What did I do this past week?

This past week I spent a good amount of time working on Collatz and doing competitive programming assignments. Collatz took me a while because I tried to pass the Hackerrank tests without a meta cache and my code was still too slow for the third test. I found the solution by changing the data structure for my eager cache from map to an array. I guess the collisions in the map and the time for hash function was slowing down the program a lot since with an array program became at least 20 times faster. I’m trying to do my competitive programming assignments in C++ since it is one of my goals to get better at C++ but it is also slowing me down a lot even when I’m writing some simple algorithms. Overall it was a busy and productive week.

What’s in my way?

I have to start working on Computer Vision because I’m little behind in readings and didn’t start the project that’s due next Friday.

What will I do next week?

Good amount of my time next week will be spent on the Computer Vision assignment. I hope to finish it by Monday so I have time to go my clubs. I might start emailing some professors this week for recommendation letters since I’m planning to apply UT’s integrated masters program.

What’s my experience of the class?

It’s taking me some time to getting used to the new pass by reference notation in C++. It is no doubt very useful but it is also out of my C knowledge. We did some pointer and reference exercises this week and it was a good refresher on my knowledge. It’s been almost a year since I had to work with pointers but I’m remembering fast. We also learned about the differences between string class and char * in C++ and how they convert and work with each other which I though was very useful.

Pick of the week

Prof. Downing already mentioned this in class but I will mention it again, we have our first open competitive programming competition next week Friday in GDC 1.304. Last semester I have been to a few of these and its very fun if you bring some friends and enjoy problem solving. Even if you don’t bring anyone you can meet new people and join their team. It’s a bit intimidating if you are a freshman and don’t know much about data structures and algorithms but you can still learn a lot. It’s also important to know last few problems are very hard and don’t get discouraged if you can’t do them.