What are the some of the best programming tips and tricks | Padsa Information

• Readability is the path to more interesting projects within a career.
• Readability is the path to knowing what you wrote 5 years ago, and makes code reuse actually viable
• Readability is the path to acquiring protégées that can learn from your style.
• Readability that is understandable by others allows people to appreciate your code at a level of architecture, not just functional.
• Readability is the path of lease resistance when you have a bug in your code.
• Readability is the how you put ideas into understandable text and syntax, much like writing a paragraph in natural language.
• Readability is somehow not a priority for most other developers, however it’s probably pretty important to your development director, if you work for one.
• Readability is more important than most believe. With moore’s law, it’s even more important to focus on readability than pre-mature optimization.

Here’s more:

• Most schools and colleges teach computer science like trade school skills. How to fix a car. How to be a dental assistant. How to be an admin.
• Most schools and colleges don’t realize there’s a difference between Computer Science and Programming. These are different.
• Most of the people applying for job in California are Programmers, when the job actually requires a Computer Scientist.
• Most people only know one or three programming languages. I personally believe you need to know between 7–8 of them to really master the idea of programming.

Psychology wise?

• Most programmers are very insecure about their programming skills and end up in bandwagon debates over which programming language is better.
• Following that, most don’t realize that each programming language is just a tool that’s better at something while other is better at something else… Like speaking Spanish while in Spain, or knowing Chinese in the middle of China down. Right tools for the job.
• Most programmers are habituated to just google everything, that’s how they were taught.
• Most insecure programmers rave about how “compact” their code is. Which serves very little purpose on compiled languages.
• Most insecure programmers focus on hyper tuning a few lines of code. Good programmers focus on delivering functional and useable software.

Habits….

• Most programmers follow the syntax and structure of the style they were taught. Very few question the style they were taught. Examples are {’s on the if-statement line, or on the next line vertically aligned with the }.
• Most programmers don’t make diagrams before they begin experimenting. Many just copy some existing example and start their modifications from there (which runs the risk of adopting bugs from existing examples).
• Most programmers don’t unit test. They believe they are better than that, or they are lazy.
• Most programmers read xkcd.
• Programmers that are computer scientists are better at computational problems.

What most don’t realize about computer science (as opposed to only programming.)

• You can merge sort your socks.
• You can apply scalability methods of algorithms to work labor level processes to improve business efficiency.
• You can learn other fields and industries because CS is a catalyze for industries like physics, chemistry, rendering, etc…
• You can apply CS methods to accounting, management, logistics, market trends, human resource management, workflow processing engineering, etc…
• Computer science has philosophies within it that can change your mode of thinking.

Lots and lots. It’s amazing what you can do if you pay attention to the computer science bit, rather than only how to program software.

Computer science includes:

• Hardware
• Software
• Programming
• Algorithms
• Problem solving
• Efficiency measurement methods
• Stability methods
• Integration concepts
• Computer architecture

And most importantly….

• Computer Science History

You learn to appreciate these things when you take in CS and listen in beyond only the programming trade skill.

Either you are a viable employee… Or you’re an amazing one that could hold a position of technical leadership.

Take your time to comment on this article.

What Is The Difference Between Sudo And Su In Linux? | Padsa information

Many of you might be using sudo and su in terminal every day to accomplish different tasks. While sudo runs a single command with root privileges, su launches another shell instance with the privileges of the intended user. Both, sudo and su, are use to grant root privileges to the users in different manners.

ALinux user comes across sudo and su in terminal very often. If you are a new Linux user, you might be fascinated by the things you can do with sudo and su. Last week, I also told you about a Windows command that you can use to get sudo-like functionality. Sudo and su  provide root privileges in two different ways. But, how are they different? Here, I’ll try to answer this query.

Before telling you the difference, let me tell you the meaning of a root user. The root user in a Linux system has the maximum permissions and he/she can do anything to the systems. Apart from letting a normal user install/delete some package, root user permissions also act as an extra security layer.

Important: One should also note that these functions are used in a different way in different Linux-based operating systems. Most of the things we’ll discuss here are applicable to Ubuntu and its derivatives. They might differ a little bit in other Linux distributions.

Key differences between sudo and su

The su command stands for super user or root user. It executes on a Linux system with no additional options. The user just needs to add root account password. In the terminal, su also lets you access any other user account using the required password. That’s why su also stands for substitute user or switch user. Simply type su followed by the user account name, e.g., sudo fossbytes, and you’ll enter the password for fossbytes. After completing the job, you can exit the root shell by typing exit. Overall, su basically starts another shell instance with the privileges of the intended user.

On the other hand, sudo runs a single command with root permissions. When a user runs a command with sudo, e.g., sudo command, he/she needs to enter the current user account password to run it as root user. Sudo uses a config file (/etc/sudoers) to define the rights of different users. For detailed information on sudo, you can read our detailed article written by Devin — Sudo in Linux

Comparing the both, sudo lets one use the user account password to run system command. On the other hand, su forces one to share the root passwords to other users. Also, sudo doesn’t activate the root shell and runs a single command.

Using sudo and su in Linux distros

Ubuntu was the first widely used Linux distribution that adopted sudo-only approach by default. When one installs Ubuntu Linux, the root account is created without any password. One needs to assign a password to the root account to log in as root. In Ubuntu and many other Debian-based distros, the user needs to remember just a single password. This way, Ubuntu encourages a user to avoid logging in as a root user. In distros like Fedora, a person needs to create different passwords for root and user accounts.

There’s an often-used combination sudo su that Linux users find helpful. First, sudo asks for your password, and, if it’s provided, it runs the next command as a root user. Also, to run a single command as a root user using su, one needs to use this syntax: su -c ‘command’.

Did you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.