Forem: Shodipo Ayomide

Deep Dive Into Ethereum’s Journey To Achieving Scalability

Shodipo Ayomide — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 17:22:07 +0000

After Ethereum was successfully launched in 2015, it came face to face with a couple of problem that restricted it from reaching its potential. The high demand led to a clogged network with high costs of transactions, rapid growth made the process of running a node hard and the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism was not making Ethereum sustainable.

To combat these problems, Ethereum set out to upgrade its network and divided the upgrades into 5 phases namely; the Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, Splurge

Representation of the phases of the Ethereum upgrade

It should be noted that these phases are happening in parallel and not sequentially.

The Merge

The first phase in Ethereum’s grand plan at scaling happened on September 15, 2022 and this signaled the transition of Ethereum from the energy hungry Proof-of-Work model to the green Proof-of-Stake model.

What happened when the merge occurred was that the mainnet which was the execution layer of Ethereum running on PoW was joined to the Beacon Chain which is the new PoS consensus layer. Now the network is secured by staking ETH.

The Beacon Chain

The Beacon Chain was shipped on December 1, 2020. It was the PoS blockchain that ran alongside the PoW Ethereum blockchain. It was created to test-run the Proof-of-Stake logic, ensuring that it was sound before it was integrated into the Mainnet. Now that the Merge has happened, there are no two blockchains but just one PoS Ethereum Chain.

Outcome Of The Merge

Increased Sustainability

The fundamental restructuring of Ethereum has dropped the energy requirements by 99.95% which now makes Ethereum more sustainable. This restructuring has now made it possible for Ethereum to be upgradable.

Improved Security

Proof of Stake has now democratized the network participation and this now leads to a higher level of security. The Merge now makes it possible for anyone with an internet connection and enough ETH balance to participate in the network. Ethereum has more validators than all PoS blockchains comined and the amount of ETH staked makes Ethereum virtually too expensive to be attacked.

Reduction in ETH Supply

Under the PoW model, the amount of ETH released into circulation was about 13,000 ETH per day (mining rewards) but now that the Merge has happened, amount of ETH released into circulation is estimated to be about 1,600 ETH per day (staking rewards). This drops the issuance of new ETH by approximately 90%. Also, Ethereum plans to burn about 1,600 ETH every day.

The Surge

The surge phase is the phase where Ethereum introduces sharding. The sharding concept is not specific to the blockchain world, it is actually a concept in computer science where a database is broken down into smaller parts known as shards in order to reduce the load on the main database.

Overview of Ethereum's sharded chains

The purpose of sharding is to increase transaction speed and to also reduce network congestion. In the case of Ethereum, when sharding is carried out, the network will split into 64 shards and each shard acts as a mini-blockchain containing its own state, account balances and smart contracts.

Validators will no longer need to verify every transaction being broadcasted on the Ethereum network, instead, they will focus on verifying new blocks on their own shards after which a committee of 128 validators then confirms on the main chain.

Features of Sharding

Everyone can run a node

With sharding in place, scaling can be achieved without trading decentralization because hardware requirements are reduced. Due to the fact that validators no longer need to store the entire data of the Ethereum database, the cost of storing data is reduced.

Increased network participation

Due to lower hardware requirements, one can run Ethereum using their personal computer or phone. This reduces the barrier of entry and increases security of the network since now, anyone can participate.

Shard Chains Version

Version 1: Data Availability

Initially when the shard chains are launched, they won’t immediately be able to process transactions and handle smart contracts. Their responsibility will be to provide extra data to the network but still, when this version is combined with rollups, there is a tremendous improvement to transaction throughput.

Version 2: Code execution

In this version, extra functionalities are added to the shard chains to make them much more identical to the mainnet. They will be able execute code, handle transactions and contain their own unique set of account balances and smart contracts. There will also be cross-shard communication.

The need to upgrade shard chains from version 1 to 2 is being debated in the community considering the boost version 1 provides (i.e 100,000 transactions per second)

Initially, Ethereum thought of carrying out sharding before the merge but with the rise of L2 scaling solutions, it become clear that transitioning to PoS was more important.

Ethereum without rollups does between 15-40 tps, rollups on their own do 1,500-4,000 tps but when sharding is combined with the power of rollups, we can have about 100,000 tps.

The Verge

The Verge is the phase where verkle trees are introduced. Verkle trees are a powerful upgrade to Merkle trees. The Verge aims to optimize storage and also reduce node size. For context, we need to understand what Merkle trees are.

What are Merkle Trees

Merkle trees can be described as a binary tree that uses cryptographic hash algorithms. They efficiently verify the correctness of data and at the same time reduce the verification’s memory requirements. One major advantage of Merkle trees is that compared to other data structures, Merkle trees take up less space.

Ethereum currently uses a Merkle tree called Merkle Patricia tree which provides a data structure that can be used to store all key, value bindings and is cryptographically authenticated.

What are Verkle Trees

Depiction of a hexary Verkle tree (Vitalik.ca)

The Verkle trees are very much similar ro Merkle trees but their most important feature is their proof size efficiency. A Merkle tree will require about 1kilobyte to provide a proof for a tree with 1 billion data points but a Verkle tree will require less than 150 bytes. Relying upon polynomial functions, Verkle trees describe data using Polynomial Commitments.

As a result of its superior proof size, Verkle trees reduce the amount of complex cryptography required and also creates an opportunity to make the Ethereum blockchain more efficient and scalable.

The Purge

The Purge is regarded as the cleanup phase where historical data is removed to reduce network congestion. Vitalik said that the purge is aimed at cutting down the amount of space you need to have on your hard drive, trying to simplify Ethereum and not requiring nodes to store history.

As earlier mentioned, the reduction in hardware requirements will increase decentralization and by effect boost the security of the network.

The Splurge

This phase is regarded by Vitalik as “the fun stuff”. it aims at making the network run smoothly after all other upgrades have taken place.

Conclusion

In the future when Ethereum is 100% complete, it will look like an aggregation of L2 blockchains, data availability protocols and side-chains. The future of Ethereum is bright, and i'm excited.

My Next Adventure

Shodipo Ayomide — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 19:47:38 +0000

Moving on doesn't mean forgetting the past, the past is part of what made a way to the future we are in today.

My time at Stack Overflow came to an end sometime recently, it was an exciting run working with some of the smartest engineers and community leaders I have ever met, which specifically thought me to do more and keep getting better, working daily and never seeing how good everyone is getting to stop me from getting even much better.

But, never forget one thing, part of the end of something huuge, is just the beginning of something far much greater.

I'm super excited to be leading Global Developer Advocacy at Polygon.

My team would be covering everything around the building of example applications on Polygon, community building, hackathons, engineering content, and more.

I believe the future of Ethereum and the internet would be built on Polygon and I'm excited to be part of this huge story being forged.

I got offers from companies I didn't expect, I saw offers coming in from Amazon, Snapchat, Ford Motors, Elastic Search, Scylladb, and more, all great products, then one popped up on my screen from Polygon, I wasn't particularly excited, but after 10 minutes of research and looking at what goes on at Polygon, it looked exactly like my next adventure, and now I've been working here and yes it's actually what I expected.

Looking forward to more years at Polygon.

As I said in the last one,

The journey is only 1% finished,

Jisi nu ike "Be Strong".

The journey is only 1% finished

Shodipo Ayomide — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 09:27:45 +0000

It's hard to find where you belong; this is mine.

As I announced on Twitter, I would be joining the incredible Stack Overflow team working in-between the Community and the Platform Engineering team here at Stack Overflow.

Helping to improve the Stack Overflow platform, in general, is exciting for me, and it's precisely the kind of role I have been looking out for.

I am looking forward to working with all the moderators on Stack Overflow and helping to shape the future, importantly making it an open/safe place where users can easily collaborate, ask questions and get answers to issues they have.

I had roughly around ten interviews, every single person I spoke with from Sara Chips, Yaakov Ellis, Teresa Dietrich, Cesar Manara and the fantastic coordinator Abby T. Mars, where all amazing, the flow of the interview was one excitement after another, I sure studied hard for this one after every interview 😂

Joining a team like this, with so many incredible people, changes everything for me, contributing to a global platform that has about 50 Million+ monthly visits and 20 Million+ developers actively using this platform is enormous, and I look forward to building a platform with Stack Overflow where every user feels welcomed when using our platform, and I can’t wait to begin on the 25th of January 2021

You can follow me over on Twitter here: @developerayo

As Chukwuemeka Afigbo would say:

The journey is only 1% finished.

Jisi nu ike "Be Strong."

Welcome to ImageHive v2

Shodipo Ayomide — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 10:33:15 +0000

Welcome to the long-awaited v2 of ImageHive, which is finally here, and here is a breakdown of the newer features available to you.

In the beta release which was done a couple of months ago, we delivered ImageHive as a platform where users would be able to get colors the combination of colors available in images uploads from your local drive, even to the smallest bit of color.

Well all that is going to be improved in v2, and here are the updates:

1) Users can now get the color of images from a URL & not just locally

Before now users can only get the color combinations from images locally but it would be much easier if I see an image over on Unsplash or Shutterstock which I need the colors used or even over on Google, just by copying the image URL and pasting in the URL section of the web app to fetch colors.

2) You can now auto-scroll to the color container section of the page once the image is gotten via URL or Upload.

As requested, finding the color of an image is hard after it has been generated, with the new auto-scroll feature, you would be automatically taken to the generated colors without your scrolling there.

3) You can now copy both HEX & RGB color codes

While designing or coding you might want to stay consistent with using the HEX combination or you might prefer RGB, both are now available to be copied for every color generated.

4) Menu bar & Body is now responsive

We had a small issue with the responsiveness of our menu and the upload section in the body, and other responsiveness issues, all have been fixed in this new update.

What the community are saying

Thank you for using ImageHive, for feature-related requests, you can post them in the chat below or send an email to imagehive1@gmail.com

DevRelChat: The Beginning, My Vision, and an Announcement 🥑

Shodipo Ayomide — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:18:52 +0000

Even though DevRelChat launched a while back in July, many people still don’t know about its background and mission. In truth, as the founder, I wasn't sure about that at the start either.

🎉Today I'm excited to be launching @devrelchat a podcast where I would be speaking to leading Industry experts around the world about DevRel 🔥🌍

Speaking would be @cassidoo @TraderD65 @jenlooper @aniediudo 🔥🤯

📅 Date: 13th July https://t.co/88RMEYOhcn #Thread #DevRelChat
— WAKANDA FOREVER ❤️🥑 (@developerayo) July 8, 2020

Still, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it well:

Ideas don't come out fully formed; they only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

By now, I’ve finally figured it out so let me share my vision with you.

The Begining 🥑

DevRelChat was launched along with four episodes on Twitter: Cassidy Williams, Doron Sherman, Jen looper, and Aniedi udo-obong. Two more joined in August: Prosper Otemuyiwa and Maya Shavin.

The Content🥑

DevRelChat is a conversation among DevRel leaders worldwide, including me. We offer answers to people looking to become developer advocates, and to companies who need to understand what to expect when hiring developer advocates or establishing a DevRel initiative.

The Justification 🥑

I started DevRelChat after thinking long and hard about how to contribute to the global developer community in the form of solutions to fix the misunderstandings of DevRel. The idea dawned on me that I could start a chat room, in which I’d talk with global leaders in the tech community and then produce the transcript in two formats: audio through Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and Anchor FM; and video on YouTube.

The Importance of Developer Relations 🥑

DevRel is an umbrella group of professionals of such titles as developer advocate, developer relations engineer, and developer experience engineer. They bridge that wide gap between the product of the company they work for and the community.

An example is Cloudinary, which, over the years, has built out its APIs and SDKs across product features. However, it needs a way in which to communicate the details to the developer community, whose feedback and ideas are crucial for its product plans and strategies. Perhaps understandably, 90 percent of the developer community do not trust sales and marketing folks because many of them don’t know the ins and outs of software development, much less engage in techspeak. Developers need and prefer to speak to people like them, and developer advocates can readily rise to the occasion.

Depending on their company’s product or service, developer advocates perform many important tasks, such as support and evangelism. Over the years, I’ve met many outstanding developer advocates from all over, including ones from Lagos, Nigeria, The United States, The United Kingdom, Canada, Netherlands, Israel, Japan, China, and Australia. Brilliant talent abounds in all corners of the world.

My Vision 🌍🌎🌏

For DevRelChat, I’d like to attract more DevRel talent. It's a great role for people who are passionate about the developer community at large and about developers themselves.

In addition, we need more developer advocates in growing regions to support the companies there that offer viable products and services—not so much for monetary compensation but, rather, to lend a hand with problem-solving.

Not least, the global community must understand the real role of developer advocates. A glance through the episodes on DevRelChat would be most helpful. In short:

Developer advocates are not salespeople or marketers, and they are not just paid to give an inspirational talk on stage.
Developer advocates are developers themselves who understand the nuances of a developer’s job and APIs.

My definition: Developer advocates are developers with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of engineering, community management, and business development.

Announcement ⚡️🎉

I’m super excited to announce DevRelChat’s first partner, Cloudinary. Not only do I love the Cloudinary team, but I also applaud how they manage and transform media efficiently, seamlessly, and economically, largely through automation.

Give it a try yourself. Cloudinary’s documentation walks you through the steps.

For all that DevRelChat’s ideals and goals are still evolving, I’m thrilled that we got the project off the ground with everyone’s support. I’m counting on continuing advocacy and assistance on your part and will work tirelessly to hit our targets.

Any comments, questions? If so, leave them in the comments section. I’ll respond once I see them.

Resources📚🔗

Here’s a wealth of information on DevRelChat on social media:

Please keep in mind this reminder and keep writing:

You'll be surprised by the number of people your article can touch and help in some way if you just hit that publish button today.

Remember to publish that article.
— WAKANDA FOREVER ❤️🥑 (@developerayo) August 29, 2020

Support 💰

If your company would like to better understand the DevRel ecosystem, the ways in which it can influence your product usage, and the extent of that influence, please schedule a time with me by email.

Also, do you wonder how your company can support DevRelChat or my initiative there? Write to DevRelChat please. I’d be happy to elaborate.

Additionally, note the Flutterwave support URL.I’d much appreciate your donation to sponsor more episodes on either a one-off or monthly basis.

Please share this article to spread the word about DevRel and encourage more participation. It’s a valuable and rewarding resource for both enterprises and developers alike.

Mentorship: The Way Forward

Shodipo Ayomide — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 16:21:32 +0000

Starting as a Developer was hell for me, all kinds of things happened, had the worst road map a man could ever have till I found an uncle who was miraculously a developer turned founder of a payment platform based in 3 countries. I was excited, I spent 6 months with him, in the first 3 month's I didn’t write a single line of code, all the though I was how to find whatever solution I needed using Google and if i do not understand what I read, I move on to watching a tutorial over YouTube, this was 8 years ago.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." - Benjamin Disraeli

Start asking the right way

I see a lot of developers starting who have zero ideas whatsoever on how to get started, what to get started with, they require guidance, I receive a lot of DM's about mentorship, "I am starting with a, b & c, but I'm confused how to start, could you become my mentor?"

When I see this kind of questions, I and I see them a lot, In most scenarios, I say I can’t help because this person in the context need's a mentor and that is a lot of work to commit to with all the things I already do

How do I ask the right way?

Stop asking this:

I am starting with a, b & c, but I'm confused about how to get started, could you become my mentor?

instead, ask

I am starting with a, b & c, but I'm confused about how to get started, are there resources in links you could share with me?

The word mentorship hit's differently on people who have a tight schedule, and if you keep saying, can you become or can you mentor me, their schedule and time left in 24 hours hit's them differently, so you either get a "No" or zero response, but instead what you should do is ask a very straight forward question that the person in context could send in a response as soon as possible, here is an example conversation between Ayo & James

James: Hi Ayo, I've always wanted to become a developer but I'm a bit lost and have I no idea how to get started, can you help with sending in a couple of videos or articles that can help guide my journey?

Ayo: Hey James, sorry for the late response, sure I'll be happy to, here are some links, if you have any more questions you can definitely hit me up. Good Luck with your learning James!

Above is a simple and straightforward conversation with James a developer looking to start his journey into becoming a developer and Ayo a developer with professional years of experience.

Result

Finally, what's most important is the results you have achieved while learning from the resources given to you, if you spoke to a developer with far more experience than yourself and the developer in this context shared a couple of resources with you, in the next conversation of you asking more questions you should include a link, Probably GitHub or a dribbble shot if a designer with what you have built or designed recently, then you can add the next question.

Sharing your progress with the experienced person in context helps give the person a solid picture of how serious you are and if you would appreciate the time given to you, You'll get a much faster response and far more support than the last time.

Thanks for reading this blog post, I hope that I could bring some light into how to find and approach a developer who has more experience than you and less time to spend in a day.

I will be posting more contents in the coming weeks, feel free to follow me here and on my twitter: @developerayo :)

looking forward to hearing your thoughts after reading this article below in the comment section or over Twitter 🔥

unStack Workshop on React.js to Kick Off Soon in Lagos

Shodipo Ayomide — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:13:33 +0000

Free unStack Workshop on React.js Coming Up in Lagos on March 20-21, learn about the tracks, agenda, and speakers at the free unStack Workshop to be held in Lagos on March 20-21.

On August 17, 2019, unStack was launched at the unStack Workshop with the aim of, through free events, enabling developers to gain software expertise and achieve their career goals. Over 300 developers attended as an open-source community that focused on hands-on workshops and enlightening, informative talks for software engineers and designers.

This year, unStack will hold a two-day React.js workshop on March 20-21 at Zone Tech Park, Gbagada, Lagos, with three learning tracks: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Day 1 (Beginner Track) 🔧

Day 1 of the workshop, slated for Friday, March 20, is geared for novice developers with an emphasis on major concepts and essentials in JavaScript and React.js. The agenda includes the following talks:

Moving From Being a Beginner to an Intermediate and Then a Senior Developer by Akintunde Sultan
JavaScript Essentials for React.js by Uzoamaka Anyanwu
Setting Up a React.js Project by Emmanuel Popoola
Progressive Web Application, expanding the horizon of mobile UX by Bolaji Ayodeji
What Is Accessibility? by Vishwa Mehta
Deploying a React App to Netlify by Seun Daramola
Power Tips for Chrome Development Tools by Olaolu Olawuyi

All the talks are designed for simplicity and ease of comprehension. Attendees for the Beginner Track are welcome to participate in the Intermediate-Advanced Track on the next day.

Day 2 (Intermediate-Advanced Track) 🔥

Day 2 (Saturday, March 21) will focus on fostering intermediate and advanced engineers as they progress in the software ecosystem, with our world-class speakers and well-crafted talks from each of them, The agenda includes the following talks:

JustJavaScript by Dan Abramov
Securing React Applications With Auth0 by James Quick
Building a Blazing-Fast Website With Gatsby Magic by Obinna Ekwuno
Accessibility as a Function of Component State" by Segun Ola
Building a Note App With React.js and Firebase by Auwal MS
Bundle Size Optimization in JavaScript Applications by Ekene Ashinze
CSS in JS by Bami Ogunfemi

Check out the complete schedule and the list of luminary speakers.

The unStack Way With Cloudinary Support 🔥

All unStack events center on deep-dive content to empower you with skills and expertise to fly on your own.

Our sponsor this year is Cloudinary, an end-to-end platform on which you can seamlessly and efficiently manage, optimize, and deliver rich media at scale. To learn about Cloudinary’s nifty features, join the training courses at the Cloudinary Academy, which would prepare you well for the workshops. In addition, attend my talk Getting Started with Cloudinary on Day 1 and Cloudinary on Steroids on Day 2.

Interested? Register pronto for free attendance. I look forward to meeting you at the workshop and learning together.

Originally published on my blog 🔥

Getting started with Raspberry Pi 3

Shodipo Ayomide — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:29:39 +0000

# Table of Contents
- What is The Raspberry Pi 3
- Models and RAM
- Operating System
- Installing Raspberry Raspbian on Raspberry Pi 3
- Get NOOBS
- Closing Thoughts
- Resources

What is The Raspberry Pi 3

Raspberry Pi 3 is a small computer the size of an ATM card which was built by the Raspberry Pi foundation and has the ability to connect with external devices and networks via wireless LAN and Bluetooth connectivity. It's basically a regular computer you can work with add a keyboard, a mouse and other accessories but it runs on a Micro SD card of as low as 16 Gigabyte and as high as 256GB for the MicroSD, the Raspberry Pi 3 is not built for working on as a regular computer, regular computers run on a Hard disk from around 500 Gigabyte to 2 Terabyte.

Models and RAM

The Raspberry Pi has different models since it’s launch starting from the Raspberry Pi 1, which supports Ethernet but does not possess wireless LAN connectivity and was firstly released in 2012, next we move forward to looking at Raspberry Pi w which was launched in 2015 with Ethernet and still no wireless LAN connectivity, in 2017 the Raspberry Pi foundation launched the Raspberry Pi Zero with now Ethernet but has wireless LAN connectivity and today we have the fully functional Raspberry Pi 3 model B+ with Ethernet connectivity and Wireless LAN connectivity. The Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 have 1GB RAM and the Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W have 512MB of RAM.

Operating System

Raspberry Pi as a company built Raspbian as the default Operating System for the Raspberry Pi devices to run on and Raspbian is a Debian based Linux distributions. but other Operating systems like Windows 10 via Windows 10 IoT Core can be installed, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, and others

Installing Raspberry Raspbian on Raspberry Pi 3

Firstly you will have to purchase a MicroSD card were the Raspbian Operating System would be stored which must not be lower than a 16GB Micro SD card to avoid too much pressure on the System, next is you would need a working keyboard and a mouse, you can use a Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse for the device as long as it has a remote USB plug to plug into the device. definitely, you will need a TV that has an HDMI slot or a VGA slot so as to connect the device to the TV.

Get NOOBS

NOOBS is a software that we would be using here to install the Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi 3 device, visit the Raspberry Download page to get NOOBS. Once Seen, download the ZIP file. once the download is done, extract the ZIP file and copy all it’s content into your EMPTY SD card, once it has been copied you can Eject the SD Card.

Put in the SD card into the device, including the Mouse, Keyboard, Ethernet, and other devices and do not forget the HDMI cable connecting to the TV. once connected it will definitely show a black screen, do not be worried, just connect your Ethernet plug and wait for some seconds it should pop up the Raspberry Pi logo. wait for another few seconds and you should see the boot screen welcoming you to Raspberry Pi as you can see below

Next is you will have to set up the Raspberry Pi for production, that’s by connecting wifi, Bluetooth your wireless Mouse and Keyboard if any and other devices.

It also comes with a browser, where you can load up any site you want as you can do on a regular laptop, or desktop computer, but in this case, I loaded up my last article which is Deploying Static Sites to Netlify from CodeSandbox.

Closing Thoughts

If you are looking for a mini computer to run some programs, the Raspberry Pi Model B+ is your go-to device, It has all you need and In my next article on Raspberry Pi, I would be writing on installing Windows 10 on a Raspberry Pi 3 via Windows 10 IOT Core. you can purchase a Raspberry Pi 3 on Jumia here or via the Raspberry Pi 3 website.

Resources

Raspberry Pi for Developers

Introduction - Raspberry Pi tutorial in python

Raspberry Pi Tutorials

NOOBS (New Out Of Box Software) - An easy Operating System install manager for the Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi Workshop for Beginners

GitHub Raspberry Pi

Awesome Raspberry Pi on GitHub

Official documentation for the Raspberry Pi

unStack 2019 event recap; All the announcements that matter

Shodipo Ayomide — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:27:52 +0000

unStack is a hands-on workshop community, tailored towards building great technical talents with a hands-on learning approach, learning about new technologies/tools and mastering patterns to navigate already existing ones.

This event which was completely sold out with 260+ people in attendance, being the first offline event of the unStack Community is not the first event nonetheless. The first-ever event of the unStack Community was a LIVE session on Zoom titled The Future of GraphQL for the Web with Nadir Dabit(Developer Advocate at Amazon) & Shodipo Ayomide as speakers.

The online zoom event impressively had 70+ developers tuned in LIVE into the event on zoom. The offline event was then conceived to accommodate folks in the Lagos Developer Ecosystem who could not tune into such LIVE sessions for reasons ranging from data to time and all.

Keynote
Speakers
Sponsors
The Team
Conclusion

keynote🔥

The event keynote which was taken by unStack’s Lead Shodipo Ayomide kicked off 17th August at 09:30 am WAT

where he spoke about various pointers on what exactly unStack is and where unStack is heading to as a community for technical talents, unStack is not just a community of developers but is also interested in the Product designers ecosystem and related technical skills, unStack is also not tailored towards React or JavaScript but focused on the Web & Mobile ecosystem. You can view the keynote slide deck here: Shodipo Ayomide Keynote Slide

Speakers🔥

1) The first speaker session was handled by Software Engineer & Founder of Dev Career Akintunde Sultan @hacksultan speaking on Software Development: Beginner to Intermediate.

2) The second workshop session was handled by Software Engineer Shedrack Akintayo @coder_blvck on the topic Getting Started with React.

3) The third workshop session was run by Software Engineer at Andela Benny Ogidan on the topic Getting started with React and GraphQL

4) The forth workshop session was handled by Senior Software Engineer at Andela
Akinrele Sinmisola @simiakinrele on the topic Code splitting using Suspense and Lazy

5) The fifth workshop session was taken by Media Developer Advocate at Cloudinary Obinna Ekwuno @Obinnaspeaks on the topic React + Accessibility (m16y) = Awesome Web for all

5) The fifth workshop session at unStack was handled by Senior JavaScript Engineer at Studio14 Abiodun Quadri @iamphobs on the topic Advanced React Animations.

6) Our fifth and last workshop session at unStack was handled by the amazing Olusegun Ayeni @iamraphson a Software Engineer at Paystack, who taught on the topic Amplify your productivity with React Native

Sponsors🔥

The unStack event had amazing sponsors who helped unStack happen so smoothly.

CodeSandbox

CodeSandbox is an online code editor with a focus on creating and sharing web application, from prototype to deployment.

Hashnode

Hashnode is the easiest way to connect with the best developers from around the world and grow your career! With Hashnode’s Devblog feature, you can start a new blog on your domain and take advantage of Hashnode’s audience network.

Cloudinary

Cloudinary is the market leader in providing a comprehensive cloud-based image and video management platform. Cloudinary is being used by hundreds of thousands of users around the world, from small startups to large enterprises. We are here to cover your every image and video-related need.

Gatsby

Gatsby is a free and open source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing fast websites and apps

Andela

Andela builds distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software engineers. We handle talent assessment, onboarding, and continuous improvement. You get back to building and they are hiring!!

Paystack

Paystack is a technology company solving payments problems for ambitious businesses. Our mission is to help businesses in Africa become profitable, envied, and loved.

Egghead

Egghead egghead is a group of working web development professionals and open source contributors that provide you with concise, information dense video courses on the best tools in the industry.

Developers Circles Lagos from Facebook

Developers Circles connects you to collaborate, learn, and code with other local developers. Join your local Developer Circle to connect with your developer community on Facebook and attend meetups in your area

Thinkster

Thinkster helps your learn how real apps are built, from scratch, using the latest frameworks and technologies.

Adora Hack

Adora Hack Adora Hack contains articles on Technology and Software Development by Adora Nwodo, a Full Stack Software Developer based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Team🔥

This beautiful and impactful event was put together by the awesome unStack team of 7 persons, with different strength but came together in one vision to collaborate and create this 🔥🔥

Name	Role	Twitter Handles	GitHub Handles
Shodipo Ayomide	Developer Advocate & Software Engineer / unStack Lead	@developerayo	developerayo
Adora Nwodu	Software Engineer at Microsoft / unStack Co-Lead	@theadoranwodo	AdoraNwodo
Orjiewuru Kingdom	Software Engineer at ShipStation & Andela / unStack Co-Lead	@kingisaac95	kingisaac95
Ademola Adegbuyi	Front-end Engineer at Paystack / unStack Co-Lead	@_ooade	ooade
Marvin Ogah	Product Designer / unStack Co-lead	NULL	dudesoamazing
Oluebube Princess	Software Engineer / unStack Co-Lead	@PrincesOluebube	Princesso
Emmanuel Odianosen	Software Engineer / unStack Co-Lead	@emma_odia	emmaodia

Conclusion🔥

We got a whole new insight on how much people are willing to contribute to themselves to good causes from watching the volunteer team of ushers provide a seamless experience for attendees! Worthy of mention is the fact that some members of the team were super early birds that day who reached out and simply asked: “How can I be of help?”

Well, how can you be of help to the unStack community? For starters, join the slack slack channel here: unStack Slack

You can follow unStack on Twitter for more updates: @unstack_ or visit our website at unstack.dev

Did I hear you ask: “When is the next unStack event?”

There is another unStack event in the works and this one… shssss…

Word on the street has it that it will be more lit than the last one because it is… Okay! Enough said! Do kindly set up your Slack & Twitter notifications so you do not get left out! Hope to see you soon!

Watch a two minute clip review of the unStack conference 2019: Video

Cheers! 🍷

Thanks for coming to unStack Conference 2019 and see you at the next meetup. 🔥🔥🔥🚀

Understanding the concept behind AIML

Shodipo Ayomide — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:26:41 +0000

What is AIML?

AIML or Artificial Intelligence Markup Language is an XML base language used for creating chatbots(AI), it is always saved with the extension (.aiml).

The tag always used in AIML used to specify a new function is the category tag which has two other tags running under it that i s the pattern tag and the template tag. Inside the template tage we cound also have other tags inbute “Depnds on the type of BOT you are building” eg set, br/, srai…etc

But note something just as in HTML or any other programming Language or Scripting Language Even Markup Languages have a closing tag, here in AIML there is really not much a difference, the closing tags are /category, /template, /srai>, /set…etc

Example

<category><pattern>WHO IS ABRAHAM LINCOLN</pattern>

<template>was a great President of the United States, during the American Civil War.<br/>

</template>

</category>

When the user inputs this in on some very close to this, the bot will respond to the input

“WHO IS ABRAHAM LINCOLN” with the response “was a great President of the United States, during the American Civil War.”.

Now lets create a simple bot using AIML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<em>Emphasized text</em><br>
<strong>Strong text</strong><br>
<code>A piece of computer code</code><br>
<samp>Sample output from a computer program</samp><br>
<kbd>Keyboard input</kbd><br>
<var>Variable</var>

</body>
</html>

<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”UTF-8"?>

<aiml version=”1.0">

<category><pattern>Hi</pattern>

<template>Hi, I’m Oscar I was developed by Shodipo Ayomide 2017, <br/>How may I be of help</template>

</category>

<category><pattern>What are you </pattern>

<template>I said, My name is Oscar and I was developed by Shodipo Ayomide ok! </template>

</category>

<category><pattern>Why are you rude </pattern>

<template>Oh sorry, Please forgive my manners do not report me PLEASE!!! </template>

</category>

<category><pattern>ok </pattern>

<template>PLEASE!!! </template>

</category>

</aiml>

Now lets explain Templates

A template specifies the response to a matched pattern.

I am Oscar by name

A template may use variables such as

You told me you are get name=”user-age” years old
which will fetch the users age if in db.

Thanks for reading! 🔥🚀

Deploying Apps to GitHub using TortoiseGIT

Shodipo Ayomide — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:24:24 +0000

TortoiseGit is a Git code control client, which is based on TortoiseSVN. It is an open source software under GNU license.

Benefits of using Tortoisegit

Tortoisegit makes it easier to clone a repository
Tortoisegit makes it easier to upload your code from your laptop to your repository online easily with a single command line.
Extremely easy to pull from your online repository to update your local if you are working on a collaboration project with the click of a button.
This tool makes it easy to remove all un-tracked files from your local with the click of a button.
And a lot more that can be found on the link below:

How To connect TortoiseGit with Github

Go to github.com and login
Create a new Repository.

Create a remote Github repo and name it.

Mine has already been created so i will work with that, Just put in the name that’s all. Then click OK.

Copy the line containing your project link : https://github.com/Developerayo/My-Project-testing-tortiseGIT-.git

Now lets head over to the TortoiseGit we installed earlier.

Once you have got that all opened, click on generate then move the mouse all around the box to make it go faster

After clicking on generate, you will have a box like this below

THE LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE THIS BELOW

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEAq0jmbEdOeDHZBcD8o8FvUv1lCUBJJmM0DpHz+nn7SzT4CT2PHcOBken+9L2Zz9D7bopmx033DX3/kp/84m3Ea1n/bVDEDfWve2hH6MGcaMM3KVBhMB+6j9LVludG8zYAIt+vrDI/F9f2pZv27h9DznOT+0PJg4cpOkRSFJTgI3tY4cNTWr5kTZdBONEMI+QGNtpWwr774S

Once you have this, save it in a secure file.

Do not forget you copied the link from GITHUB that has your project repository link, now lets put that in use:

https://github.com/Developerayo/My-Project-testing-tortiseGIT-.git

Create a folder on desktop and name it. Mine is named Code, then create a file in the folder, Mine is named myproject. Create a text file named hi.txt and put some text in it.

lets move on to putting the github link to use

Now you see the hi.txt file we created, in the message box put in initial commit then click ok

Now lets go back to that created Repo on GITHUB

Remember the link you copied from github

https://github.com/Developerayo/My-Project-testing-tortiseGIT-.git

let us make use of that.

Right click on the folder you created mine is named ‘myproject’, then click on tortoisegit, followed by the push selection at the top of the list.

How to setup the PUSH dialog with Github

click on the manage button it would pop up another dialog box like that below

Fill in the dialog

Remote: Origin
URL: your github url you copied earlier mine is https://github.com/Developerayo/My-Project-testing-tortiseGIT-.git\
The the ssh or putty key you saved earlier, you would have to add that file here from were you saved it
CLICK ADD NEW

Just click ok

It the starts pushing it to your already created GitHub Repo

You would have to wait a few seconds "Go grab a coffee"

Lastly visit your repo on GitHub

Hurray 🎉🎉 you just deployed your first file to GitHub using TortoiseGIT

Thanks for reading! 🔥🚀

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Deploying Static Sites to Netlify from CodeSandbox

Shodipo Ayomide — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:22:37 +0000

CodeSandbox and Netlify are like a passenger and an Uber driver, the passenger enters into the car and the uber driver starts the car and keeps on moving, CodeSandbox started with a super amazing idea by Ives van Hoorne the Creator of CodeSandbox and now works fulltime developing it.

# Table of Contents
- What is CodeSandbox
- What is Netlify
- Clients Templates on CodeSandbox
- File Structure
- File Structure Content
- Claim your site
- Closing Thoughts
- Resources

What is CodeSandbox

CodeSandbox is an online VSCode-like editor built for web applications development, It was built with a mindset to make projects sharing easy across teams and people. Get started with CodeSandbox here https://codesandbox.io.

What is Netlify

Netlify is a developers platform that automates codes, built in a way users will be able to simply push their code and the platform handles the rest.

Let's get started

Firstly, visit your https://codesandbox.io dashboard and create a simple static site from one of the client templates.

List of client Templates on CodeSandbox

React.js (create-react-app)
Vue.js (vue-cli)
Angular.js (angular-cli)
Preact.js (preact-cli)
Vanilla (parcel)
Cx.js (cxjs)
Dojo (dojo/cli-create-app)
Reason (reason)
Svelte (svelte)
Static (static)

In this scenario, we would be using the React create-react-app template.

File Structure

my-app/
  package.json
  public/
    index.html
  src/
    index.js
    index.css

For the project to build, these files must exist with exact filenames:

public/index.html is the page template;
src/index.js is the JavaScript entry point.

You can delete or rename the other files.

File Structure Content

src/index.js

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";

import "./styles.css";

function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <h2>CodeSandbox X Netlify</h2>
      <h3>Deploying Static Sites to Netlify from CodeSandbox.</h3>
    </div>
  );
}
const rootElement = document.getElementById("root");
ReactDOM.render(<App />, rootElement);

src/index.css

.App {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  text-align: center;
}

public/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
  <meta name="theme-color" content="#000000">
  <link rel="manifest" href="%PUBLIC_URL%/manifest.json">
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="%PUBLIC_URL%/favicon.ico">
  <title>CodeSandbox X Netlify</title>
</head>
<body>
  <noscript>
    You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.
  </noscript>
  <div id="root"></div>
</body>
</html>

You can create other files inside the src folder for faster rebuilds because only files inside the src folder are processed by Webpack. You need to put any JavaScript and CSS files inside src, otherwise, Webpack won’t see them.

Next, you would have to click on file and Fork the Sandbox, Awesome! Now you have it all to yourself. you can customize it whichever way you desire.

Deploy to Netlify

Once that's done you should have something similar to what I have below.

Now, let's create our GitHub repository directly from our CodeSandbox dashboard, click on the GitHub icon on the icon tag across your left.

Put in your desired name of repo and then click create repository, you should get the below, but then wait a few seconds for it to deploy.

You should get a loading screen like the below for some seconds.

Once that's done, click on the Plus sign and refork the repo, Click again on the rocket button and click deploy on Netlify.

Once deploy is clicked on Netlify, you will get a unique domain like csb-mqpoxl7wjx wait few seconds for it to build and deploy.

Awesome🔥🔥🔥, You should get two buttons Visit and Claim Site click Visit to view the deployed site.

Your deployed site should look like the image below if all steps were followed.

Claim your site

Once deployed you would see a blue button named Claim Site click it,

Once that's clicked, you would be redirected to a new page on Netlify that looks like the image below, you just have to add it to your netlify dashboard.

Your CodeSandbox site has successfully been added to the list of your site's hosted on Netlify

Closing Thoughts

We’ve only scratched the surface with this Deploying Static Sites from CodeSandbox to netlify article. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to Deploying Static Sites from CodeSandbox to netlify.

Read more on Netlify via the official Netlify Docs and use CodeSandbox as your default live editor its amazing if you are looking forward to collaborating with multiple people on a single project. Read more here, Documentation - CodeSandbox Documentation

Thanks to Ives van Hoorne, Sara Vieira and others behind this helping us maintain and improve this amazing platfrom.

Resources

Link to GitHub

Link to CodeSandbox

CodeSandbox-client on GitHub.