What did you do this past week?

This past week my partner and I finished the Voting project, and it went very well. We had past all the HackerRank tests and our own acceptance tests, but then we ran into a hiccup when creating our unit tests. The test kept coming up with the wrong answer when testing the voting_eval function, and we spent an hour or so looking for the problem. Turns out, since we were using a global variable to set the total number of ballots, that variable was not being set in that function. It was pretty frustrating, but it is just another example of how global variables can cause problems. Outside of this class I went to see Cirque Du Soleil Crystal with my girlfriend for Valentine’s day. Their shows are always fantastic. I also revamped my resume and applied for about 10 different internships.

What’s in your way?

Currently, I don’t have a ton of confidence when it comes to interviews. However, for Valentine’s day my girlfriend got me the Cracking the Coding Interview book. So, I hope that reading that book and working out the problems will boost my confidence. My roommate’s puppy situation has not gotten any better. He works too often to really take care of a puppy, so the responsibility falls to me and my other roommates. This puts more stress on us than we would like. We talked to him about it, and he said that it’s more work than he had anticipated as well, and so he has decided to find a better home for the puppy. If anyone is looking for one, please let me know!

What will you do next week?

This week I will be focusing on internships and the career fair. I received a response from Visa over the weekend in which they have given me a HackerRank test to complete. I am nervous about it, but I hope it will go well. If I pass the test, then I will be considered for the next step in the interview process.

What’s my experience of the class?

Professor Downing has some very insightful lectures. His lecture this week on iterators was very interesting. Specifically, he taught us that when creating a function that takes an iterator, the function should take the weakest iterator possible so that the function is very flexible from the perspective of the user. He came by my group in class while we were coding a solution to the fill function and gave us tips on how to make the function a bit faster. We were passing in a value by copy, but he told us to pass it in by const reference instead. This makes the function slightly faster since a copy doesn’t have to made.

What’s my pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week is LeetCode. This service is much like HackerRank, but it includes coding problems that employers use in interviews. It is very handy for preparing for interviews.