Kids should code

When you talk about teaching language skills to children, it’s normally a spoken language such as English or Spanish that comes to mind. What about the “other” languages that never get spoken? Coding is a series of different languages that computers can read and translate into amazing creations and innovations.

It’s for this reason that it should be taught to kids at an early age. Imagine a generation where most adults knew at least one computer language. What could be accomplished? Would it translate into more productivity? Would people be happier? We may never know. Then again, it may something that’s possible right around the corner. Here’s the infographic, courtesy of Kodable.

Before taking over the world, 14-yr old prodigy gives advice on iOS programming

Don’t be fooled. 14-year old Santiago Gonzalez may seem like your average mild-mannered young teen who is probably owning you on Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, but his skills go well beyond your standard American youth. He programs. He builds apps. Cool apps. Is thnkrtv correct in speculating that he might be the next Steve Jobs?

Keep in mind, he’s fluent in a dozen program language, he is on pace to earn his master’s degree at the Colorado School of Mines before turning 18, and he dreams in code. At this rate, he’ll be taking over the world before he reaches legal drinking age.

What age did professional programmers start?

Computer programming is a rapidly growing field. With 274 million people with Internet access in the U.S. and nearly half of all adults in America have smartphones, the demand for applications and other programs is only increasing. As the demand increases, more students are getting into computer programming.

Jobs in many areas are drying up with the decline in the economy, but the job field for computer programmers is still going strong. According to the Princeton Review, Computer Science makes their top ten list of most popular college majors. When people discuss their job fields or degrees, a question often asked is, “How did you get interested in that?” A lot of times, people can trace their interest in a particular field all the way back to young adulthood and the same is true with computer programmers

Computer classes in middle or high school help some programmers get started. For a long time, Computer Science classes were mostly geared towards teaching kids how to operate computers. After all, just 15 years ago, only 36 percent of U.S. households had a computer. Now, more than 80 percent of households have a personal computer. Since most kids start using computers at much younger ages, Computer Science classes have evolved to teaching more complex subject matter, so students have the opportunity to learn programming. A lot of kids don’t wait until they’re hired by a company to put those skills to use, either. Some kids are developing iPhone apps and making money before they’re even hold enough to have a part-time job. For example, 14-year-old Robert Nay developed the iPhone app Bubble Ball that had more than 2 million downloads—it certainly won’t be difficult for Nay to pinpoint where he got his start in a few years.

Many programmers get their start during college. Even though Computer Science degrees are increasing in popularity, not all programmers make it out of college before they hit it big. Nearly everyone knows of Mark Zuckerburg, the Facebook creator who launched his professional career from his dorm room before he started his junior year of college. Even though Zuckerburg’s story is rare, many professional programmers got started just like he did—by developing programs in their dorm rooms.

Some people don’t get started in programming until they’re older. While a lot of professional programmers got their start in their early teens, creating games or applications, this doesn’t mean that someone can’t learn later. There are many websites available that people can go to if they want to learn programming. Many tutorials are free or very cheap, so this is something people can learn in their downtime without breaking the bank. What may start out as a hobby can be lucrative enough to eventually turn into a full-time job. For example, Neil Clark Warren started the dating site eHarmony when he was 66 years old. A former psychologist, Warren shows that being professional programming isn’t limited only to people who got an early start.

How to create an intuitive drill-down interface?

What happens when a stream of water hits a big enough obstacle? It moves towards right or left to pass over the blockage. Same thing happens to your audiences when they face dashboard or presentations on your site and fail to make anything out of them.

We are talking specifically about drill-down charts here. They are pretty intuitive tools to make your reports and dashboard easier to grasp. However, the same tool can break your neck if you don’t use it with intelligence.

Here, we explain how to make drill-down charts more intuitive and least obnoxious for all your reports and dashboards.

1. Understand the data thoroughly

Get to the core of the data. What you wish to plot using the drill-down charts? Is it sales figures? Or, is it category-wise production numbers?

Say, you are trying to prepare a chart on periodic productivity statistics for your workers. How different periods will drill down? Would you allow from yearly to quarterly to monthly? Or, will it be straight from yearly to monthly? How far categorized your data is? What are the categories you want to plot and at what interval?

You need clear answers to many of these questions. In case, you don’t have answers sit again with your data. Never start working on drop-down charts without them. Once you are sure, step out to next level.

2. Understand what chart type is needed at each level

What type of charts you need to use in drop-downs? It’s a common question we face and answer depends on your analytical requirement.

Say, you need to present total sales over a period of 5 years. You have monthly level sales number too, which you need to plot as drop down chart from yearly chart. Annual sales figures are for visual understanding and periodic comparison. So, you can start with solid columns. You’ll get 5 columns for sales across the years. From each yearly column, you want to plot monthly trend.

At monthly level, you need to present the trend. With columns, trend won’t be easier to comprehend visibly. Solution is line-charts. Lines offer excellent visuals of trending data. So, depending on your analytic need you can choose from column, line, pie and other few chart types.

However, when you have same analytical need across different categories it’s better to use similar chart type. With same chart types you get a uniform style throughout your report. Too many experiments with chart type often cause detraction too.

3. How much you should stuff your chart?

Say, you are dealing with time-series data. How many of data-set are there in a single interval? Similarly, for category-wise charts, you must know size of category set. It helps to keep your chart clutter-free. Too many data-points within a cramped chart create visual nausea. Ensure that you have allotted enough free space to make things visually clean and pleasing. After all, clean chart helps neat interpretation.

4. Clearly indicate the chart has drill-down

This is funny but very common mistake we do with drop-down charts. Often audience passes through drop-down charts without knowing their usability. Unless it’s written clearly, it is not easy to differentiate a drop down from normal charts. So, you must always clearly mention.

You can use top free space to clearly indicate that user can drill down into the chart. Do you suspect people may not know how to drill down? In that case; you can do with “Click on a column to drill-down to monthly sales in the chart below”.

However, things will get complex when you’ll deal with more categories and complex charting.

Say, you have a drill down chart, where child chart opens up by side of the parent chart or below the parent chart. Simple “point your cursor on specific column” won’t work here. You’ll need more descriptive message or instruction.

For example, you need to prepare a dashboard, where you have total revenue numbers for different categories. There again you have further drop down from annual revenue figures to liner trend charts for months. You will need to give a caption like “Please select category to see category-wise sales and drop down further to monthly line chart”.

5. Use breadcrumb-style captions

Breadcrumbs are a navigation tools primarily used in websites, apps and documents. It helps to keep track of site map. Where you are and how you can jump to somewhere else.

On simplistic single chart interface, nobody gets lost. However, with too many drop-down charts, it is quite is easy to lose track. Breadcrumb style can be useful here with central links to different categories. However, breadcrumbs are not very common with time-series data. You won’t see much drop-down charts with breadcrumb link flow from year to quarter to month. Category-wise charts are more with breadcrumb style. Get an insight into interactive JavaScript Charts for your web pages and web applications by FusionCharts.com

Modern language wars: PHP vs python vs ruby

There are several questions that programmers must answer when deciding on their language of choice. Depending on who you ask, the passions towards one language or another can spark debates, even “nerd fights” as can be found in some videos (we won’t like them here but you can find them on YouTube).

The three generally-recognized “modern languages” combine many aspects from past languages and attempt to solve the problems that they had. There is no clear winner, as certain needs can be more easily filled with different languages. PHP holds Wikipedia and Facebook in their camp. Python was the language of choice for Twitter and Hulu. Ruby powers YouTube and Google.

What are you building? That’s the real question.

This infographic by Udemy should come in handy for those considering learning a language or those who already know one or more and are deciding on which is best for their current projects. Click to enlarge.

(Via: Udemy. H/T: Florence Alabama Used Cars)

Android Developer Relations introduces training to help build better apps

The Android Developers blog announced that they are launching a beta of Android Training, “a collection of classes that we hope will help you to build better Android apps.”

As the battle between Android and iOS continues to expand and with Microsoft creeping up slowly behind them, the need for better apps is high. It seems that everyone, even Microsoft, have enough apps. Android is hoping to help developers build the best apps available through this training.

With resources on topics ranging from Implementing Adaptive UI Flows to Advertising without Compromising User Experience, Google hopes that by creating a collaborative atmosphere within their platform, it will continue to paint Apple’s as obtuse and restrictive. Whether that’s true or not is a question for developers themselves who have worked with the various mobile platforms, but it’s the subtle insinuation behind nearly everything that Google (and Microsoft) say when discussing the differences between developing on their platform and iOS.

Are You Human? CAPTCHA’s Many Ways of Asking the Same Question

Are you human? For most of you, hopefully, the answer is yes. Throughout the years, CAPTCHA has provided us with a number of ways to answer the same question. Why? Well, the answer is in the question: to make sure that you are a living, breathing, real human being. Why would a website want to verify this? To prevent spam, of course.

Since the dawn of the internet, spammers have created, used, and sold automated software programs to do their dirty work. Your average spammer is a pretty busy guy, he can’t be bothered to actually take the time to type out a blog comment, forum post, and/or status update to explain the benefits of Viagra to you. No, no… his schedule is much too hectic.

CAPTCHA forms, originally developed by Carnegie Mellon researchers and professors in 2000, provided webmasters with a solution to the spam that plagued their sites. By generating an image containing a string of random, warped characters, CAPTCHA forms stopped automated spam bots in their tracks… for a time, at least.

Spammers, being the innovative people that they are, quickly adapted their automation software to bypass their new nemesis. How? By programming their software to remove a CAPTCHA’s background, separate and identify individual characters, and ultimately type in the displayed character string — in effect, completely bypassing the CAPTCHA.

Spam, without a doubt, makes for a negative visitor experience on any given website. CAPTCHAs, while often effective in fighting spam, are also an annoyance for visitors. The struggle to make CAPTCHAs the lesser of two evils has resulted in multiple iterations of CAPTCHA forms. Let’s take a look at how developers have attempted to balance user-friendliness with site security over the years, starting at the beginning.

Early and “Improved” CAPTCHAs

Early CAPTCHAs used the EZ-Gimpy program to generate and display the warped character strings we’ve all come to know and love. Effective at the time, Yahoo used these early iterations of CAPTCHA to prevent automated account creation. Realizing the imperfections in early CAPTCHAs, developers later moved to “improved” CAPTCHAs to provide a more user-friendly and secure form. These improvements included higher contrast for increased readability, and varying fonts between characters for enhanced security. While these were definite improvements at the time, this variety of CAPTCHA also proved to be easily crackable.

Modern CAPTCHAs

Moving forward, modern CAPTCHAs focused less on background noise, and more on making the individual characters harder to separate. This was accomplished by striking an angled line through the character string, making it exceptionally more difficult for automated bots to segment and identify characters. One of the most common versions of modern CAPTCHAs is Google’s reCAPTCHA. While this renders simple spam software useless, advanced programs can still bypass these forms with moderate success rates.

Animated CAPTCHAs

As you might assume by their name, animated CAPTCHAs display the standard CAPTCHA text string in an animation. Being an animated GIF, the image contains multiple frames that (when combined) display in a fashion that is easily readable by humans. These CAPTCHAs attempt to increase security by spreading the characters out over multiple frames, never displaying letters in the same frame. This makes it more difficult to crack, but hardly impossible. Spammers can break these CAPTCHAs with relative ease, and as a result, animated CAPTCHAs are rarely used.

ASCII CAPTCHAs

Using various characters to form a visual display of a random text string, ASCII CAPTCHAs attempt to fool automated software. While this is sound in theory, it is not very effective in practice. Not only are ASCII CAPTCHAs capable of being bypassed by bots, they have also been proven confusing to site visitors.

Reverse CAPTCHAs

Another tricky type of CAPTCHA is the reverse CAPTCHA. Attempting to use “reverse psychology” on automated spam programs, reverse CAPTCHAs ask visitors to leave the CAPTCHA field blank. Again, while this may sound good in theory, its effectiveness is marginal and may be confusing to the less than savvy web surfer.

Image Recognition CAPTCHAs

Essentially reinventing the standard character string that has defined CAPTCHAs from the start, image recognition CAPTCHAs ask users to identify a specific image within an image gallery. Using a command such as, “Click the cat,” humans are able to easily pass through the CAPTCHA without typing anything in. Image recognition CAPTCHAs are a definite improvement in usability, but also in security. Because image CAPTCHAs, such as the ones being provided by Confident CAPTCHA, use a dynamic gallery of images and questions, it makes cracking these forms nearly impossible (at the time being, at least). Although this is an obvious improvement over traditional forms, you better believe that the companies providing image recognition CAPTCHAs are cashing in on the recent trend of CAPTCHA advertising.

3D CAPTCHAs

There are a couple of ways that 3D CAPTCHAs have been used as a solution to spam. Early versions were formed by raising a text string out of a distorted background, creating a 3 dimensional effect. This type of CAPTCHA was often used in the past, but hasn’t seen much use lately. Recently, 3D CAPTCHAs have taken on a new form, similar to image recognition CAPTCHAs. This variety of 3D CAPTCHA shows the visitor an image containing 3D objects, and asks users to identify the objects from either a gallery of images. Some forms of 3D CAPTCHAs give users a 3D image and ask them to identify specific portions of the it using corresponding letter labels. Though this is a highly secure form of CAPTCHA, it is also a major annoyance, making it impractical for widespread use.

Problem Solving CAPTCHAs

Depending on the approach taken when using a problem solving CAPTCHA, their security can either be highly effective, or virtually useless. A simple problem solving CAPTCHA may ask a question such as, “What is 2 + 2?” in text. While this is (hopefully) easy for most humans to figure out, it’s not much of a struggle for computers either. If you need proof, go ahead and open up your Windows calculator.

More complex problem solving CAPTCHAs, however, prove to be the most secure measure to take in preventing spam. An image containing a complex algebra equation would require the automation software to segment the individual numbers, letters, and symbols, identify them, and calculate the equation. This goes beyond simple addition or subtraction problems. In reality, if a website is using a CAPTCHA similar to this, the programmer behind the bot is most likely going to rule out your site as a waste of time as oppose to adapting their software to bypass it.

Problem solving CAPTCHAs can take on nearly any form imaginable from a question like, “What color is the sky?” to complex algebraic equations to word puzzles. The problem with these problem solving CAPTCHAs is that if the problem is too simple, it is easily cracked by spamming software. If the problem is too complicated, 99 percent of people confronted with the CAPTCHA are going to decide that it’s not worth the time or energy to leave a comment or make an account on the forum, blog, or any other kind of website using it.

Making the perfect CAPTCHA all boils down to creating the perfect balance between security and user-friendliness. There is wide variety of CAPTCHA forms because not a single type has got it right just yet. In fact, it may be impossible to obtain the ideal balance of spam protection and usability. With services like Decaptcher that provide spammers with dedicated human CAPTCHA solver (what a terrible job), spammers can essentially bypass any CAPTCHA that they please, for a price of course.

If you ask me, the best form of CAPTCHA currently available is of the image recognition variety. Yes, spammers can still bypass these CAPTCHAs by outsourcing the “work” to a CAPTCHA solver overseas, but at this time, software alone cannot crack them. Besides, at least you have the comfort of knowing the spammers are paying for their annoying male enhancement comments out of their own pocket.

Security aside, image recognition CAPTCHAs provide the best user experience. No longer will you or I be forced to lean forward in our chair to decipher and type out a nonsensical string of text to prove our humanity. The obvious downside, of course, is the fact that advertisements will be displayed within the dynamic image gallery. Is it worth the tradeoff?

Security can be tested, but measures of usability vary from person to person. What kind of CAPTCHA do you prefer?