started a conversation termed as ‘5 in 5’ way back in 2012, giving their top 5 predictions every year at IBM Think 2018 on how technology would change the world. These predictions are usually the drivers for their research and innovation - and eventually solving the problems by coming up with efficient solutions to them. Here are the 5 predictions made by IBM Research for 2018: More secure Blockchain products: In order to avoid counterfeit Blockchain products, the technology will be coupled with cryptographic solutions to develop decentralized solutions. Digital transactions are often subject to frauds, and securing them with crypto-anchors is seen as the way to go forward. Want to know how this can be achieved? You might want to check out IBM’s blog on crypto-anchors and their real world applications. If you are like me, you’d rather watch IBM researcher Andres Kind explain what crypto-anchors are in a fast paced science slam session. Sophisticated cyber attacks will continue to happen: Cyber attacks resulting in the data leaks or stealing of confidential data is not news to us. The bigger worry, though, is that the current methodologies to prevent these attacks are not proving to be good enough. IBM predicts this is only going to get worse, with more advanced and sophisticated cyber attacks breaking into the current secure systems with ease. IBM Research also predicted the rise of ‘lattice cryptography’, a new security mechanism offering a more sophisticated layer of protection for the systems. You can read more about lattice cryptography technology on IBM’s official blog. Or, you can watch IBM researcher Cecilia Boschini explain what is lattice cryptography in 5 minutes on one of IBM’s famous science slam sessions. Artificial Intelligence-powered bots will help clean the oceans: Our marine ecosystem seems to be going from bad to worse. This is mainly due the pollution and toxic wastes being dumped into it. IBM predicts that AI-powered autonomous bots, deployed and controlled on the cloud, can help relieve this situation by monitoring the water bodies for water quality and pollution levels. You can learn more about how these autonomous bots will help save the seas in this interesting talk by Tom Zimmerman. An unbiased AI system: Artificially designed systems  are only as good as the data being used to build them. This data may be impure, or may contain flaws or bias pertaining of color, race, gender and so on. Going forward, new models which mitigate these biases and ensure more standard, bias-free predictions will be designed. With these models, certain human values and principles will be considered for effective decision-making. IBM researcher Francesca Rossi talks about bias in AI and the importance of building fair systems that help us make better decisions. Quantum Computing will go mainstream: IBM predicts that quantum computing will get out of research labs and gain mainstream adoption in the next 5 years. Problems considered to be difficult or unsolvable today due to their sheer scale or complexity can be tackled with the help of quantum computing. To know more, let IBM researcher Talia Gershon take you through the different aspects of quantum computing and why it is expected to be a massive hit. Amazingly, most of the predictions from the past have turned out to be true. For instance, IBM predicted the rise of Computer Vision technology in 2012, where computers would be able to not only process images, but also understand their ‘features’. It remains to be seen how true this year’s predictions will turn out to be. However, considering the rate at which the research on AI and other tech domains is progressing and being put to practical use, we won’t be surprised if they all become a reality soon. What do you think?

In the earlier articles, we gave a short introduction to RxSwift and talked about the advantages of the functional aspect of Rx,by using operators and composing a stream of operations. In my journey to discover and learn Rx, I was drawn to it after finding various people talking about its benefits. After I finally bought into the idea that I wanted to learn it, I began to read the documentation. I was overwhelmed by how many objects, classes, or operators were provided. There were loads of various terminologies that I encountered in the documentation. The documentation was (and still is) there, but because I was still at page one, my elementary Rx vocabulary prevented me from actually being able to appreciate, maximize, and use RxSwift. I had to go through months of soaking in the documentation until it saturated in my brain and things clickedfinally. I found that I wasn’t the only one who was experiencing this after talking with some of my RxSwift community members in Slack. This is the gap. RxSwift is a beautifully designed API (I’ll talk about why exactly, later), but I personally didn’t know how long it would take to go from my working non-Rx knowledge to slowly learning the well-designed tools that Rx provides. The problem wasn’t that the documentation was lacking, because it was sufficient. It was that while reading the documentation, I found that I didn't even know what questions to ask or which documentation answered what questions I had. What I did know was programming concepts in the context of application development, in a non-Rx way. What I wanted to discover was how things would be done in RxSwift along with the thought processes that led to the design of elegant units of code, such as the various operators like flatMap or concatMap or the units of code such as Subjects or Drivers. This article aims to walk you through real programming situations that software developers encounter, while gradually introducing the Rx concepts that can be used. This article assumes that you’ve read through the last two articles on RxSwift I’ve written, which is linked above, and that you’ve found and read some of the documentation but don’t know where to start. It also assumes that you’re familiar with how network calls or database queries are made and how to wrap them using Rx. A simple queuing application Let’s start with something simple, such as a mobile application, for queuing. We can have multiple queues, which contain zero to many people in order. Let’s say that we have the following code that performs a network query to get the queue data from your REST API. We assume that these are network requests wrapped using Observable.create(): privatefuncgetQueues() -> Observable<[Queue]> privatefuncgetPeople(in queue: Queue) -> Observable<[Person]> privatevardisposeBag = DisposeBag() An example of the Observable code for getting the queue data is available here. Where do I write my subscribe code? Initially, a developer might write the following code in the viewDidLoad() method and bind it to some UITableView: funcviewDidLoad() { getQueue() .subscribeOn(ConcurrentDispatchQueueScheduler(queue: networkQueue)) .observeOn(MainScheduler.instance) .bindTo(tableView.rx.items(cellIdentifier: "Cell")) { index, model, cell in cell.textLabel?.text = model } .addDisposableTo(disposeBag) } However, if the getQueues() observable code loads the data from a cold observable network call, then, by definition, the cold observable will only perform the network call once during viewDidLoad(), load the data into the views, and it is done. The table view will not update in case the queue is updated by the server, unless the view controller gets disposed and viewDidLoad() is performed again. Note that should the network call fail, we can use the catchError() operator right after and swap in a database query or from a cache instead, assuming we’ve persisted the queue data through a file or database. Thisway, we’re assured that this view controller will always have data to display. Introduction to cold and hot observables By cold observable, we mean that the observable code (that is, the network call to get the data) will only begin emitting items on subscription (which is currently on viewDidLoad). This is the difference between a hot and a cold observable: hot observables can be emitting items even when there are no observers subscribed, while cold observables will only run once an observer is subscribed. The examples of cold observables are things you’ve wrapped using Observable.create(), while the examples of hot observables are things like UIButton.rx.tap or UITextField.rx.text, which can be emitting items such as Void for a button press or String for atext field, even when there aren’t any observers subscribed to them. Inherently, we are wrong to use a cold observable because its definition will simply not meet the demands of our application. A quick fix might be to write it in viewWillAppear Going back to our queuing example, one could write it in the viewWillAppear() life cycle state of the app so that it will refresh its data every time the view appears. The problem that arises from this solution is that we perform a network query too frequently. Furthermore, every time viewWillAppear is called, note that a new subscription is added to the disposeBag. If, for some reason, the last subscription does not dispose (that is, it is still processing and emitting items and has not yet entered into the onComplete or onError state) and you’ve begun to perform a network query again, then it means that you have a possibility of amemory leak! Here’s an example of the (impractical) code that refreshes on every view. The code will work (it will refresh every time), but this isn’t good code: publicviewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) { getQueues().bindTo(tableView.rx.items(cellIdentifier: "Cell")) { index, model, cell in cell.textLabel?.text = model } .addDisposableTo(self.disposeBag) } So, if we don’t want to query only one time and we don’t want to query too frequently, it begs the question,“How many times should the queries really be performed?” In part 2 of this article, we'll discuss what the right amount of querying is. About the Author Darren Karl Sapalo is a software developer, an advocate ofUX, and a student taking up his Master's degree in Computer Science. He enjoyed developing games in his free time when he was twelve. He finally finished with his undergraduate thesis on computer vision and took up some industry work with Apollo Technologies Inc. developing for both Android and iOS platforms.

Mario Casciaro is a software engineer and technical lead with a passion for open source. After the recent publication of his successful book Node.JS Design Patterns, we caught up with him to discuss his views on today’s most important web development skills, and what the future holds. The best tool for the job may not be in your skillset yet I remember working on a small side project, something I try to do as much as possible, to put new skills into practice and try things outside of my job. It was a web application, something very similar to a social network, and I remember choosing Java with the Spring Framework as the main technology stack, and Backbone on the front-end. At the time - around 4 years ago - I was an expert Java developer, and considered it the technology with the most potential. It worked perfectly to implement enterprise web applications as well as mission-critical distributed applications and even mobile apps. While Java is still a popular and valuable tool in 2015, my experience doing this small side project made me rethink my opinion – I wouldn’t use it today unless there was a particular need for it. I remember that at some point I realized I was spending a lot of my development time in designing the object-oriented structure of the application and writing boilerplate code. Trying to find a solution, I migrated the project to Groovy and Grails and on the front-end I tried to implement a small homemade two-way binding framework. Things improved a little, but I was still feeling the need for something more agile on both ends, something more suited to the web. The web moves fast, so always let your skills evolve I wanted to try something radically different than the typical PHP, Ruby on Rails or Python for the server or JQuery or Backbone for the client. Fortunately I discovered Node.js and Angular.js, and that changed everything. By using Node I noticed that my mindset shifted from “how to do things” to “just get things done”. On the other hand, Angular revolutionized my approach to front end development, allowing me to drastically cut the amount of boilerplate code I was using. But most importantly, I realized that JavaScript and its ecosystem was becoming a seriously big thing. Today I would not even consider building a web application without having JavaScript as my primary player. The amount of packages on npm is staggering - a clear indication that the web has shifted towards JavaScript. The most impressive part of this story is that I also realized the importance that these new skills had in defining my career; if I wanted to build web applications, JavaScript and its amazing ecosystem had to be the focus of my learning efforts. This led me to find a job where Node, Angular and other cutting-edge JavaScript technologies actually played a crucial role in the success of the project I was in charge of creating. But the culmination of my renewed interest in JavaScript is the book I published 6 months ago - Node.jsDesignPatterns - which contains the best of the experience I accumulated since I devoted myself to the full-stack JavaScript mantra. The technologies and the skills that matter today for a web developer Today, if I had to give advice to someone approaching web development for the first time I would definitely recommend starting with JavaScript. I wouldn’t have said that 5-6 years ago, but today it’s the only language that allows you to get started both on the back end and the front end. Moreover JavaScript, in combination with other web technologies such as HTML and CSS, gives you access to an even broader set of applications with the help of projects like nw.js and ApacheCordova. PHP, Ruby, and Python are still very popular languages for developing the server-side of a web application, but for someone that already knows JavaScript, Node.js would be a natural choice. Not only does it save you the time it takes to learn a new language, it also offers a level of integration with the front end that is impossible with other platforms. I’m talking, of course, about sharing code between the server and the client and even implementing isomorphic applications which can run on both Node.js and the browser. React is probably the framework that offers the most interesting features in the area of isomorphic application development and definitely something worth digging into more, and it’s likely that we’ll also see a lot more from PouchDB, an isomorphic JavaScript database that will help developers build offline-enabled or even offline-first web applications more easily than ever before. Always stay ahead of the curve Today, as 4 years ago, the technologies that will play an important role in the web of tomorrow are already making an impact. WebRTC, for example, enables the creation of real-time peer-to-peer applications in the browser, without the need for any additional plugin. Developers are already using it to build fast and lightweight audio/video conferencing applications or even complete BitTorrent clients in the browser! Another revolutionizing technology is going to be ServiceWorkers which should dramatically improve the capabilities of offline applications. On the front end, WebComponents are going to play a huge role, and the Polymer project has already demonstrated what this new set of standards will be able to create. With regards to JavaScript itself, web developers will have to become familiar with the ES6 standard sooner than expected, as cross-compilation tools such as Babel are already allowing us to use ES6 on almost any platform. But we should also keep an eye on ES7 as it will contain very useful features to simplify asynchronous programming. Finally, as the browser becomes the runtime environment of the future, the recently revealed WebAssembly promises to give the web its own “bytecode”, allowing you to load code written in other languages from JavaScript, When WebAssembly becomes widely available, it will be common to see a complex 3D video game or a full-featured video editing tool running in the browser. JavaScript will probably remain the mainstream language for the web, but it will be complemented by the new possibilities introduced by WebAssembly. If you want to explore the JavaScript ecosystem in detail start with our dedicated JavaScript page. You'll find our latest and most popular, along with free tutorials and insights.

The rise of big data and business intelligence has been one of the hottest topics to hit the tech world. Everybody who’s anybody has heard of the term business intelligence, yet very few can actually articulate what this means. Nonetheless it’s something all organizations are demanding. But you must be wondering why and how do you develop business intelligence? Enter data scientists! The concept of data science was developed to work with large sets of structured and unstructured data. So what does this mean? Let me explain. Data science was introduced to explore and give meaning to random sets of data floating around (we are talking about huge quantities here, that is, terabytes and petabytes), which are then used to analyze and help identify areas of poor performance, areas of improvement, and areas to capitalize on. The concept was introduced for large data-driven organisations that required consultants and specialists to deal with complex sets of data. However, data science has been adopted very quickly by organizations of all shapes and sizes, so naturally an element of flexibility would be required to fit data scientists in the modern work flow. There seems to be a shortage for data scientists and an increase in the amount of data out there. The modern data scientist is one who would be able to apply analytical skills necessary to any organization with or without large sets of data available. They are required to carry out data mining tasks to discover relevant meaningful data. Yet, smaller organizations wouldn’t have enough capital to invest in paying for a person who is experienced enough to derive such results. Nonetheless, because of the need for information, they might instead turn to a general data analyst and help them move towards data science and provide them with tools/processes/frameworks that allow for the rapid prototyping of models instead. The natural flow of work would suggest data analysis comes after data mining, and in my opinion analysis is at the heart of the data science. Learning languages like R and Python are fundamental to a good data scientist’s tool kit. However would a data scientist with a background in mathematics and statistics and little to no knowledge of R and Python still be as efficient? Now, the way I see it, data science is composed of four key topic areas crucial to achieving business intelligence, which are data mining, data analysis, data visualization, and machine learning. Data analysis can be carried out in many forms; it’s essentially looking at data and understanding it to make a factual conclusion from it (in simple terms). A data scientist may choose to use Microsoft Excel and VBA to analyze their data, but it wouldn’t be as accurate, clean, or as in depth as using Python or R, but it sure would be useful as a quick win with smaller sets of data. The approach here is that starting with something like Excel doesn’t mean it’s not counted as data science, it’s just a different form of it, and more importantly it actually gives a good foundation to progress on to using things like MySQL, R, Julia, and Python, as with time, business needs would grow and so would expectations of the level of analysis. In my opinion, a good data scientist is not one who knows more than one or two languages or tools, but one who is well-versed in the majority of them and knows which language and skill set are best suited to the task in hand. Data visualization is hugely important, as numbers themselves tell a story, but when it comes to representing the data to customers or investors, they're going to want to view all the different aspects of that data as quickly and easily as possible. Graphically representing complex data is one of the most desirable methods, but the way the data is represented varies dependent on the tool used, for example R’s GGplot2 or Python’s Matplotlib. Whether you’re working for a small organization or a huge data-driven company, data visualization is crucial. The world of artificial intelligence introduced the concept of machine learning, which has exploded on the scene and to an extent is now fundamental to large organizations. The opportunity for organizations to move forward by understanding a consumer’s behaviour and equally matching their expectations has never been so valuable. Data scientists are required to learn complex algorithms and core concepts such as classifications, recommenders, neural networks, and supervised and unsupervised learning techniques. This is just touching the edges of this exciting field, which goes into much more depth especially with emerging concepts such as deep learning.   To conclude, we covered the basic fundamentals of data science and what it means to be data scientists. For all you R and Python developers (not forgetting any mathematical wizards out there), data science has been described as the ‘Sexiest job of 21st century’  as well as being handsomely rewarding too. The rise in jobs for data scientists has without question exploded and will continue to do so; according to global management firm McKinsey & Company, there will be a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 data scientists due to the continued rise of ‘big data’.

As a web developer, you have to adapt every year to new technologies. In the last four years, the JavaScript world has exploded, and their toolsets are changing very fast. In this blog post, I will describe my experience of changing from a web developer to an app developer. My start in the Mobile App World My first attempt at creating a mobile app was a simple JavaScript one-page app, which was just a website designed for mobile devices. It wasn’t very impressive, but at the time, there was no React-Native or Ionic Framework. It was nice, but it wasn't great. Ionic Framework Later, I developed apps using the Ionic/Angular Framework, which uses Cordova as a wrapper. Ionic apps run in a web-view on the device. To work with Ionic was pretty easy, and the performance increased over time, so I found it to be a good toolset. If you need an app that is running on a broad spectrum of devices, Ionic is a good choice. React-Native A while ago, I made the change to React-Native. React-Native was supported only by iOS at the start, but then it also supported Android, so I thought that the time was right to switch to React-Native. The React-Native world is a bit different than the Ionic world. React-Native is still newish, and many modules are a work-in-progress; so, React-Native itself is released every two weeks with a new version. Working with React-Native is bleeding edge development. React-Native and Firebase are what I use right now. When I was working with Ionic, I was using a SQLite database to cache on the device, and I used Ajax to get data from a remote API. For notifications, I used Google GCM and Pushwoosh, and for uploads, AWS S3. With React-Native, I chose the new Firebase v3, which came out earlier this year. Firebase offers a real-time database, authentication, cloud messaging, storage, analytics, offline data capability, and much more. Firebase can replace all of the third-party tools I have used before. For further information, check out here. Google Firebase supports three platforms: iOS, Android, and the Web. Unfortunately, the web platform does not support offline capabilities, notifications, and some other features. If you want to use all the features Firebase has to offer, there is a React-Native module that is wrapping the IOS and Android native platforms. The JavaScript API module is identical to the Firebase web platform JavaScript API. So, you can use the Firebase web docs on this. Developing with React-Native, you come in touch with a lot of different technologies and programming languages. You have to deal with Xcode, and with Android, you have to add/change the Java code and deal with Gradle, permanent google-service upgrades, and many other things. It is fun to work with React-Native, but it can also be frustrating regarding unfinished modules or outdated documentation on the web. It pushes you into new areas, so you learn Java, Objective-C, or both. So, why not? Firebase V3 Features Let’s look at some of the Firebase V3 features. Firebase Authentication One of the great features that Firebase offers is authentication. They have, ready to go, Facebook login, Twitter login, Google login, Github login, anonymous login, and email/password sign up. OK, to get the Facebook login running, you will still need a third-party module. For Facebook login, I have recently used this module. And, for a Google login, I have recently used this module. Firebase Cloud Messages You can receive notifications on the device, but the differences are depending on the state of the app. For instance, is the app open or closed. Read up here. Firebase Cloud Messages Server You may want to send messages to all or particular users/devices, and you can do this via the FCM Server. I use a NodeJS script as the FCM Server, and I use this module to do so Here. You can read more at Here. Firebase Real-Time Database You can subscribe to database queries; so, as soon as data is changing, your app is getting the new data without a reload. However, you can only call the data once. The real-time database uses web sockets to deliver data. Conclusion As a developer, you have to evolve with technology and keep up with upcoming development tools. I think that mobile development is more exciting than web development these days, and this is the reason why I would like to focus more on app development. About the author Oliver Blumanski is a developer based out of Townsville, Australia. He has been a software developer since 2000, and can be found on GitHub @ blumanski.

As you gear up for the holiday season and the year-end celebrations, make a resolution to spend a fraction of your weekends in self-reflection and in honing your skills for the coming year. Here is the best of the DataHub for your reading this weekend. Watch out for our year-end special edition in the last week of 2017! NIPS Special Coverage A deep dive into Deep Bayesian and Bayesian Deep Learning with Yee Whye Teh How machine learning for genomics is bridging the gap between research and clinical trial success by Brendan Frey 6 Key Challenges in Deep Learning for Robotics by Pieter Abbeel For the complete coverage, visit here. Experts in Focus Ganapati Hegde and Kaushik Solanki, Qlik experts from Predoole Analytics on How Qlik Sense is driving self-service Business Intelligence 3 things you should know that happened this week Generative Adversarial Networks: Google open sources TensorFlow-GAN (TFGAN) “The future is quantum” — Are you excited to write your first quantum computing code using Microsoft’s Q#? “The Blockchain to Fix All Blockchains” – Overledger, the meta blockchain, will connect all existing blockchains Try learning/exploring these tutorials weekend Implementing a simple Generative Adversarial Network (GANs) How Google’s MapReduce works and why it matters for Big Data projects How to write effective Stored Procedures in PostgreSQL How to build a cold-start friendly content-based recommender using Apache Spark SQL Do you agree with these insights/opinions Deep Learning is all set to revolutionize the music industry 5 reasons to learn Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in 2018 CapsNet: Are Capsule networks the antidote for CNNs kryptonite? How AI is transforming the manufacturing Industry

Experienced web developers reveal what’s needed to get ahead of the curve – and stay there!  We’ve asked eight members of Packt’s author community to weigh in on what developers who are just starting their careers can do to get that competitive edge. These experienced developers have some useful tips for the web devs of tomorrow:  Find your niche and dig in Harold Dost, Principal Consultant at Raastech, recommends that fledgling developers should take time to see what tools are available – these will help you build a strong knowledge foundation and pave the way to becoming an expert. Mapt, a skill learning platform for developers, is one of the best resources out there witha growing library of over 4,000 tech eBooks and video courses. As far as building your skillset goes, Harold says that you should “hone a core skill (maybe two or three), and then diversify on the rest. This will allow you to specialise and give you the in-depth knowledge which will be necessary as you go further in your career.” This doesn’t mean you should just pick a few things and then that’s that for the rest of your career though. You have to be on the lookout for new opportunities and directions to expand your skillset. Haroldagrees, saying that, “at the same time as specialising, be sure to keep learning about new technologies to allow you to grow and improve the work you produce.” Keep learning and start writing Luis Augusto Weir, Oracle ACEDirector and Principal at Capgemini UK, encourages web devs to “be to be passionate about learning and, of course, about coding.” There are so many ways to educate yourself, but he thinks that reading books is still the best thing you can do to further your education. “Reading books is surely a way to get ahead,” Luis says, “as well as lots of other interactive ways to learn like YouTube, blogs, online courses and so on.Not only does a huge amount of effort go into writing books, but nothing beats a good book to read whilst on the train, or bus. Bringing a book with you wherever you go means you’re always equipped to learn.” Adrian Ward, who is an Oracle ACE Associate and runs the Addidici OBIEE consultancy, affirms that in addition to reading, writing was also a crucial part of his education. Adrian says that writing anything, including “blogs, articles, books or presentations,” will give you a better understanding of the topics you are learning and compel you to keep learning new things. “If you’re writing about something, you certainly have to learn about it first!” Belén Cruz Zapata, a Mobile Software Engineer at Groupon, advises developers to “keep learning new thing.”She has first-hand experience with the benefits of blog writing, showing that writing can create opportunities for developers. Belén recounts how she came to write a book for us, saying, “I have a blog that I used to write a review about Android Studio when it was announced for the first time. Packt found my article and contacted me to write a book about it.” Recharge your batteries Sten Vesterli, Senior Principle Consultant at Scott/Tiger, says that as a developer you need “to manage your energy, and find ways to replenish it when it's running low." This is such an important skill that developers need to learn. Stenreasons that “if you have high energy, you can learn any skill and it will remain employable. If you have low energy, you will have a hard time learning something new and will be in danger of being left behind by technological changes.” Every developer will have to figure out their own recharging strategy. Sten says, “I've found that meditation and triathlons work for me, but others will have different things that give them energy.”There is no wrong way to recharge – whether it’s binge watching your favorite show, going for a run, hanging out with friends, or something else – so make sure you block out some time for you to do you. Do what works Phil Wilkins, Senior Consultant at Capgemini, urges graduates and fledgling web devs to challenge both fads and the status quo by thinking critically about the work they are doing and the tools they are using. You need to ensure that you’re not solely using a piece of tech out of habitor prioritizing novelty for novelty’s sake. Make sure that the direction you’re going is relevant and the tools you’re using are the ones best suited for the job. Phil says, “Many will consider me a heretic, but the industry is sometimes a little quick with the next shiny thing and some 'not-invented-here' thinking. I think you should challenge those around you to really understand the tools they’re using, and question whether they’re the right tools to do the job well. Reflecting on what you’re doing and challenging yourself, or being challenged by someone else, to do something better will drive better understanding and insight that can then be applied in later life.” Stay curious; ask questions Phil also advocates for developers to keep their sense of curiosity. He says, “Questioning why something is a good answer to a problem is as important as to how to answer the problem.” Phil adds that “understanding this may not make you a guru, but it will give you a foundation to work with peers in an engaging manner and set you up for future success. Ultimately IT is here to solve problems, and knowing why certain things are good answers rather than that they simply are good answers, means you stand the best chance of developing good solutions.” Network your face off Adrian Ward, who earlier emphasized the importance of writing, has another crucial piece of advice for those getting started with web development. It can be summed up in a single word: Network. You’ve probably heard it a million times already, but networking can really help you get a foot in the door. Many of Packt’s experts confirm that getting out there and connecting with people within your industry is an effective tactic for getting ahead. “Just get involved with the community,” Adrian says. There are so many ways to connect with people these days, so you can start with a method that you’re most comfortable with and then go from there. You can go to events organized by your university or college, go to conferences or local tech meet-ups, or even look for people to connect with on LinkedIn. Apply for jobs that will help you grow Robert van Mölken, Senior Integration and Cloud Specialist for AMIS, advises graduates and fledgling web devs who are looking for jobs to actively seek out employers that invest in their employees. As a developer, this means that the company has training and incentives to keep you up to date with the latest tech and ideas. “Things are changing so fast these days that you can’t sit still if you want to be relevant in two years time," Robert says. "Companies that allow their developers to go to conferences, both locally and further afield, will find that they will learn upcoming skills much faster, going beyond the point of knowledge you can get from investing in and learning from books.” Robert recommends that you, “invest some personal time to experiment with new technologies and IT innovations. Don’t fall behind on stuff just because you are comfortable with what you do every day at work. Find opportunities to speak up, to give presentation about what you learned, and share your experiences. Then you will get noticed, and a world of possibilities will open up to you.” Remember: You’ve got this Sreelatha Sankaranarayanan, Information Developer at IBM, thinks that the young developers of today have generally got it together. She says, “I think they are doing things right. They are willing to learn, explore and experiment. They have fewer inhibitions, are more confident and are willing to go all out. Good luck is all that I would like to say to them.” No developer is an island. Learn from our global author community and enjoy unlimited access to eBooks and Video Courses with a Mapt subscription.

Last year, Patrick Hamann gave a talk for Google Developers on Breaking News at 1000ms. It lays out how Patrick and his team built a 1-second web site for the Guardian, improving performance almost 10 times. I learned a lot from the talk, and I’ve summarized that below. Here’s the video: And you can browse the slides here: Web speed has come to a head recently. Facebook’s Instant Articles put speed on everyone’s radar. A news page takes 8 seconds to load, and that puts people off clicking links. Like many others, I couldn’t quite believe things had got this bad. We have fast broadband and wifi. How can a 1,000 word article take so long? So there’s a lot of discussion around the problem, but Patrick’s talk lays out many of the solutions. Here’s the keys I took from it: The problem Sites are slow, really slow. 8 seconds is normal. And yet, people really care about speed. It’s a user’s second most important feature, right after “easy to find content”. In fact, if it takes more than a second for a page to respond people start to assume the site is broken. If most pages take more than a second, people start to assume the web is broken. And we wonder why 91% of mobile impressions are in apps, not the web. The budget Patrick set a hard budget for page loads of 1 second, and measured everything against that. This is his BHAG — make the web site nearly 10x faster. But once the goal is clear, people have a habit of finding solutions. The harder the goal, the more radical the solutions people will find. Modest goals lead to modest problem solving. Next time you want to improve something, set a 10x goal, get serious about it — and let everybody’s ingenuity loose on the solution. The solution Patrick and his team’s radical solutions revolved around 4 key principles. Deliver core content first There’s a lot of stuff on a news article page, but what we really want to see is the article content. Patrick’s team got serious about the really important stuff, creating a ‘swim lane’ system. The important stuff — the core article content — was put into a fast lane, loaded first, and then the rest built around it. This made the goal more doable. The whole page didn’t need to load in 1000ms. If the core content loaded in 1s people could read it, and by the time they had the rest of the page would be ready. (Even the flimsiest Guardian article will take more than 1s to read!.) Core content should render within 1000ms Here’s the problem. To get content to the reader in 1000ms you have only 400ms to play with, because the basic network overhead takes 600ms over a good 3g connection. So to really supercharge speed, the Guardian inlined the critical CSS. For the Guardian, the critical CSS is the article formatting. The rest can come a bit later. The new site uses JavaScript to download, store, and load CSS on demand rather than leaving that decision to the browser.  From: https://speakerdeck.com/patrickhamann/breaking-news-at-1000ms-front-trends-2014 Every feature must fail gracefully Fonts are a recognizable part of the Guardian brand, important despite the overhead. But not that important. The new design fails decisively and fast when it’s right to do so: Decision tree — fallback vs. custom font. The really clever bit of the whole set up is the font JSON. Instead of downloading several font binaries, just one JSON request downloads all the fonts in base64 encoding. This means some overhead in file size, but replaces several requests with just one cachable object: A nice trick, and one you can use yourself: they made webfontjson an Open Source project. Every request should be measured The final pillar really comes down to really knowing your shit. Graph and measure EVERYTHING that affects your performance and your time-to-render budget. In addition to the internal analytics platform Opan, Patrick uses Speedcurve to monitor and report on performance against a set of benchmarks over time: Sum up For everyone… big improvements come from BIG GOALS and ingenious solutions. Be ambitious and set a budget/goal that gives great customer benefit, then work towards it. For web developers: Performance is a requirement. Everybody has to have it as a priority from day one. Take the one second web site challenge. Make that your budget, and measure, optimize, repeat. Make the core content download first, render it in the fast lane. Then build the rest around the outside. Now if that whet your appetite, watch the video. Especially if you’re more involved in web dev, I’m sure you’ll learn a lot more from it than I did! What techniques do you use to 10x your site’s performance? From 11th to 17th April save up to 70% on some of our very best web development products. It's the perfect opportunity to explore - and learn - the tools and frameworks that can help you unlock greater performance and build even better user experiences. Find them here.

In the technological era, many industries are finding new ways to carve out space for themselves. From healthcare to hospitality, rapid developments in tech have radically changed the way we do business, and adaptation is a must. The information technology industry holds a unique position in the world. With the changing market, IT support companies must also adapt to new technology more quickly than anyone else to ensure competitiveness. Decreased Individual Support, Increased Organizational Support Individual, discrete tech users are requiring less and less IT support than ever before. Every day, the human race produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – a staggering amount of information that no individual could possibly consume within a lifetime. That rate is increasing every day. With such widespread access to information, individuals are now able to find solutions with unrivaled ease and speed and the need for live, person-to-person support has decreased. Adding to the figure is the growing presence of younger generations who have grown up in a world saturated with technology. Children born in the 2000’s and later have never seen a world without smartphones, Bluetooth, and the World Wide Web. Development alongside technology not only implants a level of comfort with using technology but also with adapting to its constant changes. For the newest cohort of young adults, troubleshooting is no longer a professional task, but a household one. Alternatively, businesses require just as much support as ever. The accelerating pace of software development has opened up a new world of opportunity for organizations to optimize data management, customer support, marketing, finance, and more. But it’s also created a new, highly-competitive market where late-adopters run the risk of falling hard. Adapting to and using new information technology systems takes a highly-organized and knowledgeable support team, and that role is increasingly being outsourced outside organization walls. Companies like CITC are stepping up to provide more intensive expertise to businesses that may have, in the past, utilized in-house teams to manage IT systems.Source:Unsplash Improving Customer Service While individual tech users may need increasingly less company-provided support, they continue to expect increasingly better service. Likewise, organizations expect more from their IT support companies – faster incident response, simplified solutions, and the opportunity to troubleshoot on-the-spot. In response to these demands, IT support organizations are experimenting with modern models of support. Automation and Prediction-Based Support with Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence has become a part of everyday life for much of the world. From Google Assistant and Siri to self-driving cars, AI has offered a myriad of tools for streamlining daily tasks and simplifying our lives. It’s no surprise that developers are looking for ways to integrate Artificial Intelligence into IT support as well. Automated responses and prediction-based support offer a quick, cost-effective option that allows IT professionals to spend their time on tasks that require a more nuanced approach. However, automation of IT support comes with its own set of problems. First, AI lacks a human touch. Trying to discuss a potentially imminent problem with a bot can be a recipe for frustration, and the unreliability of problem self-reporting poses the additional risk of ineffective or inappropriate solutions. Automation also poses security risks which can be especially hazardous to industries with valuable trade secrets. Community-Based Support A second shift that has begun to take place in the IT support industry is a move towards community-based support. Crowdsourced solutions, like AI, can help carry some of the burden of smaller problems by allowing staff to focus energy on more pressing tasks. Unlike automated solutions, however, community-based support allows for human-to-human interaction and more seamless, collaborative, feedback-based troubleshooting. However, community-based support has limited applications. Crowdsourced solutions, contrary to the name, are often only the work of a few highly-qualified individuals. The turnaround for answers from a qualified source can be extensive, which is unacceptable under many circumstances. Companies offering a community-based support platform must moderate contributions and fact-check solutions, which can end up being nearly as resource intensive as traditional support services. While automation and community-based support offer new alternatives to traditional IT support for individual tech users, organizational support requires a much different approach. Organizations that hire IT support companies expect expert solutions, and dedicated staffing are a must. The Shift: Management to Adoption Software is advancing at a rapid pace. In the first quarter of 2018, there were 3,800,000 apps available for Android users and 2,000,000 for Apple. The breadth of enterprise software is just as large, with daily development in all industry sectors. Businesses are no longer able to adopt a system and stick with it - they must constantly adapt to new, better technology and seek out the most innovative solutions to compete in their industries. Source: Unsplash IT support companies must also increasingly dedicate themselves to this role. IT support is no longer a matter of technology management, but of adaptation and adoption. New IT companies bring a lot to the table here. Much like the newer generations of individual users, new companies can offer a fresh perspective on software developments and a more fluid ability to adapt to changes in the market. Older IT companies also have plenty to offer, however. Years of traditional support experience can be a priceless asset that inspires confidence from clients. All IT support organizations should focus on being able to adapt to the future of technology. This can be done by increasingly making rapid changes in software, an increasing reliance on digital technology, and transitioning to digital resource management. Additionally, support companies must be able to provide innovative solutions that strike an effective balance between automation and interaction. Ultimately, companies must realize that the future is already here and that traditional methods of service are no longer adequate for the changing landscape of tech. In Conclusion The world of technology is changing and, with it, the world of IT support. Support needs are rapidly shifting from customer service to enterprise support, and IT support companies must adapt to serve the needs of all industry sectors. Companies will need to find innovative solutions to not only provide management of technology but allow companies to adapt seamlessly into new technological advancements. This article is written by a student of New York City College of Technology. New York City College of Technology is a baccalaureate and associate degree-granting institution committed to providing broad access to high quality technological and professional education for a diverse urban population.

AngularJS is, like, so 2014. Already the rumblings have started that there are better ways of doing things. I thought it prudent to look into the future to see what libraries are on the horizon for web developers now, and in the future. 5. Famo.us “Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive.” - Walt Disney Famo.us is a clever library. It’s designed to help developers create application user interfaces that perform well; as well, in fact, as native applications. In a moment of spectacular out-of-the-box thinking, Famo.us brings with it its own rendering engine to replace the engine that browsers supply. To get the increase in performance from HTML5 apps that they wanted, Famo.us looked at which tech does rendering best, namely game technologies, such as Unity and Unreal Engine.  CSS is moved into the framework and written in JavaScript instead. It makes transformations and animations quicker. It’s a new way of thinking for web developers, so you best dust off the Unity Rendering tutorials… Famo.us makes things running in the browser as sleek as they’re likely to be over the next few years, and it’s massively exciting for web developers. 4. Ractive “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” - Carl Jung Manipulating the Document Object Model (which ties together all the webpages we visit) has been the major foe of web developers for years. Mootools, YUI, jQuery, AngularJS, Famo.us, and everything between have offered developers productivity solutions to enable them to manipulate the DOM to their client’s needs in a more expedient manner. One of the latest libraries to help DOM manipulators at large is Ractive.js, developed by the team at The Guardian (well, mainly one guy – Rich Harris). Its focus remains on UI, so while it borrows heavily from Angular (it was initially called AngularBars), it’s a simpler tool at heart. Or at least, it approaches the problems of DOM manipulation in as simple a way as possible. Ractive is part of the reactive programming direction that JavaScript (and programming, generally) seems to be heading in at the moment. 3. DC.js “A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.” ― Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet DC.js, borrowing heavily from both D3 and Crossfilter, enables you to visualize linked data through reactive (a theme developing in this list) charts. I could try and explain the benefits in text, but sometimes, it’s worth just going to have a play around (after you’ve finished this post). It uses D3 for the visualization bit, so everything’s in SVG, and uses Crossfilter to handle the underlying linkage of data. For a world of growing data, it provides users with immediate and actionable insight, and is well worth a look. This is the future of data visualization on the web. 2. Lo-dash "The true crime fighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt, Robin." - Batman There’s something appealing about a utility belt; something that’s called to all walks of life, from builders to Batman, since man had more than one tool at his disposal. Lo-dash, and Underscore.js that came before it, is no different. It’s a library of useful JavaScript functions that abstract some of the pain away of JS development, whilst boosting performance over Underscore.js. It’s actually based around Underscore, which at the time of writing is the most depended upon library used in Node, but builds on the good parts, and gets rid of the not so good. Lo-dash will take over from Underscore in the near future. Watch this space. 1. Polymer “We are dwarfs astride the shoulders of giants. We master their wisdom and move beyond it. Due to their wisdom we grow wise and are able to say all that we say, but not because we are greater than they.” - Isaiah di Trani As with a lot of things, rather than trying to reinvent solutions to existing problems, Google is trying to just reinvent the things that lead to the problem. Web Components is a W3 standard that’s going to change the way we build web applications for the better, and Polymer is the framework that allows you to build these Web Components now. Web Components envision a world where, as a developer, you can select a component from the massive developer shelf of the Internet, call it, and use it without any issues. Polymer provides access to these components; UI components such as a clock – JavaScript that’s beyond my ability to write at least, and a time-sink for normal JS developers – can be called with: <polymer-ui-clock></polymer-ui-clock> Which gives you a pretty clock that you can actually go and customize further if you want. Essentially, they put you in a dialog with the larger development world, no longer needing to craft solutions for your single project; you can use and reuse components that others have developed. It allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s still some way off standardization, but it’s going to redefine what application development means for a lot of people, and enable a wider range applications to be created quickly and efficiently. “There's always a bigger fish.” - Qui-Gon Jin There will always be a new challenger, an older guard, and a bigger fish, but these libraries represent the continually changing face of web development. For now, at least!

Consider this: in the past year cyber thieves have stolen $81m from the central bank of Bangladesh, derailed Verizon's $4.8 billion takeover of Yahoo, and even allegedly interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Away from the headlines, a black market in computerized extortion, hacking-for-hire and stolen digital goods is booming. The problem is about to get worse, especially as computers become increasingly entwined with physical objects and vulnerable human bodies thanks to the Internet of Things and the innovations of embedded systems. A recent survey has once again highlighted the urgent need for UK business to take cyber security more seriously. The survey found that 65% of companies don’t have any security solutions deployed onto their mobile devices, and 68% of companies do not have an awareness program aimed at employees of all levels to ensure they are cyber aware. In addition to this, the survey found that 76% of companies still don’t have controls in place to detect and prevent zero-day/unknown malware entering their organizations, and 74% don’t have an incident management process established to respond to cyber incidents and prevent reoccurrences. What are the most common types of data breaches? The most common attack is still a structured query language (SQL) injection. SQL injections feature heavily in breaches of entire systems because when there is a SQL injection vulnerability, it provides the attacker with access to the entire database. Why is it common for large companies to have these types of errors?  There are a number of factors. One is that companies are always very cost conscious, so they’re always trying to do things on a budget in terms of the development cost. What that often means is that they’re getting under-skilled people. It doesn’t really cost anything more to build code that’s resilient to SQL injection. The developers building it have got to know how it works. For example, if you’re offshoring to the cheapest possible rates in another country, you’re probably going to get inexperienced people of very minimal security prowess.  Companies generally don’t tend to take it seriously until after they’ve had a bad incident. You can’t miss it. It’s all over the news every single day about different security incidents, but until it actually happens to an organization, the penny just doesn’t seem to drop. Leaving the windows open  This is not a counsel of despair. The risk from fraud, car accidents, and the weather can never be eliminated completely either. But societies have developed ways of managing such risk — from government regulation to the use of legal liability and insurance to create incentives for safer behavior.  Start with regulation. Government’s first priority is to refrain from making the situation worse. Terrorist attacks, like the ones in St Petersburg and London, often spark calls for encryption to be weakened so that the security services can better monitor what individuals are up to. But it is impossible to weaken encryption for terrorists alone. The same protection that guards messaging programs like WhatsApp also guard bank transactions and online identities. Computer security is best served by encryption that is strong for everyone.  The next priority is setting basic product regulations. A lack of expertise will always hamper the ability of users of computers to protect themselves. So governments should promote “public health” for computing. They could insist that Internet-connected gizmos be updated with fixes when flaws are found. They could force users to change default usernames and passwords. Reporting laws, already in force in some American states, can oblige companies to disclose when they or their products are hacked. That encourages them to fix a problem instead of burying it. What are the best ways for businesses to prevent cyber attacks?  There are a number of different ways of looking at it. Arguably, the most fundamental thing that makes a big difference for security is the training of technology professionals. If you’re a business owner, ensuring that and you’ve got people working for you who are building these systems, making sure they’re adequately trained and equipped is essential.  Data breaches are often related to coding errors. A perfect example is an Indian pathology lab, which had 43,000 pathology reports on individuals leaked publically. The individual who built the lab’s security system was entirely unequipped. Though it may not be the only solution, a good start in improving cyber security is ensuring that there is investment in the development of the people creating the code.Let us know where you’d start!  About the Author  Hari Vignesh Jayapalan is a Google Certified Android app developer, IDF Certified UI & UX Professional, street magician, fitness freak, technology enthusiast, and wannabe entrepreneur. He can be found on Twitter @HariofSpades.