I have several post about the PronounceMe project experiments - automatic video and voice generator for English learners. If you missed previous posts please review #pronounceMe for more information about the project, ideas behind and some statistics. In this post I'd focus on the technical implementation with some diagrams and noticeable code snippets.
Coding
Programming and everything around
Functional Kotlin part 4: collections manipulation
This is a part 4 of the #kotlin-showoff series and it's going to be about the standard functions over the collections(mostly iterables to be precise) allowing developer to express data modification in the clean and functional way.
General convention
Although one might think that kotlin has inherited all the base collection types from the Java it's not quite true. Kotlin transparently maps existing Java collections into the Kotlin by using some tricks such as typealiasing. Collections hierarchy in Kotlin make code even more safer by imposing separation between mutable and immutable data structures. Take a look on the interfaces diagram:
Project update: Alexa London Bus Stop
A while ago I have published post about the first skill for Alexa I developed. Personally I use it since then practically every day and I found it very useful. I didn't even bother to check analytics since, well, it does work for me and I expected people to use it as well if it's useful.
Thanks to my wife, I recently learnt London Bus Stop skill:
- still in the top 30 skills in the area because I'm receiving $100 credit for AWS every month;
- it's not listed anymore! That fact slipped through the cracks!
Functional kotlin part 3: scoping functions
In
For folks who got lost on the word "extension functions" - it's a way to attach a function or property to the instances of the existing classes. For example, val d = 10.twice()It's very much like Utiltwice(int) but done in a very clean way. Visually it looks like you're calling a member of the class, but in reality, the compiler calls your function passing receiver as an argument.
Functional kotlin part 2: elvis operator
Continuing series of posts #kotlin-showoff about functional constructions in kotlin I want to
Essentially, elvis operator lvalue ?: rexpression is returning left value if it's not null or executes rexpression otherwise. The crazy thing about kotlin is most of the constructions are expressions and that gives another way to express business logic.
Functional kotlin part 1: safe calls
For the seasoned Java
This is a first of this series of posts unioned by tag #kotlin-showoff
Presentation – GCP APIs with kotlin
I was invited for the talk as part of kotlin/everywhere at GDG Cloud London meetup on June 8th 2019. Unlike previous talks in this one I focused on the live coding part after brief intro into the language.
The demo project I prepared is a web site allowing user to upload pictures into GCP Storage, automatically annotate content using Vision API, synthesise voice which describes content of the image.
Dynamically typed languages are selling snake oil
I truly believe they are
I hear the same statements and misunderstandings over and over again from people who like dynamically typed languages. Obliviously, that spikes a lot of endless conversations and fights between two camps.
Generally, I'm avoiding conversations about static vs dynamic typing but every once in the while I drifted into that and hear the same statements, all the time. Often both sides just aren't able to listen to each other and thus conversation end up in the dead end.
Kotlin Presentation – GDG Reading Meetup @ Spaces, Reading 21 Feb 2019
Just returned from meetup where I had a talk about kotlin language - "Why Kotlin? Why now?"
The talk took place in Spaces, Reading on 21st of February 2019 and was organised by Google Developer Group Reading, namely by Chris Guest and his team.
In this talk, I highlighted reasons for learning one more language, guided through most noticeable features. In the second part, we had a live demo - kwitter REST web server.
I found people there were very friendly, it feels like they know each other for a long time. Really nice atmosphere and good vibes!
JavaScript vs logic
In programming world we are working with logic. Everything relies on it, it's a fundamental part of computers.
If we do 3+4 we always expect to get 7. Call to createDatabase shall not destroy database. As experience grows developer grasps more and more concepts and approaches because of the past experience and logic. It's very important part of programming ecosystem which helps to grow skill set without getting another Masters degree or attending classes/courses
People ended up with very common concepts and gave them names - algorithms, design patterns, data types, naming conventions.