Advent of Code is an annual event featuring Christmas-themed puzzles that are meant to be solved with code. Since 2015, tens of thousands of programmers have tackled the new puzzles that appear every day from December 1 through 25 at the stroke of midnight (U.S. Eastern standard time).
If you’ve been working on the same sort of programming problems day in and day out and feel that you’re in a coding rut, Advent of Code is a great way to sharpen your skills. If you’re learning a new programming language, Advent of Code’s challenges are a great way to discover the in and outs of your new language. If you’re interviewing for a developer position and a coding exercise is part of the process, Advent of Code can help prepare you.
In the video, I’ll walk you through the solutions for Day 1 of the 2015 and 2020 Advent of Code in Python. Combined with my Advent of Code article on the Auth0 by Okta blog, which covers even more challenges, it should help you get started with this year’s Advent of Code!
My newest article on the Auth0 Developer Blog is a two-part that covers adding authentication to Android apps built using the Jetpack Compose UI framework!
Here are the two parts:
Jetpack Compose Basics: An introduction to Jetpack Compose through building a single-screen app with composable functions and managing state the Jetpack Compose Way.
The main talk will feature André Crabb — a “once digital nomad settled in Tampa” — talking about “mobile app development, its evolution, and life as a digital nomad.” His talk outline includes:
Evolution of mobile development
Existing frameworks
Android
iOS
React Native + Expo
Other frameworks, but in not as great in detail as the ones above
Lifestyle of a digital nomad
Here’s the schedule:
6:00 – 6:30 pm: Networking
6:30 – 7:00pm: Intro slides + quick game
7:00 – 7:30 pm: Lightning talks, 5-10 minute talks anyone can come speak
7:30 – 9:00 pm – Main talk + networking time
This meetup will take place at USF in the “Education Building,” a.k.a. EDU 115, located on 4110 USF Apple Drive:
If you did that and actually competed with tik tok that’d be hilarious
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 31, 2022
Vine started as its own company in June 2012, Twitter acquired it in October 2012, and its first official release was in January 2013. Twitter announced that it would discontinue Vine in October 2016 and disabled all uploads.
If Vine could be turned into a TikTok competitor as YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson suggests, it could help counter TikTok’s serioussecurityissues and help give Twitter a much-needed image boost.
Here’s the problem:
Musk has asked engineers to look at the old code. This would be a sensible thing if we were dealing with a hardware, mechanical, or physical artifact, but Vine is software. Even more challenging is the fact that it’s mobile software. That was first released in 2012 and last updated in 2016.
As software developer and product manager Sara Beykpour put it (and on Twitter, no less!):
some free advice, from someone who worked at Vine and also led the shutdown of Vine.
This code is 6+ years old. Some of it is 10+. You don’t want to look there. If you want to revive Vine, you should start over.
I have no inside knowledge of Vine, but I’d be willing to bet that the Android and iOS Vine apps were probably written as native apps. React Native wasn’t out until 2015, and every other cross-platform solution at the time (including Xamarin) wouldn’t have been up to the task.
In 2012, when Vine began, that would mean:
On Android: writing the app in Java using Eclipse (the stable 1.0 version of Android Studio wouldn’t come out until December 2014).
On iOS: writing the app in Objective-C, quite possibly using NIBs instead of storyboards.
Simply put — ancient stuff, at least by the standards of mobile development. While there are still some Java-based Android and Objective-C-based iOS projects out there, the majority of the top apps in the stores are written in either Kotlin or Swift.
It would be a good idea to have a handful of developers look over the old Vine code for an audit. There’s a chance that there might be a few useful ideas in there, possibly in feature switches that never got turned on. However, that old code will probably be useless as a starting point to build on in the short timeframe that Musk suggests for the relaunch of Vine.
C’mon, how many programming tutorial videos have a scene like this?
If you’re making an iOS app, the odds are pretty good that sooner or later, you’re going to have to integrate authentication — login and logout — into it. I show you how to do that with Auth0 in both a video…
…as well as a matching two-part article series that walks you through the process:
Organized by Kate and Greg Leonardo, Tampa Code Camp has been a local tech tradition for years. While it’s been the de facto local conference for people building on Microsoft/.NET/Azure technologies, it goes beyond that to include Open Source, data science, AI/ML, and soft skills sessions. (My own first presentation at Tampa Code Camp was in 2016, when I presented an introduction to React.)
Tampa Code Camp 2022 took place at Keiser University Tampa, who’ve been gracious enough to make their space available a venue for tech events with 100 people or more for the past few years, including Tampa Code Camp and the BarCamp Tampa Bay unconference. They have a spacious lobby that makes for a great reception/registration and sponsor booth hall, a good-sized auditorium for opening keynotes and lunches (made even better by a patio area), and classrooms of all sizes to accommodate all sorts of talks, each one with a reliable audiovisual setup for presenters.
Some of Tampa Code Camp 2022’s presentations
I was so busy either prepping for my presentation, presenting, or just chatting with people that I took all of two photos. Luckily, a number of people who were there took some and posted them on Twitter; I’ve shared them below and they’re linked to their source.
Here’s the opening keynote, given by co-organizer Greg Leonardo, who talked about the unexpected (and often untold) consequences of moving your back end from on-premises to the cloud, often known as the “lift-and-shift.” There are good reasons to move to the cloud, but the rationale (or more accurately, sales pitch) of cost savings has been oversold — in fact, there’s often a cost increase.
Photo by Yours Truly.
Another key message from the opening keynote: running things on the cloud isn’t simply a matter of “our old stuff, but now on someone else’s servers.” It often requires a different approach and some re-thinking about how you do implementation and architecture. Some of the things you did when your servers were on-prem can be much worse when moved to the cloud. Watch out for these “onions in the varnish!”
After Sam’s presentation, I raced to my room to give my talk, Build cross-platform visual novels, simulations, and games with Ren’Py, where I walked the group through the development of a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style infosec training manual and a turn-based “Florida Man” RPG-style combat game:
While I was talking about Ren’Py development, Art Garcia was a couple of rooms over, giving his presentation, Azure DevOps APIs: Things you can do with the APIs, where he covered ways to do things that you can’t do using the Azure DevOps UI, but can if you use PowerShell, the APIs, and some tricks that aren’t well-documented.
I’d like to thank Tampa Code Camp for not just providing a free lunch (and breakfast coffee and donuts — much apprecated!), but for estimating high in order to ensure that everybody could get a free lunch. It’s little touches like these that add to these events.
I don’t have a photo for Russ Fustino’s session, Web3 – Blockchain Myths for Developers, but we attended that one. Russ has been a local fixture on the tech scene ever since I’ve lived here (nearly a decade!) and we definitely want to catch him. His brother Gary (also a tech scene regular) recorded video of the session, so it should be online soon.
After that, Anitra Pavka gave her talk, Manage your manager for fun, profit, and career success, which covered the valuable, vital, yet often-overlooked topic of working with the one person who has control of half your weekday waking life:
Photo by Yours Truly.
At the end of the day came Joey Hernandez’Cyber Incident Response Exercise – From Tech to Exec talk — an excellent topic, because so many companies get this wrong for a multitude of reasons. He talked about TTXs — tabletop exercises, which in cybersecurity are preparedness exercises where you go through the steps of a simulated security incident.
And he came here from Atlanta to give his talks. I think the Azure team should at least send him some of their nicer swag for doing all this work on their behalf.
Events like this don’t happen without sponsors. First, thanks to Keiser University Tampa for providing a venue!
Events like this go even better when the presenters get a chance to catch up beforehand, hence the long-standing tradition of a speaker dinner. Once again, it happened at the always-reliable, always-fun Tampa Joe’s. Thanks for the food and drinks!
Starbucks was the coffee sponsor. Free coffee? Bless you.
Photo via Leah Parrott.
Thanks to Pomeroy for helping make Tampa Code Camp 2022 happen, and for providing one of the raffle prizes: a Meta Quest 2 VR rig!
Photo via Leah Parrott.
Pomeroy also provided some swag that I needed:
Photo via Leah Parrott.
Photo via Leah Parrott.
Algorand also had a table, and when Russ wasn’t giving his Algorand presentation, he was at the Algorand table, and he answered a number of my questions and hooked us up with nice T-shirts. Thanks, Algorand!
And finally, I’d like to thank Webonology — which is also Greg’s company — for being a sponsor and contributing the grand prize, an Xbox Series X!
Photo via Kate Leonardo.
Please check out these sponsors. They do great work, they supported this great event, and they’re helping to build the Tampa Bay tech scene!
Tech scenes don’t happen by themselves — they need YOU!
What makes a tech scene?
In the end, it boils down to a single factor: techies who take part in building a tech community. There are cities out there with sizable populations of techies that aren’t tech hubs — these are places without people who help build a tech community. There are also smaller places with smaller numbers of techies but have a vibrant tech scene, and these are the places with a handful of active organizers and people who show up for tech events.
Among these active organizers are Kate and Greg Leonardo, who’ve been consistently stepping up and doing the (often, but not always) thankless work of putting together events like Tampa Code Camp and upcoming events for 2023. Thank you, Kate and Greg, for everything you do for the Tampa Tech Scene!
