Forem: Anthony Beckford🚀

How I created a QR Code Generator in Python

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:56:31 +0000

This will be a short article of how I created a simple QR Code Generator in Python

For this step you need to use the qrcode library: https://pypi.org/project/qrcode/

One of the very first steps I did after creating my projects folder is created a virtual environment. A virtual environment in Python is just another separated workspace on your computer where you can install your packages to run Python Projects.

Since I'm on Mac the command is

python3 -m venv venv

The next step would be to activate the virtual machine

source venv/bin/activate

To deactivate a virtual environment you will need to type:

deactivate

Next step would be to install the qrcode package

pip install qrcode

In your Python file make sure you import the qrcode module

import qrcode

In my code I have created two inputs which I store it into a variable called data and filename. The Strip() method Remove spaces at the beginning and at the end of the string:

data = input('Enter a text or URL ').strip()
filename = input('Enter the filename ').strip()

Next here we go into the QR module and create the QR Code object

qr = qrcode.QRCode(box_size=10, border=4)

qr.add.data(data)

image = qr.make_image(fill_color = 'black', back_color = 'white')

image.save(filename)

print(f'QR Code saved as {filename}')

This code you can run on the terminal and it will create a QR code with any URL you choose

Stay tune for more articles!
Look to follow me on Twitter(X) @abeck617

Python & Data Structures Part 2: type() Keyword

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 21:18:45 +0000

Today's short lesson is about type() function in Python

the type() is a built-in function in Python that returns the type of an object.

Here are some example of how the type() function works:

`type(5)
<class 'int'>

type("Anthony")
<class 'str'>

type({age:10})
<class 'dict'>

The purpose is to return the type of an object

Stay tune for Part 3 Coming Soon!

Come learn the basics of Python with me starting with Variables

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 17:58:44 +0000

Today's short lesson is about learning variables in Python

This will be a short but straight to the point of how variables work in Python.

When you are declaring a variable in Python you dont need a keyword. It also doesn't have to be specific because its automatically inferred from the value you specify. A variable is created as soon as you assign a value to it

Here are some examples:

Age = 5;
Name = "Anthony"

My experience building Bull's Eye App (from the UIKIt Apprentice book) Part 1

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 18:14:33 +0000

Hey Community,

I'm here with another blog sharing my experience of reading the UIKIt Apprentice book from Kodeco (THE NEW RAYWENDERLICH.COM). The reason why I decided to dive deep into this book is to learn more about UIKit.

The book takes you through a series of learning the fundamentals of UIKit through building projects. The first project is building a Bull's Eye application through interface builder.

The goal of the project is to teach Xcode, Interface Builder, and Swift in an easy-to-understand manner for beginners like myself.

So far I have learned how to create a very basic single button application which shows an alert message

I have also learned about implementing sliders and labels on interface builder.

Some things I have learned were:

Switching the apps to landscape mode
Basics of object-orientated Programming
Added controls to start building the user interface of the app
setting the inital slider value
learned how to generate a random number
added rounds to the game
display the target value

I'll be doing part 2 where i will talk about adding scores to the application

Follow my journey of learning iOS Development on Twitter by giving me a follow @abeck617

My Open Source Contribution using JavaScript to Open Sauced ft. Rizel Scarlett

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 15:25:02 +0000

Hey Everyone!

I'm back with another blog post. This time its about my experience contributing to my first contribution with Open Sauced @saucedopen (https://opensauced.pizza/). Open sauced is a platform where it provides structured onboarding for new contributors to open source.

My good friend Rizel Scarlett who is a Developer Advocate @ Github challenged me to take on an open source problem. The problem was to fix the Avatar relative date on the PostList and PostGrid.

I had a lot of fun working on this issue because I got to use a new tool called Days.JS. Days.JS is minimalist Javascript library that parses, validates, manipulates, and displays dates and times for modern browsers.

If you want to see more on how we tackle this isse please see Part 1 and Part 2 of the video below!

Also if you looking to collaborate with Rizel please reach out to her via Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rizel-bobb-semple/) or Twitter @blackgirlbytes

Anthony Makes His First Contribution to Open Source - Good First Issues #opensource #javascript

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksfyAxjNEz0

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYSgrWIzwA8

Why I think the joining & being active on Twitter is so important as a Self-Taught Developer (2 min read)

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:17:16 +0000

Being a self taught developer can be excited but also very overwhelming as well. Learning on your own without being in a live classroom can be tough sometimes. Especially those who have a family and another job on the side it can be difficult to find some spare time to learn.

In this article I want to give you 3 reasons why I think joining Twitter in my opinion is the best decision to make especially for those taking the self taught path learning software development.

Supportive Community

The community is so supportive especially on twitter. Most of the questions that I asked have been answered.

Meet new friends

I have met so many new followers and made new friends. Making new friends will come a long way especially if later on you are looking for a new role.

Keep up with the latest new on iOS Development

As we all know software development moves very fast. It's hard to keep up with whats going on. Twitter is an amazing place to keep up with the latest trends. For example I like iOS development and this year I saw so many people tweet about what's new that came out on WWDC. It helps me keep up and also gives me ideas for projects.

If you like this short blog post please like and share!

Thanks and have a Bless Day!

Anthony

5 Reasons why I think Swift is a perfect language to learn for beginners

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Tue, 03 May 2022 19:45:07 +0000

I have started learning Swift about 2 months ago to learn iOS development and so far the journey has been very fruitful. In this blog I want to give you 5 reason why I think if you beginning your programming journey that Swift is the perfect language for beginners

Swift is a very clean and concise language:

The syntax of the language is very short therefore it allows you to write clean and readable code. This is one of the biggest reasons why people love programming in the Swift Language

Swift is the Future of Apple

Ever since Swift was announced at WWDC 2014, Apple is full steam ahead with Swift. It has and will continue to rapidly grow. Swift is used to develop iOS and Mac apps but it's also has been expanded to create tvOS, MacOS and watchOS with their newest framework SwiftUI.

Swift is Open Source

One of my favorite reasons why I love Swift is because its open source. There are many other languages out there that are also open source but it amazing to see Apple make the language available for the community. You can submit bug fixes and feature enhancements for the language.

Swift is Safe and Secure

Swift offer memory management (Automatic Reference Counting (ARC). What it does is it tracks and manages your app's memory usage.

Swift is in-Demand

Swift remains a very in-demand skills for mobile app developers. If your looking to break into app development and like apple products then swift might be your answer

Resources to learn Swift?

Check out the list of resources here that I recommend you try if you want to learn Swift and iOS development

100 Days of Swift/SwiftUI by Paul Hudson:
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100/swiftui
The Complete iOS Development Bootcamp by Angela Yu:
https://www.udemy.com/course/ios-13-app-development-bootcamp/
Code with Chris by Chris Ching:
https://codewithchris.com/
iOS Dev LaunchPad by Sean Allen:
https://seanallen.teachable.com/p/ios-dev-launchpad

Follow my journey of learning iOS Development on Twitter by giving me a follow @abeck617

Building a Product Website with HTML and TailwindCSS

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 12:21:35 +0000

I will be building a basic Product Website with HTML and TailwindCSS. I will also be using a tool called Astro (https://astro.build/) which is a modern static site builder.

If your looking to try out Astro check out the documentation here (https://docs.astro.build/en/getting-started/)

Steps on completing the project

Before I started on my project I had to make sure that Node.JS was installed. This is the link i used to download Node.JS for the operating system that I was using https://nodejs.org/en/
I had to create the folder where I'm going to store my project. After that I opened my favorite IDE which is VSCode and opened the terminal.
I used the Astro documentation to get Astro set up in my development environment. It is also helpful to actually download the Astro extension on visual studio code as well.
Here is the documentation of getting started with astro https://docs.astro.build/en/getting-started/
After setting up Astro I had to add tailwindCSS to Astro. The command to run to add tailwind is npx astro add tailwind. After that you will need to run npm run dev again. There you should see the tailwind effects on the website.

Adding Top Menu and Footer

I added a nav-bar with anchor tags from the navigation on top of my header of the page. I also added a footer to my page as well.

Adding a section regarding the product

Next I have added a section where I can talk more about the product. I used a grid column with TailwindCSS properties to add the columns on the page.

Added a Pricing section

I added a pricing.astro page to discuss the pricing plans of
the product.

Added a Blog Section

Last I added a mini blog section to talk about recent updates to the product.

This is only Part 1 of the project. Next I will add some functionality (JavaScript) to the Landing Page to make it stand out more. Stay Tune

My First Experience Contributing to Open Source

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 16:24:15 +0000

In the beginning of the year if someone would of told me that in I would make my first contribution to open source I would of laughed in their face. However as of September 6th, 2021 I actually made my first contribution to open source and I feel really good about it.
I would like to tell you more about my experience with Open Source.

My First Experience Contributing to Open Source

I heard about open source for a while now since I've been learning how to code. I was encouraged by my friend who is a professional developer now at GitHub to contribute to beginner friendly projects that are out there like Open Sauced, and Virtual Coffee. She not only showed me how Open Source works but she also found me a beginner friendly issue on the VirtualCoffee.io. What was amazing is that I have received so much support on how to get started with the issue from the Virtual Coffee Community. It made me feel good getting support which gave me the confidence in tackling and fixing the issue.

The issue was regarding re-wording the documentation about the monthly newsletter. It was my very first time making a pull request for an Open Source issue and as a result it was successful. When all the necessary changes were made the maintainers release the updates into production. It was a great feeling for me.

Why it took me so long to contribute?

Honestly I had major imposter syndrome. I stayed far away from Open Source because I didn't feel that my coding skills were worthy enough to contribute to any projects. It really intimidating to put yourself out there and I definitely felt insecure. My friend encouraged me to take on an easy task to ease my way into the open source world.

Final Remarks

I'm very happy that I was able to contribute to Virtual Coffee. It not only gave my experience in creating Pull Request for an open source project but I was able to increase my Git/Github skills which will be valuable in the future.

For those who took the time to read this thank you very much and have a blessed day!

JavaScript Fundamentals Part 1: Basic Variables/Data Types

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 16:24:46 +0000

I'm finally onto learning JavaScript, the language of the web.
This blog is all about my learning journey of learning the fundamentals of JavaScript. I will start with the basic variables

Basic Hello World in JavaScript:

Console.log('Hello World')

What are variables?

Variables in the programming world is a place where you can store information
How to create a variable?
When defining a new variable in JavaScript it must start with the (let) keyword.
let favoriteNumber = 14;
console.log(favoriteNumber); // 14

DATA TYPES IN JAVASCRIPT:

String
Number
Boolean
Symbol
Null
Undefined

String

Text that can be encapsulated in either single or double quotes example: "I love learning JavaScript" 'I love football season'

Number

Represent numeric data (positive, negative, whole, decimal) example: 5, 2.4, 8.00

Boolean

Information that is represented as true or false example: true or false

Symbol

A value that is not equal to any other value. example: let sym1 = Symbol();

Null

represents the intentional absence of any object value example: const relationshpStatus = null;

Undefined

represents a variable that is not assigned a value example: const noValue;

If you are looking for an amazing resource to learn JavaScript, MDN has amazing documentation

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

What are the key fundamental skills to learn to become a Backend Engineer? Check out this Youtube Channel

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 15:29:00 +0000

I have decided to start a blog series on the skills to learn to become a backend engineer. I have started out as a front-end engineer but looking to expand my skills to learn more about backend engineering

I found this awesome YouTube channel called Hussein Nasser and he talks about different topics regarding backend engineering. In the video that I have watched (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ZPPPKEipA&list=PLQnljOFTspQUNnO4p00ua_C5mKTfldiYT&index=1) he mentions some skills to learn for backend engineering. Here are some things he mentioned:

Communication Protocols: Learning the basics of the communication protocols (low level) ex. TCP and UDP to higher level (HTTP), Web Sockets
Web Servers: Have the ability to serve content (Static, Caching, Dynamic). Learn the types of web servers
Database Engineering: Relational & Non-Relational Databases
Proxies: Reverse Proxies, Load balances (Huge Potential)
Caching: Caching Layers, Statefull vs Stateless Caching
Messaging Systems: Message queue, Pub/Sub
Web API Frameworks: (Node.JS, Django, Express)
Message Formats: JSON & protobuf
Security: TLS, Encryption, Firewalls

Most important thing to take away is that you aren't going to be an expert at everything. Pick a few topics and dive deep into it.

Learn C# Programming with Me (Introduction)

Anthony Beckford🚀 — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 22:13:07 +0000

What is C#?

C# is a general-purpose, strongly typed, object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft in 2000.

Here are some of the advantages of learning C#:

Modern and easy
Fast and open source
Cross platform
Safe
Versatile
Evolving

Why are you learning C#?

I'm personally learning C# because I'm very interested in learning more about object-oriented programming. I also like the way the language is versatile and I can pretty much build anything I want with it. You can build Native iOS and Android Application, Internet of Things (IOT) devices, Web Applications, Gaming applications, Backend Services etc.

What projects are you planning on Building?

One of my first projects I'm trying to build is actually a Pokémon Console Application Game. I'm a big fan of Pokémon so I want my first project to be fun and enjoyable to learn Programming.

I do have some other ideas in the future using other technologies like .NET and even Xamarin. For right now I'm focusing on learning the fundamentals of C#

What resources are you using?

I'm actually following a video series on YouTube from Mike Dane (https://www.youtube.com/c/GiraffeAcademy/playlists) and also using the Microsoft Documentation as well.

Will you be documenting you Journey?

Yes I will be writing short blogs on what I've learned and also giving updates on my projects

References to Learn C#: