{"pageProps":{"posts":[{"date":"2022-06-08T14:30:00Z","layout":"post","title":"Escaping a paper bag","author":["Celina Bledowska"],"hero":"/static/images/pages/posts/2022-06-07-escaping-a-paper-bag/hero.jpg","tags":["NorDev","NorDevCon","2022","Interview"],"excerpt":"When machine learning and AI specialist, Fran Buontempo, approached nor(DEV):22 with her conference speech title: ‘Coding your way out of a paper bag,’ we were puzzled. Was this some esoteric philosophical thesis, or would the keynote speech really explain how to code out of a pa...","body":"\nWhen machine learning and AI specialist, Fran Buontempo, approached nor(DEV):22 with her conference speech title: ‘Coding your way out of a paper bag,’ we were puzzled. Was this some esoteric philosophical thesis, or would the keynote speech really explain how to code out of a paper bag? \n\n## Out of hand project\n\nFran Buontempo heads up her own [consultancy](https://about.me/frances_buontempo) where she works as a development dev ops contractor for investment banks in London, specialising in modelling and has a PhD in machine learning. When asked about her paper bag conundrum, Fran explained:\n\n> Tt comes from the phrase that came to me after interviewing an unsuccessful job candidate, ‘that guy couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag.’\n\nThis set her thinking and Fran realised she didn’t know how to use code to escape a bag. Therefore, the question of how to carry out this task saw the light of day. Is this possible or not? \n\n## The task\n\n“You can model a paper bag with a square or a rectangle and then you want something inside it that moves and will end up outside the bag. You could completely over-engineer this with machine learning tools and algorithms or you could run a simulation or diffusion. Flecks or dots can start in the middle and then gradually spread out.” \n\nFran suggests that the audience thinks of a gas moving within a gas model that will only require some adding up (computer led task), or orange squash diffusing once water is added to the squash is another way of understanding the problem.\n\nBy using this model, Fran suggests that this is a simplified way of explaining and learning more complicated ideas..\n\n## Machine learning\n\nFran is looking forward to giving the conference a “walkthrough of genetic algorithms and how these can be used to escape the ubiquitous bag.” She explains a genetic algorithm as, “using the idea of genetics as an algorithm rather than biology, a ‘nature inspired algorithm,’and Darwinian evolution in order to evolve a solution for something.” “All you actually do,” Fran continued, “is try with random attempts, as carrying out numerous permutations would be too time consuming, and then I’ll be able to deduce which ones are better, and this will give you more to experiment with.” She added, “through numerous experiments you will be able to prove your premise.”\n\n> In short you’ll be trying stuff, keeping track of what you’ve done and making things improve.\n\n## Experimenting and science\n\nIn an attempt to understand how things actually work, Fran codes from scratch. For example, the pandemic threw up numerous problems where machine learning was used to find an answer.and she believes that if you’re trying to model Covid and trying to work out what type of things might stop the spread, you could take a pre-built mathematical model and send in some parameters and numbers, and lots of libraries will do things for you. This is the methodology applied by most data scientists. But Fran is keen to add that you can build things yourself. \n\nMany people use Python in this field as there are many Python libraries that let you click together pre-existing pieces. Fran uses Python too but is happy to switch to C++ and other languages.\n\nBack to that paper bag. To find out how you can code your way out of this receptacle, you can catch [Fran’s keynote speech at 16.15 on 16 June](https://nor.dev/con). \n\n\n","path":"/posts/2022-06-07-escaping-a-paper-bag"},{"date":"2022-05-31T14:30:00Z","layout":"post","title":"Migrating toilets","author":["Celina Bledowska"],"hero":"/static/images/pages/posts/2022-05-31-migrating-toilets/hero.jpg","tags":["NorDev","NorDevCon","2022","Interview","Open Source"],"excerpt":"Developer at The Guardian and open source aficionado, Oliver Barnwell, has invested a fair amount of time in a unique project, the Great British Toilet Map. Billed as ‘the largest database of publicly accessible toilets’ in the UK - no one need ever get caught short again. Lookin...","body":"\nDeveloper at The Guardian and open source aficionado, Oliver Barnwell, has invested a fair amount of time in a unique project, [the Great British Toilet Map](https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/). Billed as ‘the largest database of publicly accessible toilets’ in the UK - no one need ever get caught short again. Looking for an all important public lavatory anywhere is easy with this tool.\n\n## Early beginnings\n\nOliver started coding at a young age, joining a [Neontribe](https://www.neontribe.co.uk/the-tribe/) led centre run by Rupert Redington & Harry Harrold as part of the national hackathon: Young Rewired State. For every summer, until he was 18, Oliver attended this and other events, and the experience enabled him to work at the company during his gap year. It was during this time that he started working on Neontribe’s [Toilet Map](https://github.com/neontribe) as an open source project, with Rupert and design researcher, the Royal College’s, Gail Ramster, who was collecting data for toilet locations. Exploring the search behaviour on the [Toilet Map Explorer](https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/explorer) was Oliver’s one of many projects during this gap year.\n\n## Migrating a project\n\nAfter graduation and having started a new job at Investec and before moving on to The Guardian,where he has worked on the newspaper’s identity platform migration. Oliver continues to contribute to the [Great British Public Toilet Map](https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/) This open source project is dedicated to helping people find toilets across the UK. In any city, in any part of the UK, simply click on the map and you’ll find your much needed facility.\n\nHaving retained his passion for the toilet mapping project, Oliver is working on the next stage. In 2021 the project started its migration from a Single Page Application (SPA) React app to using Next.js and TypeScript. The core aim for the migration was to improve the user experience and to improve the onboarding process for any community contributors. As the app was an SPA, those on the move can find it on their mobile browser.\n\nDuring June the migration will be released to all users and changes will be rolled back if necessary.\n\n## Looking for a loo\n\nMapping the UK’s numerous public toilets performs a valuable role for social historians, an important project for developers and an invaluable function for those of us that desperately need a loo when out and about\n\nNeon Tribe is an integral part of the project, as Oliver says, “ it’s been ten years in the making and I’ve only played a very small part, Rupert is the instigator along with Gail.”\n\nThe Great British Toilet Map may shortly become a global map. Rupert has confirmed: \"I think it is fine to say that we're laying the foundations for use in other countries and cultures.\"\n\nCatch up with Oliver’s talk on 16 June or [contribute to the project](https://github.com/neontribe/gbptm).\n\n\n","path":"/posts/2022-05-31-migrating-toilets"},{"date":"2022-05-29T12:00:00Z","layout":"post","title":"Make The Dead Fish Swim - Test Driven Golang","author":["Damien Sedgwick"],"tags":["Golang","Go","TDD","Test Driven Development","Coding Challenge"],"excerpt":"Today we are going to take a look at solving \"Make The Dead Fish Swim\" - A Codewars challenge ranked '6 kyu' and we are going to do it using Test Driven Development. First of all, let us look at the challenge we are going to tackle: Write a simple parser that will parse and run D...","body":"\nToday we are going to take a look at solving \"Make The Dead Fish Swim\" - A Codewars challenge ranked '6 kyu' and we are going to do it using Test Driven Development.\n\nFirst of all, let us look at the challenge we are going to tackle:\n\n```go\nWrite a simple parser that will parse and run Deadfish.\n\nDeadfish has 4 commands, each 1 character long:\n\n i increments the value (initially 0)\n d decrements the value\n s squares the value\n o outputs the value into the return array\n\nInvalid characters should be ignored.\n\nParse(\"iiisdoso\") == []int{8, 64} // example output\n```\n\nA quick disclaimer, there is a good chance that there is a very concise and clever solution to this challenge, and I will share it at the end of this post. However my goal here is to practice taking a problem, and breaking it down into small testable pieces of functionality that could be used elsewhere (if we were building something in real life).\n\nWe are going to be working in two different files, main.go and main_test.go\n\nI will also be using a package that I like to use when writing tests and that package is https://github.com/stretchr/testify\n\nFor me, a good starting point is to write out some test functions for the bits of the challenge that are repeated throughout the program, increment one, decrement one, square and outputs to the array. Although for now, I will start with the first three.\n\n```go\nfunc TestIncrementOne(t *testing.T) {\n\tassert.Equal(t, 1, IncrementOne(0))\n\tassert.Equal(t, 5, IncrementOne(4))\n\tassert.Equal(t, 100, IncrementOne(99))\n}\n\nfunc TestDecrementOne(t *testing.T) {\n\tassert.Equal(t, 0, DecrementOne(1))\n\tassert.Equal(t, 4, DecrementOne(5))\n\tassert.Equal(t, 99, DecrementOne(100))\n}\n\nfunc TestSquare(t *testing.T) {\n\tassert.Equal(t, 1, Square(1))\n\tassert.Equal(t, 25, Square(5))\n\tassert.Equal(t, 64, Square(8))\n}\n```\n\nEach of these functions will provide us with a specific piece of functionality that we will later need when parsing the input for the challenge. Let us run the tests.\n\n```go\n// go test\n\n./main_test.go:23:21: undefined: IncrementOne\n./main_test.go:27:21: undefined DecrementOne\n./main_test.go:31:21: undefined: Square\nFAIL github.com/damiensedgwick/codewars/makeTheDeadFishSwim [build failed]\n```\n\nPretty simple, they all fail because none of the functions actually exist yet, so let us create them.\n\n```go\nfunc IncrementOne(n int) int {\n\treturn n + 1\n}\n\nfunc DecrementOne(n int) int {\n\treturn n - 1\n}\n\nfunc Square(n int) int {\n\treturn n * n\n}\n```\n\nThese functions are very simple and may seem in fact trivial however they are going to give us the foundations we need to solve the challenge. \n\nLet us run the tests again.\n\n```go\n// go test\n\nPASS\nok github.com/damiensedgwick/codewars/makeTheDeadFishSwim 0.195s\n```\n\nMuch better, so what is next.\n\nI think a good step would be to take the input string we are going to receive, and turn it in to an array of strings so that we can loop through it and decide what we would like to happen for each element of that array.\n\nThe test\n\n```go\nfunc TestSplitString(t *testing.T) {\n\tassert.Equal(t, []string{\n\t\t\"i\",\n\t\t\"i\",\n\t\t\"i\",\n\t\t\"s\",\n\t\t\"d\",\n\t\t\"o\",\n\t\t\"s\",\n\t\t\"o\",\n\t}, SplitString(\"iiisdoso\"))\n}\n```\n\nIf we run `go test` it will fail because this function does not yet exist, so let us create it.\n\n```go\nfunc SplitString(s string) []string {\n\treturn strings.Split(s, \"\")\n}\n```\n\nNow our tests are happy again, we can proceed to the next step which could in fact be parsing the input. Let us write a test and see how we get on.\n\n```go\nfunc TestParse(t *testing.T) {\n\tassert.Equal(t, []int{8, 64}, Parse(\"iiisdoso\"))\n}\n```\n\nThe challenge is kind enough to give us a test case so we have used that to write the test and now we can try to create the function and make the test pass.\n\n```go\nfunc Parse(input string) []int {\n\tvar output = []int{}\n\n\tcount := 0\n\n\ts := SplitString(input)\n\tfor _, v := range s {\n\t\tswitch v {\n\t\tcase \"i\":\n\t\t\tcount = IncrementOne(count)\n\t\tcase \"d\":\n\t\t\tcount = DecrementOne(count)\n\t\tcase \"s\":\n\t\t\tcount = Square(count)\n\t\tcase \"o\":\n\t\t\toutput = append(output, count)\n\t\tdefault:\n\t\t\tcontinue\n\t\t}\n\t}\n\n\treturn output\n}\n```\n\nSo now we have our parse function, we can run the tests again and they should all be happy.\n\nThe tests are happy so I am going to take my code and paste it in to the codewars challenge, making sure to tweak variables names I used for the ones they specified and importing any packages that I used.\n\nLet us take a look at the results\n\n```go\nTest Results:\nRandom tests\nrandom test #1 (`ossrshsbzotsdkpvuisekvcci`)\nrandom test #2 (`odzosiqdshbiikiisiiyigdlzyd`)\nrandom test #3 (`sokssndofoimuqbqipsedfodticuotosdso`)\nrandom test #4 (`siiooisdisijoilusdshqddzosiotdoio`)\nrandom test #5 (`oiiswwmaisdosisooitio`)\nrandom test #6 (`sdhhidyoioimsoidioooodsiddoio`)\n...\nrandom test #94 (`dssdbiddoskuoondgirikdeuolspdjtsjkisido`)\nrandom test #95 (`rsoboobssixzzoudfiinbddgm`)\nrandom test #96 (`iooeioyoyviwsoqsisdhaixxl`)\nrandom test #97 (`idsdodsfsdbxdismiskdsis`)\nrandom test #98 (`icdzdsissuigoijvopdddpiddgsw`)\nrandom test #99 (`diioidooooisssmdiiisiiosossiiohivvowud`)\nrandom test #100 (`odooszoatitdwdibkdko`)\n```\n\nAll test cases have passed and the challenge is complete! Now as mentioned, there is probably a very short and concise answer to this challenge which I will share below however I hope this post has given you an insight to how powerful test driven development can be.\n\n```go\npackage kata\n\nfunc Parse(data string) []int{\n output := []int{}\n var val int\n for _, s := range data {\n switch string(s) {\n case \"i\":\n val++\n case \"d\":\n val--\n case \"s\":\n val = val * val\n case \"o\":\n output = append(output, val)\n }\n }\n \n return output\n}\n```\n\nSo in fact the solution is very similar to the one we implemented in this post. The only difference is we have the backing of our tests to give us absolute confidence in our programs functionality.","path":"/posts/2022-05-29-tdd-go-make-the-dead-fish-swim"}],"initialEventData":[{"created":1654683282000,"duration":7200000,"id":"286436850","name":"nor(DEV):con 2022 - Conference Opening Fare","rsvp_limit":100,"date_in_series_pattern":false,"status":"upcoming","time":1655308800000,"local_date":"2022-06-15","local_time":"17:00","rsvp_close_offset":"PT5H","updated":1654684734000,"utc_offset":3600000,"waitlist_count":0,"yes_rsvp_count":15,"is_online_event":false,"group":{"created":1367934016000,"name":"Norfolk Developers - nor(DEV):","id":8384542,"join_mode":"open","lat":52.619998931884766,"lon":1.2699999809265137,"urlname":"Norfolk-Developers-NorDev","who":"Techies","localized_location":"Norwich, United Kingdom","state":"I9","country":"gb","region":"en_US","timezone":"Europe/London"},"link":"https://www.meetup.com/norfolk-developers-nordev/events/286436850/","description":"

**You will need a valid Conference Ticket or an RSVP here to enter!**

Join 1Password on the night before the conference for drinks and light fare to get nor(DEV): con kicked off in the right spirit! We'll be at Fupburger upstairs from 5-7 pm, let's meet for casual drinks and a fascinating conversation!

*We're thankful to 1Password for supporting nor(DEV): con as an Elite sponsor! In addition to protecting passwords and data, they now wish to delight your stomach with some fine food and libations.*

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The eastern region's biggest tech conference returns in June 2022!

We'll gather in Norwich to learn, discuss, and network with an eclectic bunch of the best of the East's tech scene, joined by a group of international conference veterans. Talks on language, business, methodology, & blockchain. We're bringing 30 sessions across two days at The Kings' Centre, kicking off on the 16th June 2022, and closing 17th June 2022.

Find out more at https://nordevcon.com or grab your ticket now at https://ti.to/norfolkdevelopers/nordevcon-22

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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Let's wander around the lake and chat about tech & life! Come rain or shine, and we'll be walking at 7pm!

Bring a dog, your significant others, kids, a friend and your face! Join our friendly group for some healthy activities!

Our current walk is Whitlingham Lake, a 2.5-mile walk at an all-inclusive pace!

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