What did you do this past week?

This past week I studied all week long for the test for this course and for my computer security course. I felt very prepared going into the test on Thursday night, so it was very frustrating that I came out of the test not having finished the last two questions, not even getting any of the HackerRank tests passing. As for my computer security test, I feel that it went alright. I definitely don’t think I aced it, but I did better on it than the one for this course. Other than that, I scheduled an interview with USAA for next week, so I hope that will go well. As stated in my previous post, I went to see Black Panther and a Foreigner concert. I really enjoyed Black Panther, and the Foreigner concert was amazing.

What’s in your way?

It seems that one of my problems when tackling coding problems (and probably just in general) is that I overthink things. I had all the concepts for the OOP test down, but when I had to solve the last two problems I thought too hard about how to make it work. Instead of just trying to code up a simple solution modeled after the ones we did in class, I took a direction that lead me down a rabbit hole. Before I could realize my mistake, it was too late. The test was coming to an end before I could even get one test passing. My problem of having a scrambled brain under pressure is the largest thing in my way and quite honestly, I’m not too sure how to conquer it. I just keep hoping that more and more situations like this one will help me improve on that front. I hope that by doing well on the projects, the test grade will not hurt me too badly in the end.

What will you do next week?

This next week I will be preparing for interviews. As I have said before, I don’t have much confidence in this area, so I have been trying to prep with Cracking the Coding and lots of HackerRank problems. Also, I plan to start on the next project in this class.

What’s my experience of the class?

Other than being upset with the grade on my test (which I can only blame on myself), I still really enjoy the class. Although, I guess I do wish that the midterm had been two hours long instead of just an hour and a half. Professor Downing goes into so much detail about programming languages that you really don’t get anywhere else. He also is very approachable with any questions you may have. The only complaint that I have about the past two weeks of this class is that there hasn’t been anything to do (and yes, I know how this sounds). I really have been adamant about keeping up with schoolwork this semester and I find myself with a lot of free time for this course.

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

My pick of the week is Cracking the Coding Interview book. This book gives a very good overview of coding interviews and the technical questions that are often asked in them. If you are looking to get a leg up on interviews, I suggest you start with this book.