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Whatever tool you are looking for, there are plenty of open source software alternatives to choose from. By Lauren Maffeo.

2021 was another year spent largely online, but that’s nothing new for the open source world. The ability to work from anywhere is in our DNA, preceding the pandemic that ushered remote work into the mainstream.

If you think Microsoft Project is your only option, fear not. Frank Bergmann shares several open source alternatives for single users to plan and track large, single projects. Redmine, ProjectLibre, and TaskJuggler are among the open source alternatives covered in this list.

Tha article then focuses on these categories:

• An open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange
• Manage your budget on Linux with this open source finance tool
• 5 open source alternatives to Zoom
• Why choose Plausible for an open source alternative to Google Analytics
• Try Chatwoot, an open source customer relationship platform
• Get started with an open source customer data platform
• Try Dolibarr, an open source customer relationship management platform

Still, all that time in front of screens this year made our community consider open source alternatives. Regardless of the tool type you need, many of the most popular vendors are not your only option. Good read!

Built a serverless application as a weekend project to help me save money on my heating bill. In doing so, I experienced something great about building websites in 2022. By Cameron McHenry.

While there’s absolutely a learning curve to getting started, once you’ve got momentum, modern web development feels like having rocket boosters. The distance between idea and execution is as short as it’s ever been.

Simeon Griggs, There has never been a better time to build a website

When faced with a problem, one did what any software engineer would do: build a full-stack web application deployed to the edge using the hottest JavaScript framework.

That meant author needed to pick:

• a scraping tool (for fetching the current gas level)
• a database (for storing the data)
• a framework (for interacting with the database and rendering pages)
• a host (for hosting the whole application)

So, author decided to use:

• Scraping: Browserless
• Database: Supabase
• Web framework: Remix
• Hosting: Fly.io

Something author did not expect is that this project cost hom nothing at all, except for the time it took to develop it. The framework is free. All of the libraries used are open source and free. The application hosting on Fly.io is free, and we got a free randomly generated fly.dev domain name with HTTPS. Even the database and scraping tool are free for the amount that it was used. Excellent read!

How much money is your organization leaving on the table by not being more effective at leveraging data and analytics to power your business? This question is becoming more and more relevant for all organizations of all sizes in all industries as AI / ML capabilities become more widely available. And nothing highlights the costs of not becoming more effective at leveraging data and analytics to power your business models then a recent study by Kearney titled “The impact of analytics in 2020”. Posted by Bill Schmarzo.

Tha article then reads about:

• Understanding the data & analytics business maturity index
• The roadmap for mastering data & analytics
• Cost of being an analytics Laggard summary

What author found interesting is how the importance of Data Management and Analytic Capabilities – which are critical in the early phases of the Data & Analytics Maturity Index – are replaced in importance by Business Alignment (think Data Monetization) and Culture (think Empowerment).

The Data & Analytics Business Maturity Index provides a benchmark to not only to measure how effective your organization is at leveraging data and analytics to power your business, but also provides a roadmap for how your organization can become more effective. Nice one!

NeAppSheet in Gmail, a new feature that lets you use custom-built no-code applications, created in AppSheet, directly in your inbox as a dynamic email. Too often, daily workflows are spread across multiple applications, slowing productivity as we navigate from one app to another and back again. By Mike Procopio.

The article then walks you through:

• How AppSheet in Gmail works
• Create your first dynamic email in AppSheet

Setting up a dynamic email takes only a few minutes. You’ll start by setting up an automation, which allows your app to detect certain conditions and then take appropriate actions. In our example, we’ve created a bot that detects when a new Travel Request is created by a user, and then automatically sends an email to the approver with key details. Nice one!

Nearly 6 out of 10 workers found that they had more productivity working remotely than they previously expected, according to a survey conducted by Jose Maria Barrero of the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, Bloom, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’ Steven J. Davis. By FairyGodBoss.

But even if you know you’re being productive from your living room or local coffee shop, how can you show your productivity to your boss?

• Be responsive
• Offer updates
• Demonstrate engagement

Offer regular updates on responsibilities and project progress with some frequency. Your manager may be concerned about the state of your team’s work, and without being able to ask you in person, they could tend toward micromanaging. You can nip this in the bud by proactively checking in with them and letting them know that you’re on top of your tasks. Good read!

As familiar as we all are with the UNO, there’s probably a lot you don’t know about the iconic Arduino microcontroller board. Put on your rose-tinted spectacles, and let’s wax poetic about the origins of this beloved maker board. By Arduino team.

Arduino didn’t just have its eye fixed on usability. It was also searching for an identity that makers would associate with enhanced experience and quality. It just so happened that the UNO was destined to become the vessel that gave that identity a tangible shape.

The article then takes you on the path through the time:

• Rise of the techno-hippies
• Driving towards the future
• Press on with the UNO
• The power of One
• Taking shape
• The day of the UNO

It wasn’t just the Arduino UNO that was unveiled at the Maker Faire New York in 2010. It was the new Arduino. Colors, branding, logos and a refined focus on usability and recognizable quality across everything Arduino did, from the UNO to the website and the packaging. Good read for anybody interested in single board computers!

Understanding the concept of functional programming is a valuable skill for React developers. It is an important topic that most React beginners often overlook, making them encounter problems when understanding how React makes some of its decisions. By Ibadehin Mojeed.

One improvement React provides is passing a callback to the updater function. In this callback, we can access the previous version of the state, and from there, we can update the state value

const handleClick = () => setCount((prev) => prev + 1);

The tutorial then explains the following concepts:

• A quick overview of functional programming
• Functions in mathematics
• Functional programming in React
• How React implements the pure functional concept
• Improving app performance
• A pure functional concept in the state update
• Avoiding mutating data (immutability)
• Avoiding side effects
• Composition in React

Performing side effects directly inside the body of a component is not allowed to avoid inconsistencies in our app. Instead, we must isolate this effect from the rendering logic. React provides us with a Hook called useEffect to manage our side effects. Good read!

Learn the basics of Jupyter Notebook and how to turn it into an interactive interpreter for Kotlin. You’ll also learn about Data Frames, an important data structure for data science applications. By Joey deVilla.

If you’ve ever wished for a Kotlin version of a REPL (read-evaluate-play loop) like the ones in command-line Python or Node.js or for a lightweight local version of the Kotlin Playground, there’s a way to do it: by using Jupyter Notebook with a Kotlin kernel. In this article, you’ll set up a Kotlin playground that runs locally on your computer!

The content of the article is split into multiple sections:

• Kotlin? For data science?
• Introducing Jupyter Notebook
• Creating your first notebook
• Understanding code cells
• Working with markdown cells
• Diving into data frames

… and much more. You can also download the Jupyter Notebook files containing all the code from the exercises. With Jupyter Notebook and the Kotlin kernel, you have a powerful new tool at your disposal. You can use it as a straightforward Markdown note-taking tool or as an interactive coding environment. But the most interesting use cases appear when you combine Markdown and code cells to mix narrative text with executable code. Nice read!

The act of checking a given sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. Or simply put, it’s a language feature where you can test for a specific pattern on a character sequence or a data structure. By Deepu K Sasidharan.

The article then explains:

• Why pattern matching?
• Pattern matching features
• Pattern matching in Java

There are many languages that have great support for pattern matching. Rust and OCaml lead the pack here. in the JVM world, Scala also offers many of these pattern matching features. Unfortunately, Java is still a bit behind the curve when it comes to pattern matching. The state of pattern matching in Java is as below:

• Enum matching in switch statements ✅
• Match type/value in switch statements ✅
• Match type/value in if statements ✅
• Pattern matched variable assignments ✅
• Null checks ✅
• Type guards ✅
• Refined patterns ✅
• Pattern dominance and type exhaustion 🆗
• Partial/Nested/Compound type and/or value checks 🆗
• Shallow/Deep Position-based Destructured matching 🆗

Most of the basic requirements are met with the instanceof operator pattern matching, and the Java 17 preview makes many other features possible. Of course, type exhaustion only works for sealed classes, and refined patterns are still quite basic, but the majority of the features for proper pattern matching are already available with the preview. Good read!

What is low code workflow automation and why are businesses increasingly adopting it into their operations? As organizations more frequently look to digital solutions as a means to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their processes both internally and externally, the importance that tools like low-code play become more and more important—particularly as regards their role as a competitive differentiator. By impactmybiz.com.

The article then deals with:

• What is low-code workflow automation?
• Low-code workflow adoption among organizations
• RPA vs. low-code
• How are businesses using low-code workflow
• Low-code workflow automation use cases

Low-code workflow automation is something organizations find themselves approaching with more candor as they assess the capabilities of their existing applications and the effectiveness of their current working processes. Low-code also offers a substantial amount of flexibility, particularly with regards to app migration and improvement, as well as strong levels of oversight for data compliance purposes. Nice one!