Ethan's Computer Science Journey

 This week was a little rough because I had so much work. I am still in the process of tackling it, but I figured I'd get this out of the way. I even got called in on my day off, but we push. AVL, 2-3, and max heap trees are all new to me. But it was nice to see something pop up from my Data Structures & Algorithms course from back in the day. Hashing, it's probably my favorite data structure. I think it's super neat and unique. Handling collisions is also fun. I was so stumped on the puzzle this week, but then again,n I always am. After this class engagement, it's straight to the programming assignment for me.

 Week 5 begins just after the Midterm, and I did pretty well, so I'm happy with my performance. I also appreciate the midterm starting at 10am; the last class had us starting at 9am, and it was too early for me to think. This week was heavy lecture-wise, but I managed to get through it during the week. Homework 4.2 wasn't bad, but 4.1 was rough. I knew it would be bad when it said to use ChatGPT to debug. It was alot but I got through it. For my class participation, I will share a resource in the class Discord.

 This week, we didn't have any quizzes or homework. Our whole goal this week is to study for the Midterm on Monday. Content-wise, we went over merge sort very briefly, but this week I'm spending all my time studying and brushing up on past concepts that I wasn't too good at before. I need to go over algorithms, GCD, algorithmic problem solving process, data structures such as arrays, linked lists, stacks, trees, graphs, and sets. I also need to review graph traversal and dynamic programming. I plan to review by going over quizzes, puzzles, and old lectures.

 This week had a lot of new content and some review content from my Data Structures & Algorithms course at De Anza. For review, I reviewed Breadth-First Search and Depth-First Search; they were such a struggle for me at community college, but the knowledge was helpful in understanding them better a second time. We also went over Brute force string matching, exhaustive search, and the divide and conquer algorithm design. The puzzles this week were also super challenging; I was nowhere near the correct ballpark for either solution, which I usually am.  Overall this week wasn't too bad and I need to start focusing on the midterm it's creeping up. 

 It's been a little over 1 year since I started my journey at Monterey Bay, which is crazy to think about.  This week, we learned about a lot of stuff, including notations for algorithm analysis, definitions of time efficiency notations, nonrecursive algorithms, and more. One thing that stumped me a lot during the readings was the understanding of the difference and how to remember the difference between big O, theta, and omega. I had to use ChatGPT to break the concepts down a lot and explain any misconceptions I had/ reinforce any ideas I got right. For the first time, I got one of the puzzles on my own, the 4-gallon puzzle, which wasn't too bad. I almost got the racing one down, but I said 6 instead of 7, forgetting about the other cars from group A.

Hi blog! It’s been awhile. I’ve been so busy with school, work, and life. The holidays are over so my work isn’t as bad. I’m currently in the process of moving out of my life so huge is a little rough but I’m getting through it. We started our first week of Algorithms. The professor posts readings, lectures, puzzles, quizzes, and homework. I really enjoyed the puzzles I think they’re fun and really get my brain going. Particularly the fake coin puzzle, the best I could come with is putting half coins on one side and half on the other. But that lead to 3 different searches. I also struggled with figuring out if I’m going to do C++ or Java for the course, so far I’ve done 1 of each and I honestly might just do C++. I’ve done a lot of Java here at CSUMB. It would be a good refresher because I haven’t thoroughly used C++ since De Anza. The 2 homework’s were challenging and really had me thinking. The quiz was also difficult. It has been fun learning about algorithms, graphs, and brushing u...