What Caused the CrowdStrike Outage

At the end of last week, a software glitch at CrowdStrike caused major disruptions. We’ll talk about the cause, share a cybersecurity certification, introduce a new tool to help you learn tech, and share this week’s job opportunities.

This Week’s Resources

• The 10 Best Java Projects for Your Portfolio

• How to Build a Chess Game in Java (With Code)

• New Job Opportunities in Tech

• Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate (Coursera)

• Python Lists: In-Depth Guide with Examples

Highlighted Job Opportunities

Here are a few specific jobs that caught our eye this week. The list includes positions at Dell Technologies, University of California, and several remote jobs.

• Technical Staff-System Architect at Dell Technologies

• Senior Peoplesoft Developer (Remote within CA)

• Sr. IT Applications Developer at Appian (Remote)

• Product Technical Account Specialist at Autodesk (Portland)

• Swift Developer - AI Trainer (Remote)

• Senior Software Engineer, BackEnd (Denver)

How to Build a Chess Game in Java

Do you know how to code a chess game? Dr. Johns wrote a full guide to the project, including the code to get started.

Best of all, there are still a few extra challenges for you to solve. This code doesn’t include the ability to castle or to perform en passant.

Here’s the code for the board. Read the full guide to get all the code for the Java chess game.

public class ChessBoard {
  private Piece[][] board;

  public ChessBoard() {
      this.board = new Piece[8][8]; // Chessboard is 8x8
      setupPieces();
  }

  public Piece[][] getBoard() {
      return board;
  }

  public Piece getPiece(int row, int column) {
      return board[row][column];
  }

  public void setPiece(int row, int column, Piece piece) {
      board[row][column] = piece;
      if (piece != null) {
          piece.setPosition(new Position(row, column));
      }
  }

  private void setupPieces() {
      // Place Rooks
      board[0][0] = new Rook(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 0));
      board[0][7] = new Rook(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 7));
      board[7][0] = new Rook(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 0));
      board[7][7] = new Rook(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 7));
      // Place Knights
      board[0][1] = new Knight(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 1));
      board[0][6] = new Knight(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 6));
      board[7][1] = new Knight(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 1));
      board[7][6] = new Knight(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 6));
      // Place Bishops
      board[0][2] = new Bishop(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 2));
      board[0][5] = new Bishop(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 5));
      board[7][2] = new Bishop(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 2));
      board[7][5] = new Bishop(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 5));
      // Place Queens
      board[0][3] = new Queen(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 3));
      board[7][3] = new Queen(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 3));
      // Place Kings
      board[0][4] = new King(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(0, 4));
      board[7][4] = new King(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(7, 4));
      // Place Pawns
      for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
          board[1][i] = new Pawn(PieceColor.BLACK, new Position(1, i));
          board[6][i] = new Pawn(PieceColor.WHITE, new Position(6, i));
      }
  }

  public void movePiece(Position start, Position end) {
      if (board[start.getRow()][start.getColumn()] != null &&
              board[start.getRow()][start.getColumn()].isValidMove(end, board)) {

          board[end.getRow()][end.getColumn()] = board[start.getRow()][start.getColumn()];
          board[end.getRow()][end.getColumn()].setPosition(end);
          board[start.getRow()][start.getColumn()] = null;
      }
  }
}

This AI Tool Helps You Build a Career in Tech

If you’re interested, we have a new AI-powered tool to help you learn skills and find jobs. It’s still in a beta version, but we’d love to hear what you think.

We’re calling it Mentor. If you try it out, please reply to this email or leave a comment with feedback. We’re excited to build it as a resource for your tech career.

What Caused the CrowdStrike Outage?

A global IT outage affected airlines, banks, and other large institutions last week. But what caused it?

Short answer: A software update.

CrowdStrike released a software update. That update didn’t

So who is this company, and how could this happen? CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity vendor. They offer “unified and agentless” protection against cloud breaches.

Their update, however, caused major issues for their clients. CNBC described how the issue spread:

“Many companies use [CrowdStrike software] and install it on all of their machines across their organization. So when an update happens that maybe has problems with it, it causes this problem where the machines reboot, and people can’t get back into their computers.”

Additional Reading