Timestamps, dependent filters, and misbehaving left joins — SQL is a deceptively simple language. Across its many dialects, users can query databases in a syntax similar to English. What you see is what you get… until you don’t. Every now and then I come across a query that produces a result completely different from what I expected, teaching…

Understanding and deploying EC2 and Lambda services — So you’ve built a cool app and want to show it off to the world. Maybe it’s an AI that generates cat pictures from scribbles, a viral LinkedIn post generator, or an English to RegEx translator. …

Understanding and deploying S3, RDS, and DynamoDB services — Do you store your music, videos, and personal files in a garage full of hard drives? My bet is… no. Unless you’ve avoided iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive the last fifteen years − and if you have, props to you! − then you’re likely using cloud storage. …

How to leverage this half-trillion dollar industry — Imagine you’re a coordinator for data science meet & greets in New York. A major part of your planning involves reserving a venue to accommodate your guests. …

Create a database, learn useful syntax, build informative queries — When I started learning SQL, I found it hard to progress beyond the absolute basics. I loved DataCamp’s courses because I could just type the code directly into a console on the screen. But once the courses ended, how could I practice what I learned? …

Spice up this classic project with Flask, JavaScript, and Heroku — SpamCatch is a fun side project I did to bring together natural language processing, Flask, and the front-end. Classifying spam text messages is a classic machine learning problem, but I’d never seen people test their classifier on raw strings of text. …

Supercharge your programs with two highly useful tools — In our last post, we covered data structures, or the ways that programming languages store data in memory. We touched upon abstract data types, theoretical entities that are implemented via data structures. …

Optimize your code and demolish FAANG interviews — Imagine you build a wildly popular app that is quickly growing towards a million users. (Congrats!) While users love the app, they’re complaining that the app is becoming slower and slower, to the point that some users are starting to leave. …

From white noise to SARIMAX and beyond — Predicting the future has forever been a universal challenge, from decisions like whether to plant crops now or next week, marry someone or remain single, sell a stock or hold, or go to college or play music full time. …