Author: Nic Raboy

Monitoring GPS Data with the NEO 6M and Arduino

May 27, 2019 Nic Raboy

I recently wrote a tutorial titled, Configuring Visual Studio Code for Arduino Development, because I've been exploring the Internet of Things (IoT). Up until recently I've only had hands on experience with Raspberry Pi, but I've been expanding my knowledge with Arduino.

I have an Arduino Uno and a GPS module, so I thought it'd be a good idea to demonstrate how to use the two together.

In this tutorial we're going to see how to monitor a NEO 6M GPS module connected to an Arduino using a few lines of very simple code.

Configuring Visual Studio Code for Arduino Development

May 20, 2019 Nic Raboy

I've been playing around with an Arduino Uno recently, something new to me since I've always only used Raspberry Pi hardware. Many Arduino devices, or at least the Uno like I have are inexpensive and a lot of fun to play around with. However, the development experience out of the box isn't exactly what I was familiar with or happy about. To develop and push code to an Arduino you need to use the Arduino Desktop IDE. If you're like me, you're a one IDE type of developer, so having to work in a different environment is a little less than ideal.

It doesn't have to be that way when developing with Arduino though.

In this tutorial I'm going to walk you through configuring Visual Studio Code for Arduino development. You'll be able to write code, deploy to hardware, and monitor the output.

TPDP Episode #27: Static Website Generation with Hugo

May 9, 2019 Nic Raboy

I am pleased to announce that the latest episode of the Polyglot Developer Podcast has been published and is now available on all of the major podcast networks!

As many of you know, The Polyglot Developer is a static website composed of strictly HTML, JavaScript and CSS. There is no backend technology, no database, nothing dynamic, and as a result it is fast, cheap to operate, and easy to maintain.

This episode, Static Website Generation with Hugo, will shed some light into static site generation and how it differs and is advantageous over the popular alternatives such as WordPress and Drupal.

There are many static site generators available, but the focus of this episode is on Hugo, a popular generator because of its speed and functionality. To talk about Hugo, the core maintainer of the open source project, Bjørn Erik Pedersen, is on the show.

Sort A Vector Of Integers With The Quicksort Algorithm In C++

April 29, 2019 Nic Raboy

If you're studying computer science, at some point you're going to be exposed to the Quicksort algorithm. Even if you're not a computer science student, chances are this particular algorithm will come up at some point in time as part of an interview. I've been asked about it plenty of times in interview processes and never once used it again.

Whether or not you'll ever use the Quicksort algorithm, it is important to know and that is what we're going to review in this back to the basics tutorial.

In this tutorial we're going to sort a vector of integer values using the Quicksort algorithm. We're going to use a vector because it is a commonly used data structure in C++.

Getting Familiar With Arrays And Vectors In C++

April 22, 2019 Nic Raboy

When it comes to the fundamentals of computer programming, arrays will almost always make an appearance. Being able to store a collection of values could be beneficial to a near endless amount of use-cases.

To continue the back to the basics programming series, in this tutorial we'll explore standard arrays as well vectors which are a much more powerful alternative when it comes to C++.

Using Socket.io to Create a Multiplayer Game with Angular and Node.js

April 17, 2019 Nic Raboy

When it comes to client and server communication, there are quite a few approaches towards solving the problem. You could create a RESTful API or GraphQL API on your server and consume it on-demand with your client, or you can go the socket approach and interact in real-time through events. There isn't a wrong way to do things, but some ways are better than others given the task at hand.

Let's take for example gaming and online multiplayer games. While certain aspects of the game would make sense to use REST or GraphQL, not everything would feel responsive enough. Instead it makes sense to use sockets.

In this tutorial we're going to explore Socket.io for our client and server communication. We're going to create a Socket.io server with Node.js and that server will communicate with each of our games running as Angular applications.

Getting Familiar With Loops In C++

April 15, 2019 Nic Raboy

In this back to the basics tutorial, we're going to be exploring loops in C++, something that you'll take with you well into your software development career, regardless of programming language. The content in this tutorial is targeted at new developers or those that would like to start learning C++.

So when might you want to use a loop? If you need to perform a repetitive task of any kind, a loop is probably going to be want you want to use.

In this tutorial we're going to explore for loops, while loops, and do-while loops using the C++ programming language.