In this post, I will be talking about my favorite technologies and where they may be more usefully applicable. In my time during OSU, I’ve been fortunate to be exposed to a variety of programming languages and frameworks. Although I am by no means an expert on any of these, I’ve learned where different ones have been the most helpful for me, personally and would love to share that.
Getting Started
Starting out in programming is a challenge in and of itself, so it’s definitely great if the technology being used doesn’t get in the way.
For those who are just starting out creating a web application, I would recommend the following:
Front-end: ReactJS
Backend : nodeJS
Prior to starting my program at OSU, I picked up these languages in order to help me create a basic web application. One of the most helpful things about them is the large amount of documentation available online introducing these to beginners and showing beginners how to link them up in a working web application. One good example is: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-create-a-react-app-with-a-node-backend-the-complete-guide/
One of the best things about JavaScript-based frameworks is that they are very intuitive and the language is handling a lot of the different components that are more challenging to do manually (i.e. memory allocation, trash collection).
Data Structures and Algorithms
I have a strong preference when I have interviewed for DS&A problems to work in Python. Python is the introductory language that we learned in my introduction and intermediate CS classes here at OSU, as well as the one that I preferred to use during the intro to data structures and advanced algorithm classes.
The best thing about Python for me has been it’s easy to code in it — fast! The syntax is quite simple and almost similar to pseudocode. It is easy also very easy to learn. Similar to JS, a lot of the more complicated handling is done behind the scenes. However, it can also be used for object-oriented development so it is quite versatile.
Python is also very good because of it’s usefulness in data science. In my current project which I will cover in future posts, we are building a machine learning model and working with a data pipeline. We are doing this using Python.
I have to admit, Python is probably my favorite language 🙂 When I was interviewing for jobs, I was very attracted to teams that did a lot of build in Python even though I think it may not be the fastest for scalability.
Low-Level
One of the most challenging but interesting classes that I took at OSU was Assembly Language. I had no idea that when I was writing a simple if statement or declaring a variable, so much was going on behind the scenes in terms of stacks and re-direction — and I found out while implementing simple programs in MASM! This class made me realize that it’s actually pretty interesting to know what’s going on under the hood. This is what brought my interest in C. In my OS class, C was the main language that I had used. It shared some similarities to C++ which I used in prior classes but was even more low-level than what I was used to – I couldn’t declare a string!
The great thing about C is the many libraries with built-in functions and how efficiently the code can run for a multiple of applications. It also did offer dynamic memory allocation. Working close to the hardware for doing multi-threading and infra was a very useful skill to pick up for me even though it was challenging.
Out of all the languages I learned, I think C’s closeness to the hardware and great portability potentially make it the most useful that I’ve learned. I hope I can take what was taught in the OSU classes to my future career writing programs in lower-level languages.
Thanks for exploring some of my favorite technologies with me! See you next week 🙂
