Back To School

 Hello everyone,

My school opened last week, and I started my second semester of the second year. This year I'm taking CS224 and CS202 which are complimentary of the classes I've taken last semester. Also, I'm taki,ng MATH225 which is Dİfferential Equations & Linear Algebra. I have to admit I'm a bit scared of this course. Lastly, I'm taking HUM111 and PYHS252, introduction to astronomy, which are supposed to be easier courses.

During the last half the summer break I was continuing my internships at Tübitak and YapıKredi. The internship at Tübitak was more like a BootCamp actually. I've taken some courses in Spring and React. I had very little knowledge on them. Then I've started a project which was about creating a student  and course management system. I've had never used database this extensively before so it was a little challenging to work with spring actually. I couldn't come to stage I liked since I got sick the last week of the internship and then my school has started, but I'll work on it when I have time.

YapıKredi internship was pretty much what I'd expected. I was under Bussiness Intelligence and I'd a mentor to help me with the internship. Actually, this wasn't a strictly CS internship, but I've learned a great deal about SQL. They were using data to create live graphs, so I also worked in design part. Unrelated to my department, HR also arrange a multitude of seminar and activities. From one of the competitions I've won a smartwatch actually :). 

I think both of the internships taught me a great deal about the work-life. I'm really glad that I've done this internships since they gave me great insight about how my work will be after I graduated.

Now, I'll try to update my project from before and maybe study some MATH225 topics before my lessons and assignments occupy most of my time.

That's all I've got the say right now! See you.

Ece

Update

 Hello everyone,

My first internship is finished recently, and then I went on a short trip to Copenhagen. In, the internship I transformed TurkPatent's website into an android app. The app is currently functional but I couldn't finish everything in time because I got sick for almost a week. 

Besides, I've been studying matrices from Khan Academy for my MATH225 course next semester. It's going OK I think. I haven't started to study the full differential equations yet, but I'll look into them eventually. Also, I'm studying a little for my CS202 course next year, I was looking into trees from different YouTube channels, and I'll probably look into it a little more. 

Also, my next internship starts technically tomorrow, but the first-day meeting is on Tuesday. It's an internship at Yapı Kredi Banks. It actually focuses more on leadership and banking, but I've chosen an IT-related branch, so it'll probably help me in my programming career as well. 

In the following weeks, I plan to look into my MATH225 and CS202 studies and completely finish my android application project from my internship.

That's all I've got to say right now, see you!

Ece

First Month of Summer Break

 Hello everyone,

During the first month of my summer break, I was trying the relax a little, and I only focused on my internship. However, it was a bit harder than I expected. I'm converting TurkPatent's website into an Android application. I knew Android from my CS102 project next year but this proved more challenging than that. I'm finishing up all the activity designs then I'm going to connect them with Intents. Actually, I was going to connect them first but I'm using fragments and a bottom navigation bar which makes activity transitions complicated. Also, there's a bug on the main activity which immediately throws an exception whenever I open the app. I've one week left at the internship, so I'm going to finish up the activity designs and fix up the errors.

I've also studied some Linear Algebra too, but I'm at the beginning right now. I'll try to study more because it's the hardest course I'm going to take next semester. Aside from CS courses of course!

That's all I've got the say, see you!

Ece  

Half of my second year is over!

 Hello everyone,

Sorry I couldn't write after my midterms were over. Because all my teachers were, apparently, waiting for the midterms to finish so that they could just unleash the assignments. I don't remember a time when I had that much homework. After that, finals started, and since I was busy doing the assignments, I couldn't study for my finals before. Anyhow, the semester is over now. I plan to do some projects, and I have an internship at Turkey's patent agency. It's a government agency, and the internship will last for 20 days. It's also online, so I don't have to travel to its building. However, since I didn't take all the necessary courses yet, this internship will not be counted as one of my mandatory internships.

In May, I was mainly doing my CS assignments. For CS223, I was to program a microprocessor on SystemVerilog. It was supposed to do basic calculations and store and retrieve the results of those calculations. It was so hard; I don't know anyone who finished the project by implementing all the properties in the instructions. I really don't think it was possible to complete it in just 2 weeks, which was the total time we were given. For 2 weeks, I only worked on this project, and I managed to get working simulations. However, the code just didn't work on BASYS3. Vivado said there were some double names in the code, but not their places. I couldn't find them within the 2000 lines of code. So it didn't work. I got a 65 for my 2-week work. So that's that on that.   

CS201 turned out better. Our lecturer canceled the lectures for 2 weeks since we were moving fast. And he gave us relatively easy homework about stacks, which was the second last topic in the syllabus. Although sometimes I felt like years were passing while trying to fix the memory leaks, I actually liked C++. Pointers give a very different perspective to coding.  

MATH132 was OK. It wasn't too hard, but I think the graders were a bit harsh. I got an A, so I can't really complain, I suppose. It was different than the other maths courses I took last year. Even the hardest questions seemed like they could be solved very easily somehow. But I've had problems with permutations and combinations before, so I studied harder than I imagined at the beginning of the semester.

HIST200 was almost a disaster. It was a group project, but only 2 people really worked on the paper. One of them was me, and the other was a friend of mine from the CS. If it weren't for us, the other 3 wouldn't have turned in anything. I sometimes had to try really hard to contain my anger because all the group's work was falling on my and my friend's shoulders. The deadlines just made everything worse. Our lecturer just found the perfect dates to overlap with my midterm schedule. Anyway, I'm just happy that I'm done with it. 

Last but not least, PHYS102... It was just draining. The whole course was both emotionally and physically draining. For example, we needed to design a lab experiment, so I created one and turned it in. I got a 100 for my final lab design. So far, so good, right? Then, it was time to actually do the experiment. I tried to do it on my own first, but something was off. I was trying to measure the voltage on some metal cylinders, but I couldn't since their resistance is really small. Then I asked TA, the grader, what could I do. He said I couldn't do this experiment. He literally said that it wasn't possible to do the experiment, which he gave a 100. I worked on the experiment for 2 weeks and managed to get some results in the end, but it wasn't exactly the same as the experiment I first turned in.  

This covers the last month of my semester. I was exhausted when the finals week started. I don't have a clear program for this summer yet, but I'm going to do some research about what I can study. I'll update the blog when I decide on the topics.

That's all I've got the say right now! See you.

Ece

Midterms Are Finally Over!!

 Hello everyone,

Sorry I couldn't write past week, It was my midterm week, and it's finally over!

MATH132 midterm was good, I got an 83 (the average was 43 or something, oof). It was a bit hard, but I knew how to solve every question, except one where I tried to explain what I was trying to do in English because there was no time left.

CS223 wasn't what I feared it would be. It was kind of easy, actually. The only hard-ish question was creating an FSM state diagram from its circuit, and it was hard because the decoder gates were just all over the place, it was a bit hard to understand. I hope I didn't read anything wrong because its average will probably be high.  

CS201 was good too, I got an 87 from that (its average was 48, oof). I thought I would get a lower grade because I forgot to control corner cases like empty arrays ( I just didn't check anything, what was I thinking??), but anyway, it turned out ok. The main thing about the CS201 is my first homework grade, actually. I got a 0. I technically failed the course now because I need to get at least %30 from each homework to be able to take the final exam. I was shocked, to say the least, because I KNOW that my code works. I checked it so many times that I lost count. It turned out that it was because I uploaded the classes' implementation in only one cpp file. Apparently, I needed to implement each class in its own cpp file, but I didn't know that. I mailed the separated cpp's and headers to the TA, and I really hope I get at least a passing grade.

That's pretty much what I have done since I last wrote, see you!

Ece

Hello Again

 Hello everyone,

Not much happened this week, I had a short Spring break on Thursday and Friday so I was at home. I studied to my exam this Friday. It's the 1. midterm of MATH132 and I'm a little scared of it because for most of the questions you should determine a rule, or do some algebraic calculations, both of which are the things I'm very inclined to make mistakes about. Anyway, I'm still studying. Also, my CS exams are coming up.

During the break, I finally managed to use GCC in Visual Studio. I'm using "Windows Subsystem for Linux", I think it's sort of like VirtualBox but without the Linux screen. VirtualBox is still not working properly and I don't know why :/ I give Ubuntu 40GB initial storage, 4 CPUs, and 4GB ram, but it's still super slow and its system doesn't start up properly. I'll try to create new machines but not now, probably this weekend.    

I'm still doing the CS201 Homework, it's taking a lot of time, and still didn't even check for memory leaks. It's a parking system simulator and there's something very wrong with how I remove cars or parking lots because it seems like it's working but after 5-6 lines it crashes. It seems completely random because those places work correctly if I don't remove anything. So, I'll probably work on it more this week, it's due day on 22nd March.

That's all I've got to say right now! See you.

Ece

Updates!

 Hello everyone,

Sorry, I couldn't write, my exams and homework are starting to kick in once again :/ I had a PHYS midterm last Saturday, and I have 3 midterms in the following 2 weeks. But I'm at spring break now, even if it's only 2 days :) But a lot happened this week actually.

Firstly, I was trying to learn more about Linux since I saw the "Knowledge on Linux" requirement on many internship listings. So last week, I decided to download Virtualbox and then Linux. It was a bit complicated, but I think I got the hang of it right now. Anyway, last Sunday, I was trying to find an IDE for C++ since I have used C++ for one of my courses. For some reason, only Visual Studio can compile C++ on my computer. I have Eclipse, CodeBlocks, and VS Code, but  CodeBlocks just doesn't build anything, and Eclipse and VS Code can't find or use MinGW. I also can't download MinGW again. It says the download is wrong. I think the last one is because I already have minGW somewhere on my computer from last year when I was trying to attend Google'd SoC. But then, CodeBlocks downloaded its own MinGW? I don't know, really. On top of this, I can't use VS since it uses Microsoft's own compiler, and I need an IDE using Gcc since I have to send my homework to a server computer with  Linux. After trying to fix this situation for 3 hours to no avail, I decided to download Eclipse's C++ version to Linux instead. It went OK compared to others, but I had to use the terminal to download GCC to Linux. It currently works on Linux, but I can't use it either since I cannot create a shared folder between Windows (my host) and Linux. Again, I don't know why since I don't get any errors or anything, the folder is just nowhere to be found on Linux. I'm currently looking into it.

Also, I've attended a small competitive programming competition at my university. It was held by one of the programming clubs at my university, so it was really small. There were, I think, 30-40 people at most. Anyway, I actually wasn't sure if I should attend since I wasn't sure if I could solve the hard questions, but I went anyway. There were 3 (1 easy - 1 normal - 1 hard) questions in total, and comically literally no one solved any questions. Literally zero. My code appeared to be working, but its complexity was high ( n^2). The system didn't accept it, saying there was a runtime error, but it worked in every example I could think of. Maybe it meant the time limit exceeded, but it didn't say anything like that. Since no one was able to solve even one question, they gave time until the end of this week. I will look into it this week.

Other than that, I'm still studying. I have another lab for CS223 Digital Design, and it's become a bit complicated with decoders and multiplexers. I have to study them in these 4 days. Also, I got my first CS201 homework, and it's harder than I expected, especially compared to CS102. But, I have time until the 22nd of this month, so hopefully, I can manage to finish it on time.

That's all I've got to say right now! See you.

Ece

CS223 :/

 Hello everyone,

My courses started to get a little intense, with midterms closing in. Anyway, I thought giving a little summary of what I've done so far would be good.

CS223: Since I studied the material about one week early than my instructor, I'm doing OK, actually. I have a quiz this Wednesday, so I'll see how I'm doing there. In written material, at least. I still have very little idea what to do with BASYS-3. I will try to run it on my own so time soon, before my lab on Thursday, that is.

CS201: As I've mentioned before, I studied C++ from Youtube during the winter break, so I think I'm OK? My instructor hasn't given any homework yet, (and because of the Physics102 midterm on the 5th of March) I haven't focused on it much yet. But since pointers start to become somewhat complicated, I'll revise it soon, preferably this week.

PHYS102 takes all my time, unfortunately. I'm having a hard to wrapping my mind around the concepts. And after my PHYS101 midterm results, I don't want to risk waiting for the last week.

I really want to continue the OS course, but I couldn't watch it for some time now. 

That's all I've got to say right now, see you!

Ece

Update

 Hello everyone,

It's going OK generally, course-wise. I was feeling a little sick the last week, so I couldn't do much, but I'm feeling better now. 

I'm still studying physics and Digital Design. It's going slowly, but, nonetheless, it's going. I didn't (or more like couldn't) download the necessary software for BASYS-3 because I'm scared that I'm going to break it or cause something to overheat and burn down somehow. Luckily, we will start seeing BASYS-3 in the lesson this week.

We had a little recitation on CS201 about uploading homework to the university's servers and testing the code there (This course doesn't have any labs, only homework). 

I've also started studying the OS course again. 

That's all I've got to say right now! See you.

Ece  

After First Week

 Hello everyone,

My first week in 2nd year of CS is over. It was okay I guess. I've been watching Bilkent's PHYS102 lessons online to not get behind in physics (learned my lesson after PHYS101). Also, I'm also watching Onur Mutlu's lessons on Digital Design in EHT, it's great.

I'm not doing much else. I finally got BASYS3. Boy, it was NOT cheap ;-; I don't know how to use it yet but I'm planning on installing the required platforms next week to see if BASYS is working as it should, I bought it second-hand.

I'll probably continue watching those Youtube series, I may continue to C++ series and OS course too but not right now.

That's all I've got to say right now, see you!

Ece

New Semester

 Hello everyone,

I've started my second year yesterday. And apparently, in these 15 days, I've completely forgotten how the university was, I'm already a little tired ;-; Anyway, I didn't meet all my teachers yet, since it's only the second day, but the ones I met seemed good.

I'm taking a digital design course this year (CS 223), and I'm kind of scared of it due to the seniors' description of it. I know very little about the course (I only checked the book a little), I couldn't find any decent material to study on youtube during the break, which only made me more anxious. Well, I'll see for myself in a couple of days.

My other courses are CS201 (The reason for my C++ studies), MATH132 (Discrete mathematics, I think it has something to do with permutations and combinations, I'm not sure), PHYS102 (the other scary course), and HIST200 (it's mandatory for everyone)

CS223 and PHYS201 are my most intense classes. Also, I still have to study C++. Sadly, I don't know how much I can self-study, but I'll try.

That's all I've got to say right now! See you

Ece 

Update and My Reflections About All My Courses From Previous Semester

 Hello everyone,

I'm still studying C++, and it's getting a little bit confusing, to be honest. Java doesn't allow pointer arithmetic, and *s, &s, and const's are slowly getting all tangled up. I'll continue to look into them, but I also started to study for my PHYS102 course next year, which seems a bit threatening.

This weekend and last week of my winter holiday (;-;), I'm also planning to study for my upcoming CS223 Digital Design course, and I don't know the first thing about it. The only thing I know is that I'll need and Basys-3 board. Only this knowledge is enough to stress me out because I don't think I'm good at hardware, not that I have any experience, though.

Anyway, I'm here to give reviews of courses I've taken my last semester, except CS102.

MATH102:  I took the course from Natalia Zheltukhina, and she was by far the best math professor I've ever had. She explained everything she was doing as she was solving a question and lecturing; it helped tremendously. Also, she shared her lecture notes online, which also helped. 

PHYS101: I don't know what I can say about PHYS101. My thoughts about a course have never been this depressing. Currently, my two lowest exam scores from this course (1st and 2nd midterm s;-; this is why I'm afraid of PHYS102, it's even harder!!). I still got a B since my final was better and my lab and quiz scores were high. My professor was Ali Ulvi YIlmazer, he was really cool. He was really student-friendly and tried his best to teach us.  

ENG102: My professor was Robert McNamara Loomis. At first, I was a bit worried because some of my friends told me that they had heard complaints from other students who took the course from him before, but I think he was good. He tried to give feedback and advice about graded assignments, and I believe his feedbacks were understandable. I didn't understand why we did some of the class exercises, and some activities were a bit boring, but I got full points from my research paper, so I can't really complain.

TURK102: I take the course from Ayşenur Mulla, and I don't know what to think of her actually. From my first writing, I got a 5 out of 10, which is incredibly low if you consider that you need at least a 95 to get an A grade. After that 5, I thought that the other grading was similar, but apparently, I was wrong. All my writing was 10 except one. Did my writing change that much? I don't think so. So, I don't know.

That's all I've got to say right now, see you!

Ece