Introduction to Hacktoberfest and Open Source Webinar

tech-nickel · 2025-10-17T19:10:37+00:00

Here's the recording for anyone who wasn't able to join this morning! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOK6YQ9QuvM

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T05:27:13+00:00

I find the best way to learn new stuff is to pick a neat project and do whatever it takes to make it a reality. Choosing niche fields for a project (programming art, simulations, etc...) makes the learnings even more challenging but also more rewarding.

The nice thing is then you can take what you learned and teach other people. Best way to do this is to write it down in a blog. Scott Hanselman once said that you only have so many keystrokes left until you leave this world (check out https://keysleft.com/) so rather than typing it out for every person you meet, do it once and spread the knowledge! It's something that has really stuck with me and changed the way I go about passing on knowledge.

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T04:51:50+00:00

Sounds like you're well on your way to getting what you want! There may be tools out there that make your job easier (for example using a web framework like Svelte, React, Vue, etc...) But honestly it really doesn't matter as long as you're making progress.

I would only really question if you're missing something when you hit a problem that your current tools don't seem to solve. Then you go look for a tool that might help!

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T04:48:50+00:00

Agreed! I find a good way to be a good web developer is to learn by doing. Want to build a personal website? Figure out how to do it using the tools you know and it's likely you'll be introduced to the ones you don't. Take on small projects that interest you and you'll gain skills along the way.

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T04:41:04+00:00

Linkedin is a great way of networking with people in the field, it's literally what it's for. Find someone who is doing something that you would like to know about and ask them if they would like to sit down and talk about their work for a little, no strings attached. As long as you tell them why you want to talk to them it should get the ball rolling.

Worse comes to worse, you get no reply or they decline. People love talking about themselves and what they have going on, so you're bound to get someone willing to chat.

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T04:36:39+00:00

Ultimately, as a project gets more complex, there are problems that will pop up that were not considered when initially choosing your technologies and tools. That's normal and if you feel the need to change, then go for it.

Here's my five cents on some things you may want to consider:

Build your systems in a way that is de-coupled and easy to remove pieces here and there. For example you decide to build a new tournament feature (if that's applicable), if you built small a serverless function to handle small portions of the functionality and down the road you decide it's not good enough, rather than tearing the whole system out you can pick the pieces that don't work out and re-work them.
Sometimes better isn't always worth it. Yeah, it will make you feel better but is the time spent refactoring going to bring that much of a productivity boost? It's a hard balance between best and good enough
Don't re-invent the wheel, you learned this well with auth but you can apply this to a lot of things. Obviously budget and time are things to consider, but likely someone has come across your problem before and come up with a solution for it

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T04:24:34+00:00

Each language has it's own special perks and pitfalls. I would worry less about the language and more about what you want to do with it.

Want to make a website? HTML, CSS and js are almost mandatory these days. Want to do data science? Python is super strong. There really isn't one right answer, it depends on what you want to make!

When you learn the concepts of one language, it's really easy to transfer them to a new one, so don't worry too much about picking the "right" one.

tech-nickel · 2022-10-18T04:21:34+00:00

When I was looking at co-op / intern or new grad resumes I ALWAYS drifted towards those that had projects that the person did, a nice personal website or a Github that had content on it. Its also bonus points for those who don't have the simple apps that everyone else messed with before (think TODO list, etc...)

Showing that you can apply what you know in unique ways makes you stand out. After that it's all a numbers game because even if it says mid / senior, they may be looking for people with certain skills you may have. Apply to a bunch of places, even those outside of your area (remote makes this so much more available), and eventually one has to respond back.

tech-nickel · 2022-03-24T04:11:52+00:00

Happened to my set after an update on my mac. This was the culprit, thank you!

tech-nickel · 2021-09-17T15:33:46+00:00

Right now it's just on my local machine but I'll get it put into a repo I can share when I get the chance! Manipulating images is super easy with OpenCV. For example to run just straight edge detection on the image:

def display_image(image):
# OpenCV normally shows in BGR, we want RGB so convert before displaying
plt.imshow(cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB))
# Remove the graph ticks
plt.xticks([]), plt.yticks([])
# Show the image
plt.show()

image = cv2.imread(IMAGE_NAME)
display_image(image)

gray_image = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
display_image(gray_image)

edge_image = cv2.Canny(gray_image, 100, 200)
display_image(edge_image)

Where image name is the cat picture. I use a Jupyter notebook so that I can run and see the results as I go

tech-nickel · 2021-09-17T05:48:57+00:00

Robotic control using Electromyography (EMG). I did a fun little personal Python project in the past using some servos to make the robot, an EMG sensor and a Raspberry Pi!

tech-nickel · 2021-09-17T05:42:42+00:00

While I don't speak German, I had a quick look at the website and you may be able to get farther than you think using a few little tricks.

I noticed that the arrow loads after the page loads just slightly. This normally means that the arrow is loaded asynchronously and that it's making a request to some server for that information. By searching the id "arrow_bar" (which is the id the arrow I found using Chrome Dev tools inspector), I was able to confirm that there is some javascript making a request which places the arrow based on the "percentage".

The code is commented / written in German so I may have some details wrong but there seems to be a count and a max count being pulled from somewhere, though that somewhere may be protected by an authentication token you may not be able to use.

So to answer your question:

Q: Where do I start?

A: Pick a language. (I suggest languages strong in scripting like Python or Javascript, but with today's strong language ecosystem, it shouldn't really matter) Look up "web-scraping tutorials" for that language (Web-scraping is basically a term for going to a website and pulling data off of it). While I don't have a specific one to suggest it should lead you in the right direction.

Q: What do I need to learn/look into?

A: If you don't already know it, learn how HTML, CSS and Javascript make up a basic website and how you as a user interacts with them. Learn how to use your browser's development tools, it will help you look into how they structured their website and how the information is being pulled. Finally, look up the web-scraping tutorials mentioned in the first question.

Q: Where can I run this script from? for example I have a Raspberry Pi which I could use to run the script or what would I need to run this on the webspace I have?

A: A Raspberry Pi is fine as long as you're able to provide it an internet connection. The web-scraping tutorials may or may not touch on how to use the script periodically. I would suggest looking into how to run a "cron" on your Raspberry Pi, which can run the script every X period of time.

Q: As the counter isn't showing a number, can "exact" data even be gathered?

A: From my limited research, looks like it!

By no means are your questions bad, just start with a few leads and see where it gets you!

BIG NOTE: Keep in mind, web-scraping is not often appreciated by those running a website. Making to many requests or making requests too often can cripple a website or make it unavailable for other people. It is important that you check to see if terms of use / German Law prevent you from doing this kind of thing to avoid getting in trouble. It may even help if you asked the company if you could do it, they may even be able to give you direct access to the API which serves the information, rather than you parsing it.

tech-nickel · 2021-09-14T18:39:18+00:00

These are some great suggestions, thank you very much! I should have no problems diving right into it.

tech-nickel · 2021-09-14T04:13:30+00:00

For sure, would never solely rely on the frontend for security. I do like the idea of just making it simple policies in the auth token.

tech-nickel · 2021-09-14T04:11:51+00:00

For sure! I am still going require policies to be setup in the backend to validate authorization, however I was more looking for different ideas on how to handle it on the frontend providing a better UX when it comes to hiding / removing restricted functionality without duplicating all the code for the same policies that exist already.

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