How to: Sep 27, 2024
1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course on CUDA, NVIDIA's GPU programming language. You'll learn how to leverage Graphical Processing Units – chips with thousands of core processors – to do high-performance computing. You'll also get exposure to GPU architecture, writing kernels, matrix multiplication optimization, multi-layer perceptrons, and more. If you want to dive into serious machine learning, this is a great place to start. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cuda-programming/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive study guide for the Microsoft 365 Certified Fundamentals (MS-900) certification. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed dozens of similar cloud cert exams. He'll teach you all about Cloud Architecture terminology. Then he'll cover concepts like Scalability and Fault Tolerance. Finally, he'll walk you through the many Microsoft tools covered in the certification exam. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-microsoft-365-certified-fundamentals-ms-900-exam/

3. This week on the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview PhD drop-out turned Google Data Scientist Megan Risdal. We talk about how she helps oversee the Kaggle community, which hosts 300,000 open datasets. They also run data science competitions each week that anyone can participate in. We also talk about her time at Stack Overflow, and she compares the two developer communities. Megan studied Applied Linguistics in school, so she has a nuanced perspective on Large Language Models and AI research. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-phd-drop-out-to-google-data-scientist-with-megan-risdal-podcast-142/

4. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are essentially websites that feel snappy – even when you're on a slow internet connection. You can build PWAs that remain functional even when your users are completely offline. This in-depth tutorial will walk you through coding your own PWA using the popular Next.js framework. You'll learn all about Dynamic Caching, Service Workers, Fallback Pages, and more. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-create-a-nextjs-pwa/

5. And if you want to boost your web app's performance even further, you can use an approach called Prefetching. This tutorial will teach you key Prefetching concepts, then show you how to leverage its power through code examples. But – as with all good things – it's possible to go overboard with this and actually degrade your app's user experience. This tutorial will help you strike the right balance. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/boost-web-performance-with-prefetching/

Fact of the Week: Even though NVIDIA created the first modern GPU, the term “GPU” has been associated with stand-alone graphics chips since the 1970s, when it stood for “Graphics Processor Unit”. Sony then popularized the term in 1994 when they marketed the Playstation's “Geometry Processing Unit”, a Geometry Transformation Engine paired with a 2D co-processor. Finally in 1999, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce 256 “Graphics Processing Unit”, leading to modern GPUs like the one that's in the device that you're reading this Fact of the Week on right now.