I once again, split my time between two study tracks today. I continued reading through the “Technical Questions” section of the book, “Cracking the Coding Interview” (CTCI) by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. The other half of my time was used to read some of the material for the Node.js section of the “Full Stack JavaScript” development course from The Odin Project. I had some great progress today with both study tracks.
I have regularly struggled with quickly and accurately gauging the ideal runtimes for algorithm problems. I think it is likely due to a lack of experience. The section I read today in CTCI covered this topic a bit more by introducing the concept of the “Best Conceivable Runtime” (BCR). In essence, it is an approach to solving algorithms in which you first stake out the most efficient possible performance for a solution, then try to get as close as possible to that. I gained an appreciation for this because I have struggled with accepting my solutions as good enough. Now that I know there are ways to determine the theoretical best case, I feel like I have more direction when trying to improve. Now, calculating the BCR is another skill I need to work on. LOL.
For my backend studies I read the Wikipedia article on REST. It was a useful read. It helped me clarify what REST really is as a software architectural style and what constraints are required for a software architecture to be considered “RESTful”. I am not going to dive deeper into the topic unless it comes up again but I will try to organize my notes to make it easier for me to refer back to them when the topic does come back up.
TLDR;
Okay, so here are the highlights of what I did:
- Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) -> Continued reading through the book “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell again. Going through the technical interview section. Read through the section on the “Best Conceivable Runtime”. Seems really useful for maintaining my sanity while practicing with DSAs.
- Backend -> Continued going through the material on API development with
Node.jsfrom The Odin Project’s backend development course. Read through an article on REST from Wikipedia. It was a beneficial read. Help clarifies some questions I had on the topic.
Goal For Round 8 of the #100DaysofCode Challenge
This is my eighth round of the “#100daysofcode” challenge. I will be continuing my work from round five, six, and seven into round eight. I was working through the book “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. My goal was to become more familiar with algorithms and data structures. This goal was derived from my goal to better understand operating systems and key programs that I use in the terminal regularly e.g. Git. This goal was in turn derived from my desire to better understand the fundamental tools used for coding outside of popular GUIs. This in turn was derived from my desire to be a better back-end developer.
I am currently putting a pause on the algorithm work to build some backend/full stack projects. I primarily want to improve my skills with the back-end from an implementation perspective. I have improved tremendously in terminal and CLI skills but I lost focus due to how abstract the algorithm concepts got. I wanted to work on things that were more tangible until I can get to a position where I could directly benefit from improving my algorithm skills and theoretical knowledge. So that’s the focus right now. Build my backend skills and prove my full stack capabilities by building some dope projects.
Again, I still have no idea if my path is correct but I am walking down this road anyways. Worst case scenario I learn a whole bunch of stuff that will help me out on my own personal projects. Best case scenario I actually become one of those unicorn developers that go on to start a billion dollar company… You never know LOL.