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

End of Another Semester

Hello everyone,

I know I didn't write for a long time. A month or so after the start of the semester, I honestly couldn't manage my time effectively. Hence, I couldn't study any programming on my own. Since this was the first semester I spent at my university's campus, I hope I can manage my time next semester so that I can write to this blog more often, even if only to write about my lessons.

Anyway, I think I can summarize my second semester as a Bilkent CS major in terms of programming. Actually, my summer studies proved to be quite helpful. Most of the topics were similar to what I've studied before, like inheritance or searching & sorting. I was a bit confused at polymorphism, but I eventually got the hang of it. 

The most challenging topic of the curriculum was GUIs, in my opinion, because my codes got really messy really quickly, and debugging was really frustrating. Thankfully, my lecturer didn't include any GUIs in our exams. I probably could have written GUIs in exams, but it was a relief that I didn't have to do it.

The hardest part of the course was the group project which continued all semester. I had 4 teammates, sadly, 2 of them withdrew from the course. I got along well with my teammates, but the project we designed was difficult to write for only three people at our level. We developed an English learning app on Android, similar to Duolingo, but it had a separate learning part with a dictionary and flashcards. It was originally going to have a competition mode, similar to Kahoot, but after our group was down to 3 people, we removed that part. I was responsible for the testing part, and I think I did a good job. I managed to use Google Firebase Database to fetch questions and answers. (Sadly, our tests only have multiple-choice or open-ended questions. I eventually managed to combine the two question types, but my teammates didn't want to risk it.) Tests are used to determine the user's level after a new user registers. After that, when the user chooses "testing" in the application's main menu, they can select a test from the testing menu. 

It was hard to work on Android since we knew nothing of it (or the Database, for that matter) at first. On top of that, I have worked on Eclipse for almost two years now, and Android Studio is almost exactly the same as IntelliJ. This caused me to spend some time learning the IDE. Also, apparently, I forgot how to use GitHub, and trying to organize it at the end of the project was tedious, mainly because it became my responsibility entirely. Anyhow, we managed to finish the project on time with online login and question fetching, but our dictionary and flashcards were offline.

That's about all for my second semester in university in CS course, I plan to write another entry for my other courses. Currently, I'm studying C++ for my next course in my second year.

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

Ece

A Long Break

 Hello everyone!

I'm sorry I couldn't write to the blog earlier. I just couldn't get used to the campus I guess because I constantly had some homework or some project needs to be done as soon as possible. But, I think it's somehow better now. I'll try my best to keep the blog updated.

Since my last entry, I've done some projects for my CS102, a Hangman game. For this, I've studied with some of my classmates, but the instructions weren't very clear to us and we couldn't do much as a group. After that, the professor told us to finish the project ourselves, a program for every student. I finished it, and it seems OK, I think. I looped over the secret word each time the user guessed a word, but I'm not sure if it's the ideal solution.

Also, I'll do another bigger project for the rest of the semester with a group of classmates. This one will have a UI too, every exciting news to me! But, we decided to do it on the Android platform so I'll have to look into that. I heard that I can use Java but Android's GUI language is a little different as far I understand. Anyway, this (GUIs) will probably be the last step. Also, we want to include a login system, so I'll probably get to use Databases for the first time too! this project both excites me and frightens me, to be honest.

Other than that, currently, I'm covering polymorphism and inheritance in the CS102. I looked at them in summer so it's somewhat easier. But, there are certain details that I didn't study in the summer so I'll focus on them. Last week, the teacher assistants gave us a little introduction to the Git and Github. I already had an account but the introduction we nice because I get to learn that there were platforms to keep your clones updated or to fetch the updates.

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

Ece

After the first week!

 Hello everyone!

I couldn't write because I was trying to adjust to the dormitories and couldn't study programming much :( However, I'd attended inzva's Algorithm Training Beginner Set. It was really nice I think; I got to study what I learned during my summer studies. But, the website didn't allow me to log in for 2-3 days, so I got really behind schedule. I emailed the staff, and it works now, but it's a bit too late.

Other than that, I was trying to adapt to my new school schedule. As Bilkent switched back to face-to-face, I'll stay at dormitories. It's been OK so far. We covered just a very, very tiny bit of curriculum, but I mean, it's the first week.

I'll try to continue my studies, but my progress will be slower than that of the summer.

That's all ı've got to say for now! See you.

Ece 

Going To Campus!

 Hello everyone,

My university's going to start face-to-face lessons in a couple of days. I'll stay at dorms, and I don't know how it's going to be like really. This semester, I'm taking CS102, ENG102, MATH102, TURK102 (those are all the continuation of my previous courses), and PHYS101 (it's actually in the second-year curriculum but I thought there would be more sections if I got that lesson in the fall semester). I really wanted to take the Introduction to Astronomy, but it only has one section and it overlaps with MATH102 ;-;

I'm still studying the OS course. I, for some reason, didn't realize how long it was when I first started it. It's quite long, but I'll continue.

I'm also still studying touch typing. My current writing speed is around 33 words per minute. I'll continue studying it but it's a bit weird sometimes. My laptop's keyboard is a Turkish keyboard and it has a bunch of special characters not included in English keyboards. This also means the symbols (like %, @, or #) can be in difficult places to press, and the website I'm studying touch typing is completely for English keyboards. This annoys me a bit.

Also, I'm still coding some projects. They're small projects usually and I couldn't completely finish any of the new ones. I'll work on them as well.

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

Ece

  

My Post Got Deleted?

 Hello everyone!
I actually made another post before that in the last couple of days, but it seems to have been deleted. I don't have a clue why this happened. But, I will just summarize what I've been doing.

I'm still studying the data structures course on YouTube, but I slowed down. I think the topics got a bit specific so I'm watching them slower.

I'm still continuing the operating systems course. It's longer than I first thought, it will probably take some more time until I finish it. But, I think it gives a really good insight into OSs. I have no prior knowledge of OSs but I think I understand the course very well.

I studied GitHub, not from the YouTube list I linked before but from various websites on the internet. I didn't study it very thoroughly but now I can at least do the basic stuff. I didn't even know how to push my codes into GitHub. I have to study it a lot more, though.

Lastly, I started implementing some basic search algorithms and making some little projects using data structures. I did DFS and BFS, I messed it up at one point but they're OK right now. they're actually the same code but I used queues in one and stacks in the other. One of the others is a program to check if the brackets are in order in a string. There's a one for enrolling students in universities according to their preference and their exam score. In the last one, I first sorted the students but I will try to make another one without first sorting them, it will be harder I suppose.

I mostly do a combination of the one above every day. I plan to do so until I finish one of them.

That's all I wanted to say for now! See you.

Ece

Back From France

 Hello everyone!

I know it has been some time since I last wrote. I went to a language school in Vichy, France, and just recently came back to my home. There, I couldn't connect to the internet regularly, and sadly, even when I could I didn't have a lot of time to study :(

I studied Data Structures, and there are six videos left for the playlist. However, I couldn't study much to OS and touch typing courses much. Right now I've started studying them where I left them and I still study Data Structures.

I'm thinking about studying GitHub because I realized that I didn't really understand how I should use it.

Lastly, I've signed up for a data structures training set which is starting on 17 September. Its sign-up link was sent by my university's Career Center so I thought it would be good practice.

P.S. Bilkent postponed the first day of classes because it will be face-to-face, this means I have a week more to study the topic I choose.

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

Ece

Back From Holiday

 Hello everyone

I'm back at home now for a couple of days. As I was away from home, I couldn't study coding much, sadly. But, I'm back and I'll continue to the lessons I started before.

I look at the Data Structures playlist and Operating Systems course a bit but not much. I've also started to study touch typing (typing without looking at the keyboard). My typing isn't all that bad I believe, I usually type with 8 of my fingers but I have to look at the keyboard to not mistype. I think it would be nice to write code or anything else without needing to look at the keyboard or paying much attention to what letter you're typing.

That's all I've got to say for now! 

Ece

New Topics

 Hello everyone,

It has been some time since I last wrote because I got sick after I got vaccinated and I decided to wait until I can study properly.

 I started to the new Operating Systems course in Udacity. It’s pretty good I think, it gives a nice perspective on the operating systems and how they work. 

I also started to another youtube course on Data Structures. It’s longer than the one I studied earlier and this one is about slightly different topics. It’s also really neat, I’m learning about stuff that I haven’t seen on the previous 8-hour-long series. I think I better understood the recursion and big O notation with this course.

Lastly, I’ve finished the Bioinformatics for Dummies book recently. It was, like I said before :), mainly about how to use and understand bioinformatics websites. I expected it to be more general actually, like how bioinformaticists work or their work environment but the book was still very insightful I believe.

That’s all I’ve got to say right now!

Ece

Checking In

 Hello everyone,

I haven't started anything yet but I'm probably going to start another series in Data Structures and an Introduction to Operating Systems in Udacity. I'm not going to start them simultaneously, I'm thinking about starting the Operating Systems course first.

Other than that I'm still watching the HTML&CSS course. But I got a little sick after I got vaccinated so it's not going really fast sadly.

I'm also trying to solve LeetCode's array problems. I'm not really sure how to improve my solutions' time complexity but I'm trying some stuff out.

Also, I will update my blog more often.

That's all I'm going to say for now, see you!

Ece

Finished Data Structures!!

Hey everyone!

I'm back at my home so I will probably focus better on my studies now. However, I will leave again in a week or so, and for a week I won't be able to study at all. Also, I'm going to France ( first time abroad :) ) for a French course. I have genuinely no idea if I can study there.

Other than those, I've finished studying Data Structures. I thought some of them were really ingenious concepts. I couldn't completely understand the last ones though, like balanced binary trees and indexed priority queues. I will take a second look at those whenever I can. My favorites were Fenwick trees and suffix arrays. I found them relatively easy to implement and loved the logic behind them.

With Data Structures finished I will probably focus on HTML&CSS more. I haven't decided what else I will study yet.

Also, I'm almost finished with my bioinformatics book. A really big part of it was about how to use certain bioinformatic websites, but it was good anyway.

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

Ece

Another Break(ish)

 Hey everyone!

I’m not at my home currently and there isn’t really any reliable internet source :/ I’m still trying to study but my phone has only so much internet

Still, I’ve finished watching CrashCourse Computer Science and I actually loved it. It was very enlightening I believe. I loved specially the parts about the historical development of computers, the world wide web and compressing. I found the parts about hardware a bit confusing actually but they were lovely as well.

Also, I’m trying to solve LeetCode’s easy array questions but they are harder than I expected ;-; I’ve solved some of them but certain one weren’t accepted. I believe this happened because of their time complexity, they get timed out in relatively large input.

Lastly, I’m reading the bioinformatics book (Bioinformatics for Dummies) I got from the library a while back. I expected the book to talk about fundamental themes of bioinformatics but it’s mostly about how to use bioinformatics-related websites. But I will try to finish it all the same.

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

Ece