In addition to picture data, photos taken with smartphones and modern digital cameras contain metadata, which is additional information about the photo. This metadata is stored in a format called EXIF, which is short for EXchangeable Image File format, which is a continually evolving standard for information added to digital image and sound recordings.
In photos, EXIF can include information such as:
The dimensions and pixel density of the photo
The make and model of the device used to take the photo
Zoom, aperture, flash, and other camera settings when the photo was taken
The orientation of the device when the photo was taken
When the photo was taken
Where the photo was taken
Which direction the camera was facing
The altitude at which the photo was taken
My article will show you how to use Python’s exif module to access this information, as well as how to alter it (I show you how to tag your photos so it seems as if they were taken at Area 51) or erase it.
EXIF data was recently in the spotlight as a result of the January 6th riots in Washington, DC. Many of the rioters posted photos to Parler, which did not strip EXIF data from photos uploaded to it.
Graphic from the New York Times. Tap to view at full size.
While Parler’s sloppy security was by and large good news, there’s still good reason to follow good security practices, and part of that is managing EXIF data in photographs. That’s what my article covers, and in a fun way as well!
Each week, I publish a listing of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd online events by and for people in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. But what if I tried expanding the scope and listing online events beyond Tampa Bay?
That’s the subject of this week’s experiment. Each weekday this week, I’m going to provide a list of:
the day’s tech, entrepreneur, and nerd online events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas, and
a selection of the day’s tech events for the rest of the world.
Let’s face it — with COVID-19 still raging away, new variants of the disease popping up, and vaccines being slow in coming, we need to step up our online connection game. The way to do that is to look at tech events from beyond our backyard, see what other people are talking about, learn from them, and take those lessons back here to “The Other Bay Area!”
I’ve listed the events below. Check them out, and let me know if this sort of list is interesting or useful to you.
Tuesday’s ONLINE tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events in the Tampa Bay area
…and here’s a selection of online tech events taking place across the country and around the world. I have no idea if any are limiting attendance to locals, but I suggest you drop in and find out!
In this meetup, we’ll use the Python programming language and the Pygame collection of game development libraries to write a game similar to this “Super Bowl Streaker”-themed parody of the old videogame Tecmo Bowl:
That’s right, we’re going to build a game where the player controls the guy who ran onto the field in a pink leotard during the Super Bowl, and the goal of the game is to dodge security for as long as you can.
While writing the game, you’ll learn about key game programming concepts including the main event loop and collision detection, as well as everyday programming topics including object-oriented programming and data structures.
This is going to be a “code along with the instructor” exercise. I’ll explain a key concept for the game, and then we’ll code it together. By the end of the session, you’ll have a working game that you can play but even modify and improve on!
What will you need for the Programmers of Portables Meetup?
Even this decade-plus-old hardware (which I own) will do.
Aside from a computer (which could run macOS, Windows, Linux, or Raspberry Pi OS) made sometime in the past ten or so years and an internet connection, you’ll need:
Zoom (I’ll provide a link to the Meetup as the day gets closer)
All you need for this session is just some programming experience, and it doesn’t have to be in Python. If you can code a “Magic 8-Ball” in JavaScript, you’ll understand most of what we’ll cover when writing our game.
At the same time, while I’ve wanted to keep covering iOS, I also wanted to expand into other portable platforms, namely programming Android, smart watches, Raspberry Pi, and Arduino devices.
I’m going to scratch these two itches by re-tooling Tampa iOS Meetup into a new meetup called Programmers of Portables, or PoP for short. If you want to know what kind of platforms and programming this meetup will cover, just read its motto: “If it fits in your hand, it’s on-brand!”
Some of the topics I’m planning for this year:
iOS and watchOS programming with Swift
Android programming with Kotlin
Cross-platform mobile programming with Flutter
Raspberry Pi programming with Python
Arduino programming with Arduino’s C-like programming language
Wearables (after all, “portable” is related to the French verb porter, which means “to wear”)
I’m going to keep the beginner-friendly focus with this revamped meetup, but don’t let “beginner-friendly” fool you into thinking that it means “simple”! In some of my “beginner-friendly” classes, we wrote:
a machine learning app that tried to identify common objects,
a machine learning app that tried to identify the kind of room your were in, and
a machine learning app that could identify various members of the Avengers.
My plan is to return to regular meetups, which will be Zoom-based until the pandemic gets under control.
I’ll announce the first meetup shortly. In the meantime, let me know what topics you’d like me to cover at PoP. You can do it in the comments for this post, or on my Twitter or LinkedIn accounts.
Of the podcasts in this roundup, Thunder Nerds — “A conversation with the people behind the technology, that love what they do… and do tech good” — has been around the longest, with 274 episodes over five seasons to date. You’ve probably seen the hosts at local meetups and conferences; they’re Sarrah Vesselov, Frederick Philip Von Weiss, and Brian Hinton.
274 – 🧑🏽🍳 Learn to Cook Code at Hackathons with Vincent Tang
In this episode, we get to speak with fullstack developer, tech educator, and speaker, Vincent Tang. We discuss the value of learning from hackathons, and how to get started in the tech industry. We also discuss Vincent’s new podcast Code Chefs.
…a show dedicated to helping developers to grow their career. Topics include Test Driven Development, Clean Code, Professionalism, Entrepreneurship, as well as the latest and greatest programming languages and concepts.
178 – Identity with Christos Matskas
Microsoft Identity for developers and Security in the Cloud! Christos is a developer, speaker, writer, and Microsoft Program Manager for Microsoft Identity, doing advocacy at scale.
177 – F# and FP with Phillip Carter
Phillip Carter joins us on the latest episode of The 6 Figure Developer Podcast to talk F# and Functional Programming. Phillip is a software person by trade. He currently works for Microsoft, focusing on .NET languages and compilers and tooling, with a heavy emphasis on F#. He likes doing other things too, like riding snowboards and bikes.
176 – REST APIs with Irina Scurtu
Irina is a Software Architect, a Microsoft MVP, and .NET Group Community Lead at Endava. She’s also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and founder of dotnetdays Romania.
175 – Dave Glick: Statiq Sites and Open Source
Dave has been professionally developing software for almost two decades. He is passionate about open source, .NET, and the intersection of the two.
174 – DevOps Engineering with Ken Mugrage
Ken is Tech Principal for the Office of the CTO @ThoughtWorks. He’s passionate about #ContinuousDelivery and #DevOps. He’s now focused on future tech.
173 – bUnit: A Blazor Testing Lib w/ Egil Hansen
Principal Developer at Delegate. A Microsoft MVP & .NET Foundation member. Creator of the Blazor Testing Library #bUnit. Egil joins us to talk all about bUnit – a Testing Library for Blazor Components.
172 – Rob Richardson: .NET 5, Pipelines, & Testing
Rob is a software craftsman building web properties in ASP.NET and Node, React and Vue. He’s a Microsoft MVP, published author, frequent speaker at conferences, user groups, and community events, and a diligent teacher and student of high quality software development.
171 – Jeremy Sinclair: Win Insider, .NET on ARM
Jeremy is an enthusiastic developer with over 10 years of development experience. He’s also part of the #WindowsInsiders community and a Windows Insider MVP.
170 – Michael Jolley on JavaScript, TS, Blazor, etc.
From his early days with lincoln logs to building custom ERP systems, Michael has always been a builder. With nearly 20 years experience designing & developing software, he loves sharing his knowledge with others and watching them excel. While still building custom applications for clients today, Michael has been spending considerable time pouring into others via his live-coding sessions on Twitch and talks at conferences & meet-ups. When not in full-geek mode, Michael is a husband of nearly 20 years, father to three awesome kids, musician, and football fanatic.
169 – Welcome Back Ash! Self Care in Covid Times
We’re so happy to have Jon Ash back! Ash was taking some time for self care, family, and personal projects. In this episode we welcome him back and hear all about what he’s been working on.
168 – Oqtane and OSS with Shaun Walker
Shaun Walker is the original creator of Oqtane and DotNetNuke, web application frameworks which have the earned the recognition of being among the largest, most successful, pioneering Open Source projects native to the Microsoft platform. He has 25+ years professional experience in architecting and implementing enterprise software solutions for private and public organizations. Based on his significant community contributions he has been recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) as well as an ASPInsider for over 10 consecutive years. He was recognized by Business In Vancouver in 2011 as a leading entrepreneur in their Forty Under 40 business awards, and is currently the Chair of the Project Committee for the .NET Foundation. Shaun is currently a Technical Director and Enterprise Guildmaster at Cognizant Softvision. Shaun joined us to talk about his newest project, Oqtane, a Modular Application Framework for Blazor, as well as Open Source Software, and The .NET Foundation!
167 – Manage Cloud Cost with Omry Hay
Omry is Co-Founder and CTO at env0, the first self-service cloud management platform for infrastructure as code (IaC) architecture.
166 – The State of Python with Michael Kennedy
Michael is the founder and host of Talk Python To Me, a weekly podcast about Python and related software developer topics. He is a the founder and chief author at Talk Python Training where many leading Python developer courses are available online. Michael is an entrepreneur, a father of three girls, a husband, a student, and a teacher. You can find him in his hometown of Portland, OR.
165 – Kode Vicious, George Neville-Neil
Writing as Kode Vicious, George has spent more than 15 years sharing advice and insights as a “coder with attitude” in ACM’s Queue magazine. He is a software engineer, author and security nerd with other varied interests who speaks several languages including Japanese.
164 – .NET MAUI with Auri Rahimzadeh
Auri joins us to talk about .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI). Auri A. Rahimzadeh is an accomplished technophile writer and author. He has written three books: Hacking the PSP, Geek My Ride, and co-authored Hacking Digital Cameras. Rahimzadeh has contributed to many digital entertainment technology standards, including HDTV and DVD, and is former west coast research director at The Envisioneering Group, a prominent consumer electronics research firm. Having taught side by side with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Auri continues to share a passion for technology education for children and teens. Currently Mr. Rahimzadeh is owner of Auri’s Ideas in Fishers, Indiana, and an instructor at Eleven Fifty Academy, a non-for-profit technology education bootcamp.
The Mike Dominick Show is the second-newest of the podcasts in this list, and it has an open source focus.
40 – Monica Ayhens-Madon
Mike sits down with Monica Ayhens-Madon to discuss the People Powered Book Club, fostering open-source and their eclectic educational backgrounds. This is an amazingly varied and fun chat!
Friends that Code is the newest podcast on this list, and it’s hosted by Mike Traverso, whom locals may know from the Tampa Bay Google Developers Group meetup and other Google-y events. In this podcast, he showcases…
…some amazing people I know that just happen to write code for a living. Whether they started off intending to code or just happened into it, we get to hear about the types of people you’ll meet, things you’ll get to do, jobs you’ll have along the way, and advice from some awesome coders along the way!
26 – Imposter Syndrome: You Do Belong Here & other affirmations and ways to beat imposter syndrome
25 – I owe a world famous video game designer 70 cents with Graeme Devine Video game lover, developer, designer, producer, Godfather of games on CD-Roms, and man partly responsible for a Christmas shortage of gold Zelda cartridges. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Graeme Devine!
24 – Preparing for better opportunities. Oh! and pinball too with Stacy Devino Developer, Google Developer Expert, Community Organizer, Conference Speaker, Mentor, Sneaker fan and Mistress of Android. Ladies and Gentlemen, todays guest is Stacy Devino!
23 – Having every job imaginable in technology with Joey deVilla
Developer, former Evangelist, former CTO, Author, Community Organizer, Conference Speaker, Accordion Guy and Developer again. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Joey deVilla!
22 – Coding a secure, community driven, open sourced Smash Bros moves app with Kento Kawakami
Nintendo enthusiast, Video game lover, graphic designer, photographer, App developer and spanking new software developer. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Kento Kawakami!
21 – Mentoring developers & fostering the community with Maggie Negm
Software developer, volunteer, and mentor to newer software developers and all around good person. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Maggie Negm!
20 – Dialoging with an Android Developer with Huyen Tue Dao
Developer, Architect, Fantastic Conference Speaker, Google Developer Expert in Android & Kotlin, YouTube Producer and On-Air Talent… Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Huyen Tue Dao!
19 – Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready with Jerome Hardaway
Developer, Air Force Veteran, Tech Evangelist, Founder and Executive Director at Vets Who Code and Captain America of web development! Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Jerome Hardaway!
18 – Development is just another creative outlet with David Khourshid
Developer, Conference Speaker, Author, Javascript framework creator, Twitch streamer and moonlighting piano player. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is David Khourshid!
17 – Creating creativity, turning static into fantastic with Erica Jacobs
Designer, Illustrator, Volunteer, Celebrator of women in the design and tech community, Creator of the Neon Swan Awards and Creative Mind extraordinaire. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Erica Jacobs!
16 – ABC’s of success: Authenticity, Balance and Communication with Bill Conyea
Developer, CTO, Investor, Technology Staffer and Entrepreneur. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Bill Conyea!
It’s the start of a brand new year, and in the world of developer YouTube, that means one thing: A whole lot of videos on the topic of the programming languages that you must know or learn for the upcoming year.
In a non-pandemic year, “Top programming languages for 2021” is a relatively easy topic to cover, and one that’s sure to attract some extra search-based viewership. In the year after the one we just had, a good number of people who are trying to pivot to software development, and a title like “Top programming languages for 2021” is pure YouTube audience bait.
Since I had some time to kill while reformatting one of my machines over the holiday break, I decided to enter the search term top programming languages for 2021 into YouTube’s search field and see what came up. To keep the number of videos down to something manageable, I considered only videos posted after the start of November 2020.
A lot of the same recommendations
Creative Commons photo by Doug Kline. Tap to see the source.
I ended up watching 17 videos, and there was a high degree of overlap in their recommendations:
Language
Recommendations
JavaScript
17
Python
16
Go
12
Java
11
C#
10
Kotlin
10
C / C++
9
PHP
9
Swift
6
R
3
Rust
3
Ruby
2
SQL
2
TypeScript
2
Dart
1
Shell scripting
1
Unsurprisingly, every video recommended JavaScript and all but one recommended Python. The more interesting results were further down the list including:
A surprisingly high number of recommendations for Go and C/C++ — lower-level systems programming languages that are a little less suited for web development than the others. Most of the people who posted “top languages for 2021” videos seemed to be targeting an audience of web developers, which makes me wonder if their recommendations are based simply on C’s, C++’s, and Go’s strong showing on the TIOBE Index.
I thought Kotlin and Swift would be about even, but 10 reviewers recommended Kotlin, while only 6 recommended Swift.
I thought TypeScript would get more recommendations.
The videos
For the benefit of the curious, I’ve listed the videos below, complete with links and each one has a list of the recommendations made in the video.
I feel obliged to remind you that these are subjective opinions that could easily be based on the presenter’s biases, some Googling, or cribbing notes from the Technology section of the 2020 Stack Overflow developer survey.
If you’re planning to learn a new programming language or sharpen your skills on a language you’re already familiar with, you should make sure that it’s in service of some kind of goal. Is knowing a language part of a larger career plan, to assist you with your current job, to make yourself more attractive to prospective employers, or for fun? All of these are valid reasons, but you should have a reason.
I thought I’d start by giving my home state of Florida some love by presenting Jacksonville-based polyglotengineer’s list of languages to learn this year. Here are his picks:
10. Java
9. C#
8. PHP
7. C / C++
6. Go
5. Kotlin
4. Rust
3. Python
2. Swift
1. JavaScript
Simplilearn is an online bootcamp that boasts of partnerships with Purdue, Caltech, UMass Amherst, AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and Accenture. Here’s their “top ten” list of programming languages to take up in 2021:
10. C#
9. Go
8. C++
7. JavaScript
6. Swift
5. Java
4. R
3. Kotlin
2. PHP
1. Python
Danny “DThompsonDev” Thompson wins the prize for best use of props in his round-up of the languages you should learn in the new year, with the Python fanboy baseball bat and PHP cash money.
Here’s his selection of the top seven programming languages to take in the 2G21:
7. Go
6. PHP
5. C#
4. Java
3. C++
2. JavaScript
1. Python
Hitesh Choudhary is one of the instructors at LearnCodeOnline, an online coding school. Here’s his list of the top five programming languages to learn this year:
Here’s Boston-area-based Bryan Cafferky’s take on what you should learn this year, broken down by category. His is the one list that has a recommendation that no one else gave: Learn shell scripting, whether for Windows or Unix-based platforms.
codebasics is Dhaval Patel’s YouTube channel, where he covers a lot of data science and Python topics. Here are his top five languages to learn in 2021:
5. Go
4. Kotlin
3. JavaScript
2. TypeScript
1. Python
Here’s another video from a channel that’s just getting started — NeuralNine, which is “an educational brand focusing on programming, machine learning and computer science in general.”
Here’s their list:
5. C# / Java
4. C / C++
3. JavaScript
2. Go
1. Python
Great Learning say they have over 200 free certificate courses and seven years’ worth of videos. Here’s their top ten list of programming languages to take up in 2021:
10. Kotlin
9. Swift
8. C#
7. R
6. PHP
5. Go
4. C++
3. Java
2. Python
1. JavaScript
Ishan Sharma looks to be just a bit older than Yazeed (judging from his youthful appearance and bookshelf contents). In addition to making videos at GeeksForGeeks,he also has his own YouTube channel, which boasts over 32,000 subscribers.
He recommends the same languages as Yazeed, plus two more:
7. Kotlin
6. PHP
5. C++
4. Go
3. Java
2. Python
1. JavaScript
I’ll close out this collection with a more general list from John Codes, who describes himself with the phrase “software engineer turned content creator”. Here’s a quick summary of his recommendations for 2021:
If you don’t know it already, pick up a little JavaScript.
If you’re looking for a new back-end language and stack, look at Go and Kubernetes.
For operating systems and embedded programmers, look at Rust.
Avocado Labs an Auth0 project whose goal is to keep developers and techies — and people who want to become developers and techies — connected through high-quality online talks.
Today at noon Eastern (17:00 UTC), join Avocado Labs’ Twitch channel to meet Matthew Pegula, Director of Creative Technology at the technology/experience design studio Deeplocal.
He’ll be talking about some of their cool projects, including a project called “Connected Mistletoe”, which keeps distant people connected over the holidays:
Here’s the brief for the talk:
Matthew Pegula works at Deeplocal, a creative technology and experience design studio based in Pittsburgh, PA. They’re a group of engineers and creatives who use technology to tell stories and create experiences in novel ways. At first glance, their projects don’t always jump out as being overly technical or software-driven, but that’s sort of the idea: the technology enables the story, it doesn’t overshadow it. Matthew is going to show a few of their favorite projects, talk about the technology that’s driving them, and some of the challenges they ran into along the way.
Matthew Pegula is a software engineer who has been lucky enough to blend his interests in technology, design, writing, and engineering into a career that encompasses them all. He has a BS in computer science from Allegheny College and leads the Creative Technology team at Deeplocal.
My latest article on the Auth0 blog, How to Read and Remove Metadata from Your Photos With Python, shows you how to use Python and the exif module to examine, alter, and even remove the metadata that your phone adds to pictures you take.
In addition to picture data, photos taken with smartphones and modern digital cameras contain metadata, which is additional information about the photo. This metadata is stored in a format called EXIF, which is short for EXchangeable Image File format, which is a continually evolving standard for information added to digital image and sound recordings.
At the same time, while I’ve wanted to keep covering iOS, I also wanted to expand into other portable platforms, namely programming Android, smart watches, Raspberry Pi, and Arduino devices.
I’m going to scratch these two itches by re-tooling Tampa iOS Meetup into a new meetup called Programmers of Portables, or PoP for short. If you want to know what kind of platforms and programming this meetup will cover, just read its motto: “If it fits in your hand, it’s on-brand!”
The Mike Dominick Show
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Avocado Labs