CSC148 Week of Mar 23

Sorting and Efficiency
This week, we covered multiple types of sorting, why they are used and how efficient they are compared to the list size
Bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, quick sort, merge sort, python's built-in sort and the conditional count sort. Generally, since python's built-in sort is a combination of the other sorts in order to maximize efficiency, it will run the fastest out of all of them. However at very large lists, the simple count sort can run slightly faster than the built-in sort.
The efficiency of the count sort though comes from the assumption that all the values in the list are between 0 and len(list).

CSC148 Week of Mar 16

And I completely forgot about this thing last week. Up until I finished the assignment, I hadn't really thought about this slog this week.
The second part of assignment 2 wasn't difficult to program, but it was very long (at least for me). For a couple of the functions, I made helper functions, and then I realized that the last function was basically the exact opposite of one of my helper functions. That made me hopeful about that last function... Unfortunately, the function was a one-way only function, so I had to create a different set of functions for the last one.

CSC148 Week of Mar 2

First of all, the assignment was extended :D

Our lessons delved further in depth into linked lists- trees with one child and an empty final node to signify the end of the list.We also covered binary search trees, trees that are sorted by the values of their objects, making searches quicker and more efficient.

And lastly I should really stop procrastinating on the slogs and assignments (back to finishing the assignment).

CSC148 Week of Feb 24

Click here for the definition of recursion.
^^ I think that defined it.

Recursion is the process of a function repeatedly calling itself or a sub-function until a certain condition is met. This is useful in reducing the length of the code when used at the right places, but it is also inefficient, causing larger processes to take a noticeably longer period of time to run. Therefore for small programs, it is an effective tool, but it is less useful larger programs when the inefficient runtime is more noticeable.

CSC148 Week of Feb 10

The assignment felt like an overload when I first started working on it because I was trying to understand everything at once. However once I got into a group and we went over it, it became a lot easier. In my group I probably did the least in terms of the programming itself, but I was able to catch the mistakes that my teammates made and debug them. Although debugging is supposed to be more difficult than programming, I found it both easier and more enjoyable...I'm strange.

CSC148 Week of Feb 3

Before even starting the assignment I felt a bit overloaded, by the feed from the course discussion board on Piazza, a constant stream of questions and even a correction to the original code by the instructors. Then, in starting the assignment, I figured I could just jump right into the coding...*stares at computer screen for an hour (well I typed the headers at least for TOAHModel)*.

Then I went back to actually read the non-stop feed I had been receiving from Piazza. The comments and questions from the other students really helped clear up my confusion about what I was supposed to do. (Guess I should go read some of their blogs too now that I saw we should do that from the feed)

CSC148 Week of Jan 27

Our labs and exercises have been very straightforward and simple recently. They are basically guiding the person straight through everything, so as of now this course has felt really simple. I just hope that this doesn't mean that I'm going to have problems with the assignments and tests.