As per my university curriculum, I was required to undertake a full-time internship during the 3rd year 2nd semester. Therefore, I began applying for internships in Sri Lankan Tech companies in July 2022. While I was applying and facing interviews with other Sri Lankan Tech companies, I saw a Facebook post advertising an internship opportunity for Full Stack Developers at Nichelabs. Based on that Facebook post, I decided to apply for the position. After one week, I had been selected as an Intern Full Stack Developer at Nichelabs, following an interview and technical assessment process.

Nichelabs (Pvt) Ltd.

Nichelabs is a Sri Lankan-based tech startup company that focused on the niche digital market of Europe, backed by a set of experienced entrepreneurs, innovators, and software engineering industry experts.

What I did at Nichelabs.

In August 2022, I started working as an intern Full Stack Developer at Nichelabs as a newcomer to the IT industry. In the first week of my internship, I have to do an assessment project before assign to ongoing project team. That assessment project helped me to get familiar with the tech stack on the Nichelabs. During my internship period at Nichelabs, I had the opportunity to work on two exciting projects. After completing my assessment project, I was assigned to the Sri Lankan base Billing Management System project. Working under the guidance and support of senior developers, I was responsible for developing various features for both the front-end and back-end of the system. After spending several weeks contributing to the Sri Lankan-based Billing Management System project, I was assigned to another exciting venture, a Portugal-based IT Professional’s headhunting and job-hunting project. I primarily worked on the front-end development aspect of the project. But when I was assigned to a feature on that project, I worked on both front-end and back-end development.

What I learned throughout my internship?

• Working in Agile environment.

Nichelabs is a fully Agile company, and during my time there, I had the opportunity to learn about the practical application of Agile methodology in a real-world setting. I had only learned about Agile theory through my university curriculum. However, working in an Agile environment allowed me to see firsthand how the Agile process is implemented within a company. I was able to actively participate in sprint planning meetings, daily standup meetings, and sprint retrospective meetings, which gave me a deeper understanding of the Agile development cycle. Furthermore, I had the privilege of working alongside a team of highly skilled Senior Developers, QA Engineers, UI/UX Engineers, and Product Owners in an Agile development environment.

• Cloud Technologies.

My experience at Nichelabs was not only limited to software development, but I also had the opportunity to enhance my knowledge and practical experience in cloud technologies. I had only learned about cloud computing theories through my university curriculum. However, I was given the chance to work with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is the cloud platform utilized by Nichelabs. Working with AWS allowed me to gain hands-on experience with a variety of AWS services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Amazon Cloud Front. Because of this experience, I got a chance to gain a comprehensive understanding of how AWS can be leveraged to support software development projects.

• Learn new Tech Stack.

When I first joined the Nichelabs team, I had no prior experience working with GraphQL, Apollo Client, or Vue.js. However, I got the opportunity to enhance my technical knowledge by learning these technologies. Additionally, working on complex project requirements enabled me to enhance my ReactJs, JavaScript, and MongoDB experience. My work on front-end development of the project allowed me to gain a deep understanding of Bootstrap and how it can be leveraged to create effective and attractive web designs. Moreover, I also got a chance to enhance my knowledge of implementing responsive design for mobile and 4K views on websites.

Life at Nichelabs.

When I was joining to Nichelabs team, it was a fully remote working company. Therefore, all of the Nichelabs team members are working from home. However, despite the remote working arrangement, I got several chances to have had several opportunities to meet the team members in person and have some fun with them. Additionally, Nichelabs organized knowledge-sharing sessions called Inspiro, where team members could share their experiences and expertise with others. These sessions and gatherings were immensely helpful and allowed me to gain valuable knowledge that I could apply to my work and life in general.

Furthermore, I was fortunate enough to be a part of the third edition of the Being Helping Hand project. The aim of this project is to help parents who are unable to provide the necessary materials for their children’s education and are facing daily living difficulties.

I would like to give my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Mr. Asela Wijesinghe for the guidance and help me to successfully complete the internship. Also, I’m very thankful to Mr. Senal Perera, Mr. Hirantha Gunawardana, and Mrs. Hasini Rathnayaka for giving me this valuable opportunity. Furthermore, I am very thankful to Mathura Thusyanthan, Thiwanka Shan, Chamika Wijerathna, Tisal Rathnayake, Buddika Amarashinghe, Viraj Abeywardana, and Nethya Liyangaskumbura for being an amazing team.

This is my internship journey as a Full Stack Developer at Nichelabs. I am so glad you read my article to the end. Stay tuned to my next articles.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.

Hello everyone, I warmly welcome you to my 2nd blog post on the “Let’s dive into the depths of Mobile App development with React Native” blog post series. According to my previous blog post, I think you will understand the basic facts of mobile app development and React Native. Throughout this blog post, let’s see how to start working with React Native.

Before starting to work with React Native, you need to understand the ways in which you can develop React Native apps. Mainly we can find out two kinds of CLIs for React Native app development. CLI is Command Line Interface, and it’s a visual interface where programmers can run commands to develop apps. Developers can use the official React Native CLI by Facebook or the Expo CLI. Selecting one CLI among these two CLI depends on your app requirements.

What is Expo CLI?

Expo is a free and open-source set of tools built around React Native for developers who want to build native iOS and Android apps faster using JavaScript and React. It provides an inbuilt build chain that works well for building and testing on both iOS and Android devices. Expo is a specific tool for developers who are new to mobile app development with react native. Expo takes off all the complexity while building a React Native app. It has become the main reason for the specific to developers who are new to mobile app development with react native. When you develop mobile apps with Expo CLI, you only need a recent version of Node.js and a phone or emulator. The main drawback of using Expo CLI is that you cannot extend the native functionality while writing your app.

What is React Native CLI?

You can generate a plain react native project with separate native projects for iOS and Android platforms by using React native CLI. And also, you can modify the native projects as you want, writing native code for each platform. React Native CLI is mainly specific for developers already familiar with mobile development. It requires Xcode or Android Studio for getting start the app. The main drawback of the React Native CLI is that you need to set up build chains for both platforms on your system. It means you need Android Studio for Android and Xcode for iOS to build and test your app.

Things you need to install before you start working with React Native.

Now you know that there are two ways to develop React Native apps. Among them, let’s see how to work with React Native CLI for our mobile app development. When it comes to the React Native CLI, we can find out it differs from the environment for the operating system. But commonly need Node and JDK for the React Native development in any operating system. We need Xcode or Android Studio to run the application, as I previously mentioned. Inside the mac operating system, we can install both Xcode and Android Studio. But Xcode cannot install in Windows operating system. It only can install for the mac operating system. For this issue, we can use a virtual box to run the mac operating system and install Xcode in it and run it inside the Windows operating system. As a result, we can run our React Native app in Xcode even we are using the Windows operating system.

Let’s see how to set up the environment for the Android in Windows operating system.

1. Install NodeJs.

2. Install Java SE Development Kit (JDK).

3. Download and install Android Studio.

After downloading Android Studio, you have to do several things to do setup the environment.

• You have to check Android SDK, Android SDK Platform and Android Virtual Device checkboxes in the Android Studio installation wizard.
• Android 11 (R), Android SDK Platform 30, Intel x86 Atom_64 System Image or Google APIs Intel x86 Atom System Image are should be downloaded and installed the Android SDK and related build tools by checking the checkboxes which are in “SDK Tools”.
• You have to configure the ANDROID_HOME environment variable by following the below steps.

I. Open the Windows Control Panel.

II. Click on User Accounts, then click User Accounts again.

III. Click on Change my environment variables.

IV. Click on New and create a new ANDROID_HOME user variable that points to the path to your Android SDK.

• Then, you have to add platform-tools to Path by following the below steps.

I. Open the Windows Control Panel.

II. Click on User Accounts, then click User Accounts again.

III. Click on Change my environment variables.

IV. Select the Path variable.

V. Click Edit.

VI. Click New and add the Path to platform-tools to the list.

4. Install preferred code editor. (Ex:- Vs Code)

After installing and setting up the above things and steps, you have successfully created the environment for starting the development of React Native apps.

Create the first React Native App.

You can generate a new React Native project without installing anything globally using npx because React Native has a built-in command-line interface.

• You can create a new React Native project called “Hello_World” by running the following command.

npx react-native init Hello_World

• You can start your Metro Bundler by running the following command.

npx react-native start

• You can start your application by opening a new terminal inside your React Native project folder and running the following command.

npx react-native run-android

Congratulations! You’ve successfully created and run your first React Native app.

I hope you learned how to start working with React Native through this article. I expect to write more articles for you. I am so glad you read my article to the end.

Stay tuned for my next article.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.

Web development is the creation of an application that works over the internet. Not only creation but also maintaining the websites is also one of the tasks in web development. Web design, web publishing, web programming, and database management are the main aspects of web development. The professionals who create websites are known as web developers, and they use various methodologies for web development, such as Agile. In earlier days, web developers follow the traditional web application model for web development. But today, most web applications are developed in a single page application model.

Traditional Web Applications.

The traditional web application is a server application that handles a client request, processes it on the server, generates and renders the HTML response and passes it to the client’s browser. They mostly center around static text and filling out forms, and most interactions require a full page refresh. Browsers send data to the server via HTML forms, and the server handles the processing. Furthermore, Traditional web app workflow typically presents the user with a form, a submit button, and a full-page response is received from the server after they click the button. As a result of this, the User experience will be disjointed and unsatisfactory. We can find out ASP Web Forms as an example for the traditional web app.

Single Page Applications.

A single-page app is a web-based app where UI is dynamically modified based on data transfer with the server via API calls. By using single-page apps, users can view a website without loading the entire new page and data from the server. As a result of this, performance will increase, and users can have a dynamic web experience. SPAs help users be in a single, uncomplicated web space in easy, workable, and simple ways. Furthermore, SPA’s most widely used framework is Angular.

What is AngularJs?

AngularJS is an open-source front-end JavaScript framework used to develop single-page web applications. It was developed by Google in 2002. The primary goal of AngularJS is to simplify both the development and the testing of such applications by providing a framework for client-side Model-View-Controller (MVC) and Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) architectures. AngularJS is no longer updated by Google according to security, browser compatibility, and jQuery issues.

What is Angular?

Angular is an open-source front-end JavaScript framework written in TypeScript. It is used primarily to develop single-page web applications, and it is maintained by Google. TypeScript is basically a superset of JavaScript developed by Microsoft. Furthermore, Angular adds structure and design patterns to front-end development, allowing developers to create more advanced web applications that are easier to maintain and update.

AngularJs vs Angular.

Users of Angular.

Several cutting-edge companies use Angular in their present-day web app development pipeline. These are the example companies for angular users.

Reason for Angular more popular.

There are several reasons why web application developers and business owners choose Angular as their framework.

• Easy to Use.

Angular is an easy to use open-source JavaScript framework, which prevents the need to write tons of code. This framework contains plenty of features that will help you develop web apps with just minimal coding. This makes it easier to collaborate on projects.

• Great Support.

So many developers tend to choose Angular over the other frameworks according to the credibility of Google. Because Angular framework was developed and is currently managed by Google. As a result of the credibility, Angular has a massive community with expert developers who are skilled enough to improve the framework.

• Simplified MVC architecture.

Angular framework use MVC architecture for developing dynamic and powerful web applications. MVC is the most popular software design pattern commonly used for web app development. MVC is made up of Model, View, and Controller.

• Testability.

When it comes to the web development process, testing becomes a big part of the process. Primary testing ensures that the code is doing what it’s meant to do. Angular makes it easy to test because of its modular separation feature.

• Mobile Compatible Design.

As a result of today’s massive usage of mobile devices, websites need to be mobile-friendly. It means your website must work well for both desktop and mobile devices. Angular offers instant compatibility with mobile devices. Therefore, developers can develop websites that work well for both desktop and mobile devices.

Prerequisites for learning Angular.

Angular is extensively used for web development, and there are several prerequisites for learning Angular. These are the prerequisites for learning Angular.

• Sound knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• The basic idea of the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture.
• Basic knowledge of Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager).
• Experience working with the command line.
• Exposure to TypeScript.

Things you need to install before you start working with Angular.

Before you start working with Angular, you need to install several things on your device.

• Install Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager).
• Install the Angular Cli.
• Install a code editor.(Ex:- VS Code)

I hope you learned about the background of Angular framework through this article. I expect to write more articles for you. I am so glad you read my article to the end. Stay tuned for my next article.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.

Today, smartphones have become very essential devices for humans’ day-to-day life. Adults to children use smartphones to cater to their diverse needs. Covid-19 global pandemic pushed the humans’ lifestyle to online mode. Therefore, people have to work from home and study on an online platform. As a result of that, the Smartphone requirement rapidly increased. Now, hardly a person does not have a smartphone in society, and it’s become part of humans’ lives.

What are Mobile Applications?

A mobile application or app is a type of application designed to run on a mobile device, which can be a smartphone or tablet computer. Early mobile apps avoided multi-functionality because of the limited hardware resources. But, the devices used today are far more sophisticated. Mobile apps remain narrowly functional rather than early mobile devices.

Why Mobile Applications?

Because the mobile phone has become a part of human life, there are several reasons why mobile applications are very important for businesses.

1.Strengthen customer engagement.

All your customers are searching for a way to reach you, whatever your business. Nowadays, customers prefer to use a fast and easy way to access your products, services, and contact information. Therefore, nothing can serve this demand better than a mobile app.

2.Increase accessibility.

Mobile apps make your customers reach you easily. Because of the vast number of smartphone users, you can increase the accessibility of the business with the customers.

3.Better Customer service.

Customer satisfaction is the most important thing that all businesses should focus on, whatever the business. If you improve customer satisfaction, customers will tend to choose your service repeatedly. Hence, this mobile app has taken customer service to another level.

4.Build brand awareness and recognition.

Most smart mobile phone users are spending their time using mobile apps intelligently. And also, they expect something impressive through your mobile app. If you are going to provide a mobile app solution to your customer, you can retain it in the market for the long run. Hence, building brand awareness and recognition can gain your business because of these mobile apps.

Types of Mobile Applications Development.

Android and iOS are the most popular mobile operating systems currently. Each Operating System (OS) needs the application program to be in a particular format so that it can be run on the device. And also, there are three different types of mobile apps by technology.

• Native Apps.

Native mobile application development is the most common type of mobile application development. These applications are developed specifically for a mobile device’s operating system (OS) by using a language native to the operating system. Furthermore, Java or Kotlin can be used to develop native apps for the Android operating system, and Objective-C or Swift can be used to develop native apps for the iOS operating system.

There are several advantages to native apps. These apps have excellent performance on a particular OS. Native apps have a more optimized customer experience because they utilize native UI. And also, these apps have access to the device features.

• Web-Based Apps.

Web apps are the responsive versions of websites, which can work on any mobile device or OS as they are delivered through a mobile browser. These apps can be accessed from an internet browser and do not require much storage space. These apps are developed on Software such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

We can find several advantages on web apps. These apps do not need to be downloaded or installed. Web apps are very easy to maintain. And also, the same codebase can support all devices and offer instant access through any browser.

• Hybrid Apps.

Hybrid apps are a combination of native apps and web apps. It works across multiple platforms and active just like a native application. Hybrid apps are built upon HTML, CSS, JavaScript. And also, hybrid apps don’t require the source code of any device it is going to be installed or the Operation System. React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin like programming languages can be used to develop native apps.

When it comes to the advantages of hybrid apps, we can find several advantages. Hybrid app developers manage only a single code base. Therefore, this development is quicker and more cost-effective. Hybrid apps can easily maintain and work offline on hybrid apps.

Mobile applications will bring business to their customers’ fingertips. Hence, Businesses must choose the suitable category of the app depending on their business goals.

What is React Native?

React Native is an open-source JavaScript Mobile framework created by Facebook in 2015. We can use this framework for writing real, native UI elements for iOS and Android operating systems. React Native is based on ReactJS and JavaScript library that helps to build the user interface for mobile platforms. It will allow you to create an application for both IOS and Android platforms by using the same codebase. It enables to access platform features like the phone camera or the user’s location. Furthermore, react-native currently supports Android, Android TV, iOS, MacOS, and Windows platforms.

Why React Native?

• React Native helps in formulating cross-platform mobile apps.
• React Native is an excellent selection for developers who have expertise the JavaScript because there is no need to learn Android’s Java or iOS’s Swift.
• React Native has a large developers’ community when you need help for React Native app development.
• It is time and cost-effective to build mobile apps on multiple platforms.
• React Native support for Third-Party plugins also.

Products that use “React Native”.

We can find several witness mobile apps for React Native to prove the success of working well on both Android and IOS platforms. Many large companies and businesses use React Native for their mobile business apps. These are examples of mobile business apps.

Prerequisites for learning React Native.

If you are willing to learn about React Native, there are some prerequisites that you should be familiar with before starting to work on React Native. These are the prerequisites for React Native.

• There should be familiar with programming concepts like functions, objects, arrays, and to a lesser extent, classes.
• There should have a basic knowledge of JavaScript.
• There should have some familiarity with HTML and CSS.
• If you have previous experience with React. It means already have the knowledge about React Native. It will give advantages for learning more about React Native.

I hope you learned about Mobile Apps and React Native through this article. I expect to write more articles for you. I am so glad you read my article to the end.

Stay tuned for my next article.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.

Let’s read a Research Paper.

Hello everyone, I warmly welcome you to my second blog post about my experience with ScholarX 2021 program. Through this blog post, I would like to share with you how to read research papers that I learned from Dr. Chathura Sarathchandra’s mentoring sessions.

What is a Research paper?

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides novel contributions to a field based on in-depth research. Scientists research and expand many theories, developing social or technological aspects in human science. Research papers are used to analyze questions or topics like this and write papers on defined themes.

Structure of the Research paper.

The structure of each research paper may vary because of various reasons. It depends on the researcher who did the study. For example, some papers may focus on introducing novel concepts/theories and then validate/evaluate them through simulations, while others may focus on providing analysis using real-world data gathered through trials. Basically, the structure of research papers consists of the title, abstract, introduction, contribution of the paper, conclusion, and references.

• Title.

The title is the most important part of the paper. It draws us in and tells us what they are presenting. It will become a very important part when we browse the paper on the internet.

• Abstract.

The abstract is a summary of the research. We can get a rough understanding of the paper by reading this abstract. It is not a critical review of the paper. But the abstract is presented to the reader as a summary of what the researcher is addressing?, what is the problem?, How they solve the problem? And, what are the results?

• Introduction.

The introduction includes background information on the subject and the researcher’s objectives here. It is a kind of an expand the abstract. It gives a critical review of the paper by using the existing knowledge.

Some papers may still have a literature review section. It includes the critical review of the paper by using the existing knowledge.

• Body of the paper.

The body of the paper includes the results, used methodology and methods, discussion, recommendation, and limitation. It may vary according to the data, so some parts may not be in the research paper. Methodology and methods will explain the research design with techniques used for gathering information and other aspects related to the experiment. Results will present and illustrate the obtained findings. The discussion will review the information in the introduction part, evaluate their gained results, or compare it with past studies. The recommendation will propose potential solutions or new ideas based on the obtained results. The limitation will consider the weaknesses of the research and results to get new directions.

• Conclusion.

The conclusion provides the final thoughts and the summary of the whole work.

• References.

All resources used in the study are cited from the reference section.

How to find papers that are related to your research project?

If you are new to reading research papers or new to studying the area, sometimes you may not be aware of how to start studying or find a research paper that is suited for you. Firstly, you have to understand the area in which you selected to read the research papers. One approach is to identify the latest survey papers to understand the area you are studying, people working in that area, and what are existing research going on in the selected area. After reading the survey paper, you will find out the interesting areas of the selected field. Then you can go deeper by reading more research papers that include areas of interest.

How to read a Research paper?

Reading a research paper from top to bottom may not suffice when it comes to reading research papers. Sometimes you may not have the time to read all research papers from top to bottom while doing a research study (especially if you have not yet managed to identify the most relevant papers to your study). Some research papers may not contain what you are looking for. Otherwise, some papers may contain the information which you are looking for only in certain parts. By following these steps, you can avoid useless things you do in the reading research paper top to bottom.

• Step 1 - First, read the Title and Authors of the Research Paper.

As the first step of the reading research paper, read the title and authors of the research paper. By reading the title and the authors, you will understand what the paper and the people working in the area are discussing. By following this step, you will understand whether this paper is relevant to you or not.

• Step 2 - Then, read the Abstract.

As a second step, read the abstract section. The abstract gives a full understanding of the paper. By reading the abstract, you will get the thing that addresses the author, the problem that was solved, the way of solving the problem, the contribution of the paper, and the research results.

At the end of reading the Title, Authors, and Abstract, you will understand your relevance. Then you can make a decision whether continue reading the paper or stop the reading.

• Step 3 - Then read the Introduction.

As a third step, read the introduction section. The introduction will give an understanding of the background of the paper, and it is an expansion of the abstract. This introduction includes a summarization of the upcoming sections. By reading this section, you can get ideas about the upcoming sections which are relevant for you.

• Step 4 - Then read the Conclusion.

As a fourth step, read the conclusion section. The conclusion will give an understanding of the final thought of the entire study.

After reading the Introduction and Conclusion, you can get an idea about what you can gain at the end of reading this paper. As well as, you can understand that this paper is whether relevant to the selected field or interesting. Then you can finally decide whether the research paper is further read or not.

• Step 5 - Finally, read the body of the paper.

If you came to this fifth step, you should definitely have decided to read the complete research paper.

How to take notes and highlight important parts in the paper?

Taking notes and highlighting essential parts of the paper is one of the most essential parts of the research paper reading. These notes and highlights are very useful when you want to get back into the paper to identify key points. If you didn’t take notes and highlights in the research paper, you have to reread the paper to find out the key points in the paper.

When it comes to taking notes in the research paper, we can recognize several tools which help you to take notes. Notion and Evernote are the most popular note-taking tools because both tools have a user-friendly environment, and you can download them freely. Notion tool is very useful for you to store your notes and organize your work. As well as, Evernote tool we can use to archive the knowledge by storing your research papers and other papers.

It is a very important thing to write a small paragraph about the paper at the end of the reading. This paragraph should include “What is the paper about?”, the problems which were solved, the way of solving the problems, and the conclusion or result of the paper. This paragraph will very help you to understand the research paper when you reach back to the paper again.

Highlighting important parts is a very important thing in reading research papers. You can highlight the important facts, newly learning things, and things which you refer again. There is no specific rule for highlighting. You can use your own way to highlight the paper by giving your own definition of the color. As an example, you can use the yellow color to highlight newly learning things in the paper. The important thing is to continue the color definition without changing it. Otherwise, it will confuse you when you read early papers because of the color difference.

I expect that you will be able to productively select the research papers for reading entirely by following these steps. And also, I think that you will get an idea about “what research papers are”, the structure of the paper, how to select suitable papers for reading, the way of reading papers, and the important point of taking notes and highlighting important parts.

I would like to give my gratitude to Dr. Chatura Sarathchandra for giving me valuable knowledge. And also, I would like to give my gratitude to Sustainable Education Foundation (SEF) team for giving me this valuable opportunity.

These are some of the things I added to my knowledge from the mentoring sessions of the ScholarX 2021 program. I think you have got something worthwhile by reading my article. I expect to write furthermore about my experience in the ScholarX 2021 program.

Stay tuned, everyone, to my next article.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.

1. What is Git?

Git is the most widely used modern version control system in the world today. It is an actively maintained open source project, originally developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds. There are a huge number of software projects that rely on Git for version control, including commercial projects as well as open-source projects. And also, it works on a wide range of operating systems and IDEs.

2. What is Version Controlling?

Version Controlling is a practice for managing code or project modification tracking and managing changes to software code. Those software tools are recording changes made to files by keeping a track of modifications done to the code. Because of this, developers can turn back if any mistake is made without affecting the work of the other team members who collaborate with this project.

3. How to install Git?

You can download and install Git freely. Let’s see how to install Git on Windows.

i. Download the latest Git for Windows installer.

ii. When you’ve successfully started the installer, you should see the Git Setup wizard screen.

iii. Then click the Next and Finish prompts to complete the installation.

iv. Open a Command Prompt or Git Bash.

v. The run the following commands to configure your Git username and email.

$git config — global user.name “<username>”

$git config — global user.email “<email>”

vi. Run the following commands to verify Git was installed.

$git version

Not only for Windows you can download and install Git for Mac and Linux Operating systems also.

4. What are the advantages of Git?

Git users can get several kinds of advantages by using it.

• Simultaneous development.

Git users have their local copy of the code. Therefore, users can work simultaneously on their own branches.

• Built-in integration

As a result of the popularity of Git, most tools and products integrate with Git. Every major IDE has built-in Git support. This integration simplifies the day-to-day workflow.

• Strong community support

Git is open-source and there are many tools and resources available for teams. Git has huge community support when comparing other version control systems. Therefore, it is very easy to get help when needed.

• Git works with any team

Using Git with a source code management tool can increase a team’s productivity. The team can settle on individual tools for version control, work item tracking, and continuous integration and deployment. We can use Git hosting solutions like GitHub.

5. What are the basic Git commands you must know?

i. Git Init

This command is used to convert an existing, un-versioned folder into a Git repository. As well it uses to initialize an empty repo.

$ git init

ii. Git Clone

This command is used to download the source code from a remote repository.

git clone [url]

iii. Git Branch

This command is used to create a new branch, view existing branches, or delete a branch.

$ git branch <branch-name>

iv. Git Checkout

This command is used to change from one branch to a different one.

$ git checkout <branch-name>

v. Git Add

This command is used to add one or more files into the staging area for Git.

$git add <fie or directory name>

vi. Git Commit

This command commonly is used to save your changes. Every time you commit your code changes, you have to include a proper message by describing the changes.

$ git commit -am “<commit-message>”

vii. Git Push

This command is used to send all your committed changes to your teammates by pushing them to the remote origin.

$ git push <remote> <branch-name>

viii. Git Pull

This command is used to fetch all changes made by your teammates and to automatically merge them into your local repository.

$ git pull <remote>

ix. Git Status

This command is used to tell you all the information you’ll need to know about your repo.

$ git status

x. Git Merge

This command is used to merge your branch with the parent branch.

git merge [branch name]

6. What is the top five Git hosting solutions?

Developers are using Git nowadays for their code management and collaboration. But, this is not enough. This is the place which Git hosting solutions come in to picture. One of the Git hosting solutions is used for your collaboration within your team or organization. We can find several kinds of Git hosting solutions for Git Repositories. The top 5 Git hosting solutions are,

i. Bitbucket

ii. GitHub

iii. GitLab

iv. Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services

v. Perforce

7. What is GitHub?

GitHub is a kind of Git hosting solution. It is a for-profit company that offers a cloud-based Git repository hosting service. It makes it easier for developers and teams to use Git for version control and collaboration. It is very user-friendly and there is no need for more technical savvy to use it. As well as It is not only for developers but also other types of users can use to manage other types of projects like writing books. GitHub has high popularity for open source projects.

8. What are the features and benefits of GitHub?

Programmers’ and designers’ collaborative workplace is GitHub. They collaborate, contribute, and fix bugs together. We can mention below several features of GitHub which give users be comfortable with using GitHub. That features are,

• Collaboration
• Integrated issue and bug tracking
• Graphical representation of branches
• Git repositories hosting
• Project management
• Team management
• Code hosting
• Track and assign tasks
• Conversations

Users can get valuable several benefits by using GitHub. We can see the benefits of GitHub as follows.

• It makes it easy to contribute to your open source projects
• It helps to create excellent documentation.
• You can attract a recruiter by showing off your work. If you have got a profile on GitHub, you will have a higher chance of being recruited.
• It allows your work to get out there in front of the public.
• You can track changes in your code across versions.

9. Why GitHub is more popular than other Git hosting solutions?

We can find five reasons why GitHub is so popular.

• Immensely Powerful Community.

GitHub is an open-source platform. There are millions of programmers and hobbyists that download, review, and evaluate each other’s work. Moreover, GitHub is the platform of choice for developers from various large corporations.

• The Largest Shared Repository.

Pushing the project to a shared, public repository makes it instantly discoverable around 28M users. As well as you can discover code written by others, learn from it, and even use it for your own projects.

• Easy Version Control.

GitHub tracks all the changes made to your code and who made them. You can always review the detailed changelog that neatly hosts all of the relevant information.

• A Myriad of Integrations.

GitHub platform provides a huge choice of integrations, from your Amazon and Google Cloud accounts to project management tools.

• Secure Cloud Storage.

GitHub platform protects all your data like code branches, verifies commit signing, controls access for you. For more trust, you can use the GitHub Enterprise package.

10. What are the differences between Git & GitHub?

I am very glad to give my gratitude to the RSLUP undergraduate program’s organizers for encouraging me and imparting the knowledge to write this article. As well, I used several websites like Geeksforgeeks, Microsoft, Atlassian Bitbucket, GitHub, and DZone.com to write this article.

I hope that you got a good idea about Git & GitHub. I expect to write more articles for you. I am so glad you read my article to the end.

Stay tuned everyone to my next article.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.

First of all, I would like to give my gratitude to Sustainable Education Foundation (SEF) team and my mentor Dr. Chathura Sarathchandra for give me this valuable opportunity.

What is ScholarX?

ScholarX is one of the projects founded by the Sustainable Education Foundation (SEF). ScholarX is a 6-month program for Sri Lankan undergraduates who would like to get mentoring during their academic. This program gives the valuable opportunity for Sri Lankan undergraduates to gain access to mentoring from Sri Lankan experts who are around the world in both Industry and Academia. ScholarX project creates a platform for Sri Lankan experts who live abroad and willing to contribute Sri Lankan education system.

How I got selected for the ScholarX 2021 program?

ScholarX 2021 program called the student applications from 15th February 2021 to 14th March 2021. In that month, I accidentally saw a Facebook post about the ScholarX 2021 program. When I saw the post, I realized that It would be a life-changing opportunity if I could be a mentee. I applied for ScholarX 2021 program on 14th March 2021 with the help of a friend of mine. After one month and a few days later, I got an email informing me that I got selected for the ScholarX 2021 program.

I am an undergraduate student of the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka studying for a degree in Information Systems. ScholarX is a big opportunity for me because I was seeking to have a mentoring opportunity to get career guidance. When I filling my application, I had to choose three mentors from the ScholarX 2021 mentor list. Dr. Chathura Sarathchandra’s expertise areas influenced me to choose him as my first choice mentor. I am fortunate to have Dr. Chathura Sarathchandra as my first choice as a mentor in the ScholarX 2021 program.

About my Mentor.

Dr. Chathura Sarathchandra is a staff researcher at InterDigital Inc. He is a graduate with BSc in Computer Science and also he holds a PhD in Computing and Electronic Systems at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE), University of Essex, UK. His expertise areas are Distributed Systems, Mobile Computing, Advanced Networked Systems, Telecommunication Systems, and Computer Science.

My Experience in ScholarX.

Dr. Chathura sent me an invitation to our first meeting 4 days before the meeting date. It was scheduled to have our first meeting on 22nd May 2021 at 6 pm. When I got the invitation email, I first checked the UK time with the scheduled time. Because that meeting was the first meeting which I had a meeting with abroad person. Because of my searching, I understood that UK time is 1.30 pm and also I realized that I have to greet him by saying “Good Afternoon”.

In our first meeting mainly focused to get to know each other. Dr. Chathura introduced himself and told me about his academic journey until now. He gave me a full idea about his company while he told me about his career life and his responsibilities at InterDigital Inc. After his introduction, I gave him a full idea about my academic background and future goals. I expect to gain knowledge about mobile computing, distributed computing, and research as well as professional guidance from these mentoring sessions.

He gave lots of instruction for my career as well as my academic life. And also he encouraged me to do blogging as well as doing podcasts to improve my writing skills and publish my works. We discussed Scholarship programs and what are the things I can do after my degree. During one and a half hours, we discussed lots of valuable topics in my first mentoring session.

At the end of the session, we discussed life in London because of my curiosity. We discussed what it is like to live abroad, the opportunities I get to meet people with different backgrounds and cultures. “Do well at studying.” was his final instruction for me to in the first mentoring session.

I hope to have very informative discussions with Dr. Chatura in future meetings. I would like to give my gratitude to Dr. Chatura for allocating his valuable time to mentoring me as a mentee.

This is my experience of the first mentoring session of the ScholarX 2021 program. I hope that you got understand the ScholarX program and how it going on. I expect to write more about my experience in the ScholarX 2021 program.

Stay tuned everyone to my next article.

Thank You.

Thimira Madusanka.