The Last Slog

Week 12: The Last Slog

As the final week of classes finish, the time to study for finals has arrived! Luckily, the CSC148 final is not until the 23^rd, but there are many others to be done before (at least for me). This week in class, we went over how dictionaries worked, and we also had a review session of everything covered over the semester. The explanation on dictionaries was interesting, as in CSC108, we were told the ordering was “random” (but not quite) in that to us it seemed random, but the computer had its own way of ordering the indexes. I had been curious at what the instructor meant by this, and now I know. The indexes are ordered through hashing. That is, the indexes (which are immutable) are given a number and are ordered based on those numbers. In addition, there was also the review on Wednesday, which helped me remember what was covered this semester.

Outside of class, the main thing was E4. Overall, E4 was not that bad, the code for the function insert was very helpful in writing the two functions needed. This task probably would have been more challenging had the given code not been provided. I did make a careless (and probably common) mistake of returning the node.item instead of the node itself for E4b, which caused the auto test to fail, but this was easily fixed. It seems one recurring problem for me with this class (and in other classes as well) is making careless mistakes even though I understand what I am doing. For example, it is very easy to make a simple typing mistake (such as leaving out a character in a variable name), forget to list include a parameter in a function call, or misread directions (especially in a test when I am nervous). I am prone to such mistakes, which can sometimes be a major problem. The best way to improve this in my opinion is to just check over my work before I submit it. I usually catch most of my errors, but something almost always manages to slip between my fingers (or I run out of time). These mistakes are especially fatal in programming, as one small error can cause the entire program to fail. But with more thorough checking (something I normally do), and maybe having someone else check my work (something I don't normally do but could try), I can hopefully eliminate all of these mistakes.

The second last slog I picked to read is http://47tulips.wordpress.com/. This person found sorting, and big O to be the most difficult unit of the semester, and I feel the same way. To me, big O requires a different way of thinking than does writing code, which may be why some people are uncomfortable with it. This person also mentioned the sorts we learned in CSC 108 were very inefficient compared to the ones we learned this semester. I agree, as I said something similar in my entry on sorting. The very last slog form another person I will read is http://supercskid.blogspot.ca/. I thought this person's descriptions of merge sort and quick sort were fairly accurate. Like the previous slog, this person is also still getting used to big O. However, it was mentioned that the lab for sorting was the easiest. I actually agree with this statement, as a large part of it was just copying, pasting, and making graphs. Interpreting the graphs was not too bad, as we already knew the run times from class, and the graphs confirmed what was said in class.

Well, that was the last slog. Goodbye everyone! See you at the final :)