Forem: Indrani

14 coding platforms to build your programming logic

Indrani — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 13:48:56 +0000

Let me give you some interesting insights into the world of technology, which I consider, the tip of the iceberg of uncertainty.

With the advent of DeepSeek AI, which was built by Chinese AI engineers, OpenAI faced a huge setback. Nasdaq became red. The US economy faced losses of 1 trillion US dollars. The DeepSeek R1 model was made open source and was made available for everyone. Also, it's being said that it took lower costs to train the LLM since they were short of resources. Their basic approach involved the use of reinforcement learning. OpenAI then launched its newest reasoning model, the o3 mini, which can essentially "think" and "reason".

🔥THE BURNING QUESTION.....

Why would the recruiters ask coding questions during the recruitment process, if the models are intelligent enough to solve them??

🎁MY HONEST OPINION

Recruiters will ask to solve coding questions to get a glimpse of the innate and raw problem-solving skills of the candidate, the dedication that was previously put in during the preparations, consistency, and discipline. Essentially, coding questions serve as the metric of all the above-mentioned parameters.

With the emergence of ultra-powerful AI models, it's an absolute necessity to possess the skill of problem-solving and logic building. Even using AI tools properly and utilizing them to their maximum potential is not everyone's cup of tea.

Think of yourself, imagine you are a manager of a multi-million dollar enterprise. While recruiting a candidate, would you not check if that person had serious problem-solving skills? Would you not check if that person was disciplined? Would you not check if the human is consistent with putting effort and dedication or not? Surely you would. And what would be the easiest way to do that?

I think you have the answer.

Over the years, I have bookmarked some well-known problem-solving sites that will level up your thinking skills and exercise your brain muscles.

Competitive Programming

To practice Data Structures and Algorithms

Multiple-use site

Topcoder

This is it. So let's

GET. SET. CODE. 🤘💪✌

How I generated 15 vibrant and highly detailed infographics at the last moment...

Indrani — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:41:11 +0000

As we all know, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Also, our attention spans have become incredibly short. For video content creators, it is the first 5 to 7 seconds of their videos, that decides if their videos will have a longer watch span or not.

This leads us to the importance of infographics.
Adding infographics to our documents, presentation, or anything that has text, has the potential to
1) Hold the readers' attention for a longer period.
2) Present the information concisely.

I have used Napkin AI to prepare a pitch deck for a case study competition. The deadlines for the submission were closing in fast and apart from this event, my team members had a lot of other obligations to fulfill. We didn't have the time to
1) Go through all the information, and
2) Summarize it, and
3) Jott down the main points that graphics can depict, and, finally
4) Design the graphics from scratch.
5) Just one graphic is not enough, we needed at least 10, maybe more.

That's where my army of AI tools jumped in to save us. Long story short,
1) we fed the problem statement to ChatGPT.
2) We wrote prompts for specific perspectives of the case and the questions we needed answered.
3) We pasted ChatGPT's instructions into Napkin AI and it generated the graphics for us.

Here is a collage of the pics that we had generated.

All the infographics that are used here are generated from Napkin AI itself.

Here is a list of all its features we found to be useful :
1) You can generate visuals from text.
2) It generates a good number of options for you to decide which one of all the options, suits your needs the best.
3) Each option has several styles to choose from, to match the theme of whatever you are working on.
4) You can customize your visuals, colors, border outlines, and even the text.
5) You can sketch and draw directly on your visuals
6) You can export in PNG, SVG, or PDF format.
7) You can collaborate with your team.
8) You can upload your visuals and customize them
9) There is a free version and a paid one. You can choose to use whatever suits your needs the best. (I chose the free one. :) )
10) There is a feature to add comments too.

Here is an infographic to summarize all the points mentioned above :

This tool is very handy, intuitive, and easy to use. Once you get started, you will instinctively know what to do and how to proceed.

There is one thing that I feel Napkin AI needs to work on: The web app lags a bit after one napkin is used for too long. While the generation of images provides numerous options, scrolling through them was a bit longer process than expected. What I mean is scrolling is supposed to be instantaneous but while using Napkin, it took me more than just an instant, took me around 4 to 5 instants, at max.

I wish Napkin had plug-ins or extensions to be used alongside Google Docs/ Slides, MS PowerPoint, WordPress, or other creator tools that are used very often. Those features might roll in soon.

Altogether, Napkin AI presents us with an incredible demonstration of the power of Artificial Intelligence, more specifically, the Gen AI.

Behind the Scenes: Key takeaways from our Smart India Hackathon 2024 experience.

Indrani — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 12:19:22 +0000

My team consisted of two girls and four boys: Anu Priya, Harshit, Beeplov Sharma, Manish Sah, Roshan Yadav, and my pathetic self (just kidding). We developed a solution for the following problem statement: Develop an ML model-based solution to refine CAPTCHA.

There was intense competition since the Smart India Hackathon is the world's biggest open innovation model, sponsored by the Government of India. We had been trying to become "The Chosen One" since our 1st year. When the SIH finally opened for idea submissions, the brains of the entire community of innovators started storming. Teams began building, friendships began evolving, and YouTube videos about how to become finalists started rolling in. Each topic was limited to 500 idea submissions. Some topics did have 500 submissions (which means more than 500 teams attempted to submit to that particular problem statement), while others had 30 or maybe 40 submissions.

Takeaway 1: Select a topic that has a probability of fewer submissions.

This way, you will have less competition to worry about. (Since we are ignorant humans, we worry more about others and less about our actions.)

There were 186 problem statements in the software domain. We were in search of that one magical problem statement for which we could build something meaningful. All 6 of us divided the problem statements, and each of us went through all of them. We didn't ponder much on the ones we didn't like or that wasn't our cup of tea. All 6 of us made a list of problem statements that ignited our visceral train of thought, i.e., how to approach the problem and what to build. This was done within a fixed deadline, after which a meeting was held, and we identified our divine problem statement.

Takeaway 2: Select a problem statement from which you (as a team) believe you can build something meaningful.

All members should know what will be built and what their contribution to the team will be. If there is a primary working member (this arrangement is more common than might be apparent at the surface level), then the other members should assist that person in whatever way possible.

Takeaway 3: Make a list of all the tech stacks that you will need to build your proposed solution.

Include the technologies you would need to scale up your solution to production-grade. Include this in your PowerPoint presentation or pitch deck. The list should be made available to everyone on the team.

Takeaway 4: The importance of a detailed and well-structured flowchart is quite underrated.

I would like to emphasize the importance of pictures and infographics. Try to use graphics to design the architecture of your proposed solution. Websites like Canva, Polotno Studio, or any other software/website of your choice can be used. Detailed flowcharts give insights into your thought process, and demonstrate the validity and scalability of the proposed solution.

This is a screenshot of the problem statement.

You can view more such problem statements at the official website of the SIH.

Here is the link to the ppt of the proposed solution that we had submitted.

Our joy skyrocketed when we learned that we had been selected for the finals. Here is the link to our ecstatic LinkedIn post.

Although we had been selected for the finals, we could not make it to the hackathon because we had our end-of-semester exams on the same day. If we had skipped our end-of-semester exams for the hackathon, it would have been considered a backlog in our academic record. So, the choice made out of sheer desperation was obvious. After innumerable sleepless nights, countless silent prayers, and multitudes of long, arduous hours, our patient wait to attend this grand hackathon in person remained a distant dream, a goal never achieved, a wait that never ended.

"I tried so hard and got so far
But in the end, it doesn't even matter."
-Linkin Park (In The End)

This, however, is not true. It does matter. We are developers. We always learn and implement; that's what we do. The journey to becoming a finalist in SIH 2024 has been hugely rewarding and immensely humbling and was a great learning experience in itself. I extend my deepest gratitude to each exceptional member of my team for their unwavering support, seamless collaboration, and the treasury of memories we've created together.