Quality Assurance is more than just finding bugs in an application. The QA team focuses on delivering a quality product that is developed by a developer,within a deadline. The QA team’s primary task is to eliminate the issues that may affect the way the product works and thereby hampering the user experience.

When we approach testing in a project, irrespective of how small or big a project is, we always strive to achieve the testing pyramid. If you have never come across this model then go and look it up, it’s on the list of being a badass!

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”— Aristotle

Here is the pyramid,

Why Quality Assurance (QA) is a must in software development?

The longer a bug goes undetected, more expensive it is to fix. A simple cost vs. benefits analysis overwhelmingly shows that the benefits of employing a QA test engineer to validate the code far outweighs the costs.Most importantly, it also influences your product’s reputation!

Here is why the QA process is important in software development:

• An extensive QA process is performed to eliminate avoidable defects or bugs before a site is made live.
• QA is done to make the website credible and easy to operate.
• What if the search button of a search engine like Google, which is used by millions of people every single day, doesn’t work? It might require a simple fix, which can be done by a developer in a jiffy. However,this defect will encourage users to use a different search engine,which leads to a loss in users
• A proper QA process will help you find defects that can be fixed before the website goes live.
• When a product is launched, it is a must for the product to have undergone the complete QA process. What if the product is launched and the users find that something is not working as expected? The company will lose its credibility, reputation, and resolving the issue will become expensive and time-consuming
• The QA process is not just for delivering stable products there is a higher purpose. The purpose is to make users and customers believe that the company is credible, retain the number of users, provide the users a great experience.

If you are still skeptical, look at these stats!

• In April 26 1994, China Airlines Airbus A300 crashed due to a software bug killing 264 passengers.
• In April 1999, a software bug caused the failure of a $1.2 billion military satellite launch, one of the most expensive accidents in history.
• In May 1996, a software bug caused the bank accounts of 823 customers of a major U.S. bank to be credited with 920 million US dollars.

The QA process can be a lifesaver sometimes, can’t it?

How is the QA process performed?

Method

Courtesy:Jack Sheppard

The QA should be aware of the stack, the frameworks, the business purpose of the feature, and most importantly understand the customer’s and user’s pain! This is where the QA process starts and this is where you should begin!

We believe that the QA then enters into the Design Phase and starts its transformation from then on. Having a pre-design QA assessment is even better. Once the company decides to build a product, the PM schedules a meeting with the developers, QA engineers, and designers.

During this meeting, the PM explains the purpose, need, and user requirements that will be used when the product is built.This clarifies information about design, engineering, stack, and other engineering requirements. During this time the QA engineer will understand and clarify information about the origination of the requirement.From there on, QA becomes an integral part of every process till and after the delivery of the product

The following processes must be followed for an effective QA process:

Design QA

Once the design is completed, there should obviously be the obvious design QA. The QA engineer has a discussion with all the members of the software development team.

In this informal discussion table,the features in the product would be explained to the entire team,which they will soon be starting to develop.Then we start the design QA, in which the QA team will go through the entire design to check about functionality, feature, enhancements, user requirements, business purpose validation, potential issues, foresee complexities that may exist and are briefly made aware on the drawing board to the devs during the design QA process.

Create the test scenario document

After the design QA is done, the QA team starts designing a test scenario document (sample template), which is a hybrid of use case and test case documents.

This document will be used throughout the testing phase. It contains a list of all the possible scenarios that are identified for testing in the product based on the design. Once the testing begins, the scenarios will be iteratively added during the Executing phase.

Documentation review

Documentation review is a critical step in the QA process.This review decides the direction of the testing process and direction is very important.

This review is done by developers or the PM before the execution phase starts. In this step, either the developer or the PM goes through the test scenario document that was created by the QA team and checks whether all the scenarios have been covered.

If a scenario is missing, it is the shared responsibility of the PM, developers, and QA engineer to ensure that it is added. It is recommended that you do not start testing until all the scenarios have been added to the document.

Execution

Execution is the phase where the real testing happens. The testing process is started when 75% of the product has been developed thus avoiding rework by the time the development reaches 95%.

Rework is mitigated by the test scenario document which was created during the test scenario phase. If you take up QA earlier, then you will not have the appropriate QA and test coverage. If you do QA after the product or feature has been fully developed, then you will have to deal with a lot of demotivation among the developers due to rework.

You must test all the scenarios which are covered in the test scenario document along with the scenarios which you come across while testing the actual product. Add the new scenarios to the document while testing.

The execution phase takes its own time.There will not be any compromise on the time for QA. The results of the execution will be noted in the test scenario document and the same will be shared with the developers who have developed the product.

During the execution phase, not only the scenarios are just covered but the user experience would be tested too.The way the product behaves,all the functionalities,features,UI would also be tested.If a scenario fails.We would add the explanation of it along with the screenshot,URL,steps to reproduce.

Defect reporting

As Joel says in his blog,

“A great tester gives programmers immediate feedback on what they did right and what they did wrong. Believe it or not, one of the most valuable features of a tester is providing positive reinforcement. There is no better way to improve a programmer’s morale, happiness, and subjective sense of well-being than a La Marzocco Linea espresso machine to have dedicated testers who get frequent releases from the developers, try them out, and give negative and positive feedback. Otherwise it’s depressing to be a programmer.”

During a sprint ,the defects that are found should be noted in the a defect summary sheet (sample defect summary) of a test scenario document (sample template).This helps the developer to view the defect along with the explanation, screenshot, URL, and steps to reproduce the defect.

The developer then fixes the defects. If a defect is not valid, then it will be classified as one of the following:

• Feature
• Bug that cannot be fixed for various reasons or requires a design change.

Otherwise, the defect is marked as fixed in the relevant column of the test scenario document and also updates the Maniphest log. The defects can be related to the functionality, features, UI, or anything that affects the way the product works.

Maniphest

Maniphest is one of the defect-management tools that is used during the QA process. It helps to manage the entire bug life-cycle. As tests are executed, you may find bugs in the existing flow or may feel there is scope for a few enhancements. You should immediately, create a task in Maniphest and assign it to the relevant developer.

Based on the priority, bugs will be fixed. Once the bug is fixed, the author of the bug i.e. the relevant QA engineer will receive an email notification.This helps the QA engineer to retest the bug and change the status accordingly.

Retesting

Once the issue is marked as fixed by the developer in the test scenario document, the retesting of the specific defect is the responsibility of the QA engineer who reported the issue. The results of the retesting should also be recorded in the test scenario document.

The Testing phase ends with this step. Retesting will be done at the end of the Execution phase because execution is usually done on a fully developed product—the most stable version of the product.

Test closure

This is the step where the QA team prepares the release notes of the testing process.

Release notes contain the following information:

• Description of the product that was tested
• Time taken
• Approach followed
• Reference links
• Test results
• Type of testing that was done

After the release notes are sent to the whole team, the QA process ends.

Types of testing at HackerEarth

Automation testing

While there is plenty of room for improving the QA process at HackerEarth, we are now trying to put an emphasis on building automated tests so that we can let people do what people are good at and have computers do what computers are good at. That doesn’t mean that we never do manual testing or drop out of the pyramid. Instead we do the “right” amount of manual testing with more human-oriented focus (e.g. exploratory testing) and try to ensure that we never do repetitive manual testing.

Performance testing

Performance testing is an important type of testing which is a must before deploying any new change. Performance testing is performed to determine the behavior of a system under both normal and expected peak-load conditions. It helps to identify the maximum operating capacity of an application.We use New Relic for the performance testing.

“An application can work fine for a single user but may break when multiple users use it simultaneously.”

We use JMeter to perform load testing.

JMeter creates realistic & accurate scenarios, sends requests to appropriate servers which show the performance of an appropriate server/application via tables, graphs etc.

Environments used for testing

We have an environment that is a replica of the production environment. It is called the ‘staging environment’.We use this staging environment for the testing process.

The developers develop an application in their local environment and push it to staging where the QA engineer will test the application. All the testing takes place in the staging environment.

We would never have been able to get this far and achieve an effective QA process without a dedicated grassroots effort from everyone in the team. This effort would have failed if it hadn’t been combined with huge improvements in our testing tool, processes, and mind shift along with the business and developers.

“QA is hard!! If it was easy, anyone could have done it. The ‘hard’ part is what makes QA important!”

We have taken a serious and pragmatic approach to establish a definite QA process. The important thing about this process is that QA at HackerEarth has evolved into a multi-dimensional process. We have formulated this QA process collaboratively and improved it over time.

Wondering what is the best way to introduce QA process in your team? Just get started! Good luck!

Fintech is the application of technologies to disrupt existing processes or bring in new paradigms in the financial industry. Be it banking or insurance or digital payment, fintech is currently revolutionizing the world.

Fintech has disrupted all aspects of the industry. Rapid innovation is the key in sectors like lending, financial inclusion, financial advisory, personal finance, security, and digital payments. Fintech, on one hand made services like Net Banking a given in today’s world. On the other hand, it has made names of startups like PayTM a common word in the vocabulary of the laymen.

Fintech companies are more customer centric than traditional financial companies. They believe in rapid innovation. The fact that many of the early adopters are low-age groups with disposable incomes has made fintech one of the hottest trends in technology.

What are the companies in fintech?

There are mainly four types of companies that are interested in fintech.

1. Major banks that have traditionally been associated with finance and look at technology and fintech as the next level, for example, any large bank that has technology offerings
2. Well-established tech players that are also looking for business opportunities in the financial services space although they are not traditionally financial companies, for example, we now have the Google wallet and the Apple pay.
3. Companies that provide infrastructure and services which enable other fintech players to operate in the financial space; examples include PayUmoney that acts as a payments gateway, or MasterCard, which processes payments between banks of merchants when the merchants use the cards that are issued by the banks

Disruptors that are fast-moving companies and startups; these companies generally focus on a single business innovation or process. For example take SoFi, it is a San Francisco based company that focuses on high-earning recent graduates and tries to refinance their student loans. Or take the case of PayTM, which focuses on the Indian payments ecosystem.

What are the major fintech areas that are driving innovation?

Lending: Lending is the space where the biggest innovations in fintech are coming from. Traditionally, lenders have given more money to people who already have money. Fintech companies are doing away with the traditional credit history-based scoring system and coming up with lending solutions even for the unbanked. For example, Lending Club operates an online lending platform that helps borrowers get a loan and investors purchase notes backed by payments made on loans. Others like Biz2Credit are using social profiling tools to access the credit worthiness of individuals and small businesses.

Financial Inclusion: Experts believe that fintech is the key behind financial inclusion. For example, M-Pesa reached 80% of households in Kenya in 4 years[source]. Fintech companies achieve financial inclusion through various methods. One of them can be by leveraging existing low-cost solutions, like M-Pesa doing transactions through SMS. One other example is Kobocoin, which is giving an existing technology, blockchain in this case, a more local flavor so that it reflects the needs of the masses.

Even for developed countries, companies that focus on financial inclusion have the potential to make social security programs more effective. For example, in various parts of the world like Japan and India, public benefits are directly paid to the bank accounts of the recipients and the process is tracked through a Unique Identification Number like Aadhar Card in India or the My number(??????) system in Japan.

Financial Advisory: Fintech companies have generally relied on automation to provide services and this is the strategy being applied to traditional advisory services like M&A transactions, restructuring, raising capital, and forensic investigations. There can be a common platform where the users can engage with the experts as in BankerBhai.com. One more example is Elliptic, which provides services like identifying illicit activity on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Personal Finance: Through the use of fintech, there is a lot of scope to have more efficient processes. Many organisations are building companies by automating the acts of personal finance like individual or family budgeting, insurance, savings, and retirement planning. For example, Wealthfront provides online money management. Paytm tries to keep all your different payments under one portal.

Blockchain and distributed ledgers: Blockchain, which is the technology behind the famous bitcoin, is an open source distributed database using state-of-the-art cryptography. Currencies that use blockchain enable us to do transactions without a powerful third party like a bank or the government. There are various companies that are operating in the space of blockchain, either by using bitcoin, the largest blockchain, like Blockchain.info or Unocoin, or by having their own blockchain cryptocurrency like Kobocoin.

Security: Fintech is only projected to grow in the future and since this domain primarily deals in finance and financial products, customers will have high expectations in terms of security from fintech products. Also, fintech companies will always be a lucrative target for people with malicious intent. For example, there was the JP Morgan Chase data breach in 2014[source] which affected 83 million customers accounts. For this reason, heavy investment is being done in security. and we have a lot of companies in the field. For example, VKey focuses on user security. Tranwall is a Hong Kong startup that focuses on providing increased levels of security to the cardholders of the customer banks.

What is the future in fintech

The rise in fintech has led to growth in both customer awareness and customer expectations, and this acts both as a challenge and as an opportunity. This has resulted in financial incumbents, those who are already established financial services players, taking bold steps and engaging with emerging innovations. Also, new start-ups have found greater acceptance with the population. Following graphs show the amount of investment the fintech companies have received globally.

Image: the growth of global investment in the fintech sector from 2011 to 2016

Source: Business Insider

Users are also spending more time on various apps and doing a greater part of their financial transactions through the apps.

User activity on various payments apps
Source: Nielson

If you think that these trends are astonishing, remember that this will only grow in the coming years.

References:

techstory: lending market in india
letstalkpayments: 22 fintech companies in africa

fintech is the key driver of financial inclusion
fintech and financial inclusion
how fintech security helps foster innovation
fintech companies in fraud prevention
how banks are leveraging developer community

How does alpha-beta pruning work?

1. Initialize alpha = -infinity and beta = infinity as the worst possible cases. The condition to prune a node is when alpha becomes greater than or equal to beta.
2. Start with assigning the initial values of alpha and beta to root and since alpha is less than beta we don’t prune it.
3. Carry these values of alpha and beta to the child node on the left. And now from the utility value of the terminal state, we will update the values of alpha and be, so we don’t have to update the value of beta. Again, we don’t prune because the condition remains the same. Similarly, the third child node also. And then backtracking to the root we set alpha=3 because that is the minimum value that alpha can have.
   
4. Now, alpha=3 and beta=infinity at the root. So, we don’t prune. Carrying this to the center node, and calculating MIN{2, infinity}, we get alpha=3 and beta=2.
5. Prune the second and third child nodes because alpha is now greater than beta.
6. Alpha at the root remains 3 because it is greater than 2. Carrying this to the rightmost child node, evaluate MIN{infinity,2}=2. Update beta to 2 and alpha remains 3.
7. Prune the second and third child nodes because alpha is now greater than beta.
8. Hence, we get 3, 2, 2 at the left, center, and right MIN nodes, respectively. And calculating MAX{3,2,2}, we get 3. Therefore, without even looking at four leaves we could correctly find the minimax decision.

evaluate (node, alpha, beta)

     if node is a leaf

        return the utility value of node

     if node is a minimizing node

        for each child of node

            beta = min (beta, evaluate (child, alpha, beta))

            if beta <= alpha

                return beta

            return beta

     if node is a maximizing node

        for each child of node

            alpha = max (alpha, evaluate (child, alpha, beta))

            if beta <= alpha

                return alpha

            return alpha

Conclusion

Perhaps a post on these programming languages needs no fore ward. But then again, for the skeptics who are rooting for Go and Swift, here’s a little bit of background that reinforces the fact that despite not being the most popular ones today, these object-oriented languages still form the base for many applications.

Why bother

Java and C# were touted as the pet languages of the 2000s. Now, people talk Python and Ruby, Javascript and PHP.However, fundamental programming skills still necessitate a solid foundation in C and C++. (You can read more here- Top programming languages that will be most popular in 2017)

TIOBE may be scorning C now, but Dice and other job portals show a significant demand for these skill sets across industries. Beginner-friendliness, scalability, and a sizable community continue to make C++ a major player as well.

“They [C and C++] are the native tongue for system-level programming, and they probably will be for many years. Eventually, though, languages like Google Go or D may replace them,” says Gartner Research Analysts Mark Driver. “The trial-by-fire of learning C tends to weed out the noncommitted, so knowledge of C at the very least makes you stand out,” he added.

These languages act like a “mental model” that helps you go where places you thought you couldn’t. Bjarne Stroustrup, the C++ creator, says, “Basically, nothing that can handle complexity runs as fast as C++.” Used with some scripting language, it is for “high performance, high reliability, small footprint, low energy consumption, all of these good things.”

With a plethora of resources available, choosing the best can leave you in a tizzy. We’ve got a list, a valuable one, which keeps the curious ones who wonder what’s beneath the hood get as “close to the machine” as possible.

Stroustrup: The C++ Programming Language (4th Edition)

What’s better than studying from the guru himself? Bjarne Stroustrup created C++ in 1979.

The book covers the language in its entirety, talking about containers, algorithms, abstraction mechanisms, concurrency, utilities, basic facilities, standard libraries, and design models. This reorganized edition discusses C++11, a version that followed C++03, and then got superseded by C++14 and C++17 later on. A must-have for programming enthusiasts, because it certainly is a definitive reference book for general programming principles and practice using C++. Reviewers are raving about the code examples and the way the language has been presented. It may not be the best book for novices according to some readers; it is more of a “description of the features and the reasoning” than answering how-tos. Look at the detailed table of contents here and access the exercises here.

You can buy the book here.

Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Example by Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo

For learners who are eager to get into the practical aspects of C++, this book, which is a part of Stroustrup’s C++ in-depth series, is the go-to reference. If you don’t have time for the basics, then you can go directly into the coding bit with the help of Koenig and Moo’s “accelerated” C++. Topics covered include “basic string handling, loop and flow-control statements, arrays, functions and methods, iterators, file I/O, operator overloading, inheritance, polymorphism and virtual functions.”

Founding member of the ANSI/ISO C++ committee, Dag Brück, says “This is a first-rate introductory book that takes a practical approach to solving problems using C++. It covers a much wider scope of C++ programming than other introductory books I’ve seen, and in a surprisingly compact format.” The authors talk about features using understandable examples, teaching you how to use the features rather than trying to explain the whats and whys. It takes you from standard library abstractions to defining your own. Key takeaways that crystallize low-level and high-level concepts and end-of-chapter exercises cement your understanding.

With this book, you can begin programming right away!

You can buy the book here.

C++ Primer (5th Edition) 5th Edition by Stanley B. Lippman, Josée Lajoie, and Barbara E. Moo

In the C++ primer, the authors focus on the 2011 revised standard. In the Why Read This Book section, they say they “emphasize good style and explain the rationale behind the rules.” The first part of the book covers basics of C++ such as variables, strings, vectors, arrays, expressions, statements, functions, and classes. The next section deals with the I/O library, sequential and associative containers, generic algorithms, and dynamic memory. Another part takes you through copy control, overloaded operations and conversions, OOP, templates, and generic programming. The primer teaches you high-level programming techniques, such as specialized library facilities and tools for large programs, in the later sections. Learners don’t have to know C, but they need to be familiar with writing, compiling, and running a program “in at least one modern block-structured language.”

You can buy the book here.

Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 (1st Edition) by Scott Meyers

A part of his Effective C++ book series, this edition talks about how you can use the new features of C++11 and C++14, such as lambda expressions and move semantics, effectively. A software architect at Microsoft and chair of ISO C++ standards committee, Herb Sutter, says: “After I learned the C++ basics, I then learned how to use C++ in production code from Meyer’s series of Effective C++ books. Effective Modern C++ is the most important how-to book for advice on key guidelines, styles, and idioms to use modern C++ effectively and well. Don’t own it yet? Buy this one. Now.”

With this book, Meyers ensures that you can “create software that’s correct, efficient, maintainable, and portable.” Topics covered include perfect forwarding, except specifications, braced initialization, auto type declarations, and differences between std:: atomic and volatile and their relation to the concurrency API of C++.

A few reviewers feel that some basic knowledge of C++ is required to fully appreciate this edition on modern C++. Lots of great examples and bite-sized “items” tell you why the features have been added and what they can do; it is a set of guidelines on the newer additions to C++ rather than an introductory text to learn C++.

You can buy the book here.

Exceptional C++: 40 New Engineering Puzzles, Programming Problems, and Solutions by Herb Sutter

This top-quality book is a part of Stroustrup’s C++ in-depth series. Written by Herb Sutter, arenowned expert in C++, the book talks about the what, the why, and the how-to of “solid software engineering” using scenarios in a problem-solution format. Sutter answers questions such as “How does writing inline affect performance? How does exception safety go beyond try and catch statements? What’s the real memory cost of using standard containers?”

If you want to be one of the best C++ programmers around, Exceptional C++ is a definitive guide to topics such as generic programming, writing reusable templates, exception safety issues, compiler firewalls, class design, inheritance, and polymorphism, and optimization. Exemplary presentation and entertaining puzzles make this a must-buy. His next book, More Exceptional C++: 40 New Engineering Puzzles, Programming Problems, and Solutions continues the journey. With an aim to help you write exceptional code, the book comes with new detailed sections (e.g. multi-threaded environments) and insights on vital topics covered in the prequel.

You can buy the book here.

The C Programming Language 2nd Edition by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie

Despite having been originally published in 1978, this amazing book continues to be the bible for C programmers. Ritchie (1941–2011) was the original C language designer, and he also co-designed the UNIX OS. The K&R (authors) C version is different from the ANSI C or the earlier version.

The book discusses has challenging exercises to help you attain a working knowledge of C. It concisely and clearly types, operators, and expressions, control flow, functions and program structure, pointers and arrays, structures, input and output, and the UNIX system interface. You need some programming background; you need to know what a compiler is; the book teaches you the syntax and not exactly the programming principles. For example, when it talks four pages about functions, it doesn’t actually tell you what a function is. Still, this seminal text has the first Hello World program.

In the preface to the second edition published in 1988, the authors write: We have improved the exposition of critical features, such as pointers, that are central to C programming. We have refined the original examples, and have added new examples in several chapters. For instance, the treatment of complicated declarations is augmented by programs that convert declarations into words and vice versa. As before, all examples have been tested directly from the text, which is in machine-readable form.

You can buy the book here.

A Book on C: Programming in C (4th Edition) by Al Kelley and Ira Pohl

Kelley and Pohl have put together a great tutorial on ANSI C. The authors have used unique and clear explanations of program code, along with all-encompassing exercises and summary tables, to highlight the power of C, a general purpose programming language.

The USPs of the book include a chapter on how to move to Java from C, detailed coverage of pointers, multi-file programming, and recursion, an improved standard library functions appendix, and more focus on abstract data types. The comprehensive tutorial on ANSI C also discusses input/output and the operating system, lexical elements, operators, and the c system, the preprocessor, structures, functions, unions, transitioning to C++ from C, how ANSI C is different from traditional C, and advanced applications.

You can buy the book here.

Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets by Peter van der Linden

This book isn’t for a beginner either. Once you have learned C from K & R, Linden’s book can answer questions such as “How can you debug linker errors? What is an activation record? Why are arrays and pointers not identical?” Unlike most bland technical books, Linden has managed to keep the reader engaged with humor, puzzles, depth of content, cultural references, and exercises. Although some bits in the book may not seem relevant anymore, it is still a satisfying read with its hacker stories and more.

John Barry, the author of Sunburst, Technobabble, and other books says “In Expert C Programming, Peter van der Linden combines C language expertise and a subtle sense of humor to deliver a C programming book that stands out from the pack. In a genre too often known for windy, lifeless prose, van der Linden’s crisp language, tongue-in-cheek attitude, and real-world examples engage and instruct.”

For C programming enthusiasts, this book is about the background stories and the appreciation for the language. The lore aside, Linden discusses advanced concepts related to compiling, pointers, and memory usage. The 11 chapters have positive titles that make you curious about linking, runtime data structures, declarations, arrays, and so on.

You can buy the book here.

Let us C by Yashavant P. Kanetkar

This is a book that helps you learn C from scratch. The author, who says he picked up the language from Dennis Ritchie’s book on C programming, has explained the basic concepts such as decision control instruction, complex decision making, loop control instruction, complex repetitions, case-control instruction, functions, pointers, recursion, data types revisited, the c preprocessor, arrays, strings, structures, console input/ output and file input/ output, C in Linux, and operations on bits in an easy-to-understand format. The book also teaches you how to create programs using Visual Studio and NetBeans.

You can buy it here.

Introduction to Algorithms 3rd Edition by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein

This is what Daniel Spielman, Henry Ford II Professor of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Applied Science at Yale, has to say about this book, “Introduction to Algorithms, the ‘bible’ of the field, is a comprehensive textbook covering the full spectrum of modern algorithms: from the fastest algorithms and data structures to polynomial-time algorithms for seemingly intractable problems, from classical algorithms in graph theory to special algorithms for string matching, computational geometry, and number theory. The revised third edition notably adds a chapter on van Emde Boas trees, one of the most useful data structures, and on multithreaded algorithms, a topic of increasing importance.”

The book is meant for readers at all levels. With a bit of programming background, learners can grasp the magic—design, and analysis—of algorithms. The book broadly covers foundations, sorting and order statistics, data structures, advanced techniques such as dynamic programming and greedy algorithms, advanced data structures such as Fibonacci Heaps and van Emde Boas Trees, graph algorithms, and a few selected topics such as matrix operators, linear programming, polynomials and FFT, string matching, computational geometry, and NP-completeness.

You can buy the book here.

Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy by Narasimha Karumanchi

For whom is this book? Prof. Hsin-Mu Tsai, National Taiwan University, answers it in his book review. He says, “This book is a good supplement to a conventional data structure textbook, as it offers many good code examples and selections of relevant problems **with solutions**. There is no deep analysis or detailed proof in this book, which is not what this book is for (for example, as a textbook to teach algorithm and complexity analysis), and what you would be able to find in a conventional data structure textbook. The book could also be good for a professional who just wants a quick review of important data structure concepts and implementations.”

Reviewers on Amazon believe that this book is a must-have for job interviews and competitive exams. The author emphasizes problem analysis over theory. The book is coded in C and C++. A comprehensive introduction, recursion and backtracking, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, heaps, graph algorithms, sorting, searching, selection algorithms, symbol tables, hashing, string, divide-and-conquer, and greedy algorithms, complexity classes, and dynamic programming are the key chapters in the book. Looks like he has covered just about everything you need for a binge-reading evening!

You can buy the book here.

Summary

Computers are not about calculations, they are about information—organizing, retrieving, and manipulating it. You want to write efficient programs? Then you need to understand and learn to work with data structures. Data structures and algorithms tell you how you can put the programming languages you mastered to good use. Pick up C and C++ and implement and play around with data structures, and see how exciting it all is. In spite of young upstarts, dependable C and C++ continue to be the programming languages of choice for several applications.

• Nodejs - To create the API server and the mock sensor data generator
• Kafka - To build the data pipeline
• Apache Spark - To process the real-time data stream and generate metrics to measure the driving quality
• ReactJs - To create the dashboard web app
• Google roads & maps API : To get the traffic and ETA data

1. The Android app: Simulated by the team, this app aggregates locally and sends the chunks of sensor data to the API server via an HTTP endpoint.
2. API Server: This matches the data with the schema and if valid, it puts the data in Kafka queue.
3. Engine: Made with the Apache Spark, this helps sensor data to aggregate and form metrics such as sharp acceleration, hard braking, sharp turns, etc. These metrics, in turn, are used to generate a dynamic driving quality score for the driver. This score forms the basis of a lot of analytics and functionalities that this system provides.
4. Dashboard: The dashboard provides a beautiful and intuitive interface to take proactive decisions as well as run analytics using the provided APIs. It has been written using ReactJS.

• A dynamic profile and the dashboard of the rider describing his driving style, which affects his rating.
• An actionable "real-time" rash driving reporting system which allows the authorities and the hub incharges to react before it’s too late.
• A dashboard usable by both the fleet managers and traffic police control board to visualise the data such as incident distribution by time, which tells at what time of the day a driver is more likely to drive in an unsafe manner.
• A modular system in which the new data sources, metrics, and models can be added so that the third-party vendors can be easily on-boarded onto the platform.

1. Setting up the entire system architecture with different components by developing them in isolation and then combining them together to work seamlessly
2. Deciding the thresholds for different metrics after which the driving will be considered rash
3. Creating a linear predictor for the driving quality score vs time with only one data point
4. Creating a synthetic feature as generating the score itself is challenging enough

1. Create and SDK for easy data collection and integration with different apps and make it possible for third-party vendors to utilise this data
2. Improve the driving score model to include even more parameters and make it more real-world oriented
3. Create a social profile which lets the users share their driving score
4. Enable enterprise grade plug-n-play integration support