The post Is Computer Science Really that Hard? first appeared on Qvault.

With the influx of interest in the edTech site I’ve been building, I’ve been getting a question that I don’t think I had previously taken the time to really think through, “Is computer science hard?”. Like most things, the answer depends on your perspective and current situation. That said, my guess is that a standard computer science education is easier than most of my readers think.

Take as an analogy two friends, one weighs 300 lbs and is trying desperately to lose weight, the other friend weighs 100…

The post Splitting a String into a Slice in Golang first appeared on Qvault.

I can’t begin to tell you how often I split strings in Go. More often than not I’m just parsing a comma-separated list from an environment variable, and Go’s standard library gives us some great tools for that kind of manipulation.

Split by commas or other delimiters

strings.Split()

Go’s rich standard library makes it really easy to split a string. 99% of the time you need to split strings in Go, you’ll want the strings package’s strings.Split() function.

package main import ( "fmt" "strings" ) func main() { fruitsString := "apple,banana,orange,pear" fruits :=…

The post All the Ways to Write for Loops in Go first appeared on Qvault.

A for loop executes a block of code repeatedly, and in Golang, there are several different ways to write one.

1. The standard three-component loop
2. For-range loop
3. Range over slice
4. Range over map
5. Range over channel
6. Range over string
7. While loop
8. Optional components loop
9. Infinite loop
10. Break from a loop
11. Continue (skip to the next iteration) in a loop

#1 The standard three-component loop

Go has fairly standard syntax for the three-component loop you’re probably used to from C, Java, or JavaScript. …

The post Search and Replace Strings in Golang — Top 5 Examples first appeared on Qvault.

Go has a powerful standard library that makes string manipulation easy right out of the box.

One of the functions I use most often is the strings package’s Replace() function. strings.Replace() returns a copy of its input string after searching and replacing all instances of the given substring with a new one.

strings.Replace() signature

func Replace(s, old, new string, n int) string

Notes

• s is the original string that contains parts that need to be changed.
• old is the substring you want to be replaced.
• new…

The post How and Why to Write Enums in Go first appeared on Qvault.

An enum, which is short for enumerator, is a set of named constant values. Enums are a powerful tool that allow developers to create complex sets of constants that have useful names yet simple and unique values.

Syntax Example

Within a constant declaration, the iota keyword denotes successive untyped integer constants.

type BodyPart int

const (
    Head BodyPart = iota // Head = 0
    Shoulder             // Shoulder = 1
    Knee                 // Knee = 2
    Toe                  // Toe = 3
)

Why should you use enums?

Why would you want an integer constant called Head with a value of 0? And if you did, couldn’t you just use const Head = 0?

Yes, you could do that, but enums are…

Through the desert, without light, a friend and I drove through the night.

In search of my missing brother, we sat in silence with one another.

Lacking success, I still yearned to roam, when out of nowhere appeared a home.

As we were about to pass, a man appeared upon his grass.

He hurriedly gestured for us to stop, so we pulled over and began to talk.

We explained the entire situation, hoping for news of my brother's location.

He said, “I haven’t seen him, nor has my group”, but invited us in to let us recoup.

We shared his…

The post Backend Developers are UX Designers Too first appeared on Qvault.

Too often I neglect the idea of UX design in backend work. The goal of user experience design is to give users a product that’s easy to use. In the world of front-end development, that typically means making it obvious how to navigate your site, using commonly-understood icons, or implementing well-contrasted colors for foreground and background, making your site easy to read.

I’m here to contend that UX is extremely important in backend development as well, the difference is simply that our users are typically other developers, sometimes…

The post Advanced Algorithms Course Released on Qvault first appeared on Qvault.

Sorry, it took so long for me to get this one out! Advanced Algorithms was just released, and I’m excited to let you all get your hands on it, even if you’re just auditing it for free! The more advanced material takes quite a bit longer to produce, I wanted to triple-check to make sure I got everything correct and that I’ve presented it in a way that makes it easy to understand.

The course, like its prerequisite Bit-O Data Structures, is written in Python, so most of…