Author: Jonathan Reynolds

It was challenging to know what I wanted to work on or for. I had almost no understanding of what people of different professions do daily. In general, economists calculate something; doctors treat; mathematicians calculate(after economists?), and lawyers deal with the law somehow. Hint: you may find actionable advice at the end of this article. I missed the details: what exactly do economists and mathematicians calculate? How do musicians and actors make money? Is it interesting to be an engineer or designer? How to know the answers to these questions when you don’t have much experience? Lack of knowledge Many students…

The short answer is: why not? According to Wikipedia: Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed I’ll describe a few ideas in this article, but they aren’t new. So, is this article a creative work? According to the definition – yes, it requires some combination of my current knowledge, thus creating a new way to deliver such a topic. It’s valuable because someone will find new ideas here. However, the very ideas aren’t new, and one may find a different way of delivering them on the Internet. Can a natural language generation model create such an article?…

It’s beneficial to write down the thoughts you want to think about more in the future. Then, you can return to them at any convenient moment and continue developing a thought process. I wasn’t used to writing ideas down since I didn’t value them enough(I have a dozen of them every moment, so why care?). However, let’s skip the reasoning on why people write their ideas. Instead, I want to share one concept in this article: having a middle space between a never-ending thoughts waterfall and a notebook. Problem: you don’t always have your notebook near you Sometimes, you don’t…

It simplifies development workflow, provides many built-in solutions and optimizations, simply put. Next.js is a React framework that employs the latter to make a developer’s life easier when creating web apps. How did I develop web apps/websites before It’s sort of a retrospective on how things were before fancy technologies. It’s a short journey on how do we come up with React. Feel free to skip it and read more about Next.js in the next sections. Pure HTML, CSS era: simple websites When I was getting started with web development, I put simple <div> blocks into Notepad, adding some CSS styles. It’s…

A tutorial on implementing Firebase web push notifications for React, Next.js, Node.js, Javascript apps. These notifications we’re used to on smartphones are available in browser environments too. If you know why are you here exactly, skip this part and jump directly to the solution. And these notifications on the web that we hate because every spam site asks our permissions about sending us their spam. However, the technology itself is useful. I didn’t implement web push notifications before. There was no such case, but recently I needed to notify my users about important information as soon as possible. Email is…

Text classification and machine learning with Javascript: Natural.js, Brain.js, TensorFlow.js. A few months ago I tried to find information about doing some natural language processing with Javascript. There was not much of it. Most of the time, I stumbled upon tutorials on how to do so in Python. I’m writing this article in the hope to help someone do the same with Javascript. At least, try to. Javascript ecosystem is large, yet machine learning is mostly done in Python. For some custom(complicated) cases, you maybe will decide not to use Javascript. I’ll explain why you may do so. I want…

I wrote an article on why to use Typescript if you’re still in doubt about whether to use it in your projects. In short, Typescript allows you to write maintainable code. Javascript works well for prototyping but becomes frustrating when you return to a project again. Suddenly, you see blocks of code where you can’t understand what kind of data passes there. In this article, I want to introduce you to Typescript while playing with code. Thus, you see it in action and don’t overflow with an unnecessary theory. I recommend playing with the code you’ll meet here in Typescript Playground. Imagine you…

Jump to the section How to create a memory palace if you want to start practicing. Read the Is a memory palace for you? section to understand whether you need one at all. We’re bad at remembering The brain isn’t good at storing things but generating ideas. It also depends on what sort of things, but we tend to forget them anyway. If something is unique or interesting, it’s simpler to remember, right? Hermann Ebbinghaus ran memory experiments on himself. He tried to remember nonsense syllables like “ATF”, “UBH”. Then, tested how well he could retain the data he’s learned. Thus, the forgetting curve appeared. Some people…

How much time do you allocate for work? If you do not work, what do you usually do? I surf the Internet, watching YouTube, movies, reading books. What do we do in between? Eating, chores. Have you tried to pause the flow and see what happens? You can try and get bored. It’s normal. Instantly I want to do something useful or enjoyable. Taking a pause and doing nothing isn’t regarded so. We like doing something. Staring at the ceiling, and/or contemplating the thoughts isn’t “useful”. But isn’t it?We like to consume a lot of information. A new video about…

Are you afraid of losing your job? Or, you’re sure it’s safe? Technology gives humans great leverage. Should business owners and workers bother? Let’s look at some jobs from the “old days”. Jobs that disappeared Peddlers Take, for example, product peddlers in the 18th and 19th centuries. These are the people who went to other people’s doors and tried to sell their products. Books, candies, sewing machines. What was the problem there? You don’t know whether those people want a product you sell. This job didn’t disappear completely. It migrated to other cold-approaching techniques. Sellers try to reach at least…