Walking down memory lane?
This is my data structures resources page from the Fall 2017 semester. It proved to be useful for my lab students and several others, so I have decided to keep it up for as long as this domain lives on.
As I have graduated from NYU in December 2017, this page will no longer be updated. Some links may be dead by now, however the slides should be accessible from any NYU-issued Google account. Please feel free to share this page with other students at NYU Poly who are learning data structures, and if you're a TA who wants to refer to this page, go ahead and do so.
And if you're a former student of mine, please don't be a stranger and say hello! I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Hi! I'm Sergey Smirnov and I'm currently a super-senior at NYU. This semester, I am teaching CS 1134 labs with Mahmoud Abdo Fridays at 11am and 2pm. I major in computer science and have a keen interest in full stack applications and automation.
I also have a rather unhealthy habit of drinking hella Philz coffee and saying "hella".
Sergey's office hour is on Tuesday, 1-2pm and Mahmoud's office hour is Tuesday, 3-4pm. Both are in 2 MetroTech 10.098A-D.
General resources
- (more will be added as we progress through this semester)
- Piazza
- Python Tutor
- The Zen of Python
- Anonymous feedback form
- Professor Sterling's homepage
- Professor Tal's homepage
- Official Python tutorial
- Big-O Cheat Sheet
- Stanford's CS 106A guide to Pair Programming
- Albert Wu's guide on Environment Diagrams (specifically designed for Berkeley's CS 61A course, but the material is similar)
- Practice problems:
- Beginner practice problems: CodingBat
- Harder problems: 99 Prolog Problems
- Many of these problems are way beyond the scope of CS 1134. Focus on the ones with a single asterisk (*).
- These questions were written with a different language (Prolog) in mind, but you should be able to translate them to Python.
- Answers
- Programming puzzles for the mathematically inclined: Project Euler.
- Slides from the lecture I delivered on December 12th
Tips
- (more will be added as we progress through this semester)
- Whenever you work through a practice exam or problem set, resist the urge to look at solutions when you get stuck. Give it your best attempt first!
- When in doubt (especially on a WWPD question), draw an environment diagram.
python3 -i <filename>opens a session in python, with the code in<filename>loaded.- In terms of studying, thirty solid minutes every day is better than 50 hours in the last few days before the exam. It's a lot more comfortable.
- Look for opportunities to teach things to your peers. They say you haven't really mastered the material until you're able to explain it for someone else to understand; we're aiming for mastery here!
- Convince yourself that you enjoy this material and that you want to learn it. Once you have that, everything else will come a lot easier.
- Make friends. This class is a hell of a lot more fun when you have people to
suffer alongsidecomplain about CS withhelp cultivate your love of learning! - In order to become better at something, you practice until you improve (and then you practice some more). If you want to get better at coding problems, do a ton of coding problems. If you want to get better at recursion, take in and write a lot of recursion programs. That's how you learn.
- Generalized algorithm for learning pretty much anything:
- Acquire conceptual knowledge of the material. In CS1134, this can be done by attending lectures, reading the textbook, and talking to other people.
- Put that knowledge into practice. Binge-solve lab problems and past homework questions, or try your hand at a side project. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it allows you to apply the stuff you've learned.
- Repeat that last step. (A lot.) If you come across things you don't know, repeat step 1 too.
Inspiration and Wisdom
- "Advice for Computer Science College Students" from Joel Spolsky, blogger extraordinaire and cofounder of Stack Overflow (among other things).
- "How to be Effective" by Philip J. Guo, creator of PythonTutor.
- A Beginner's Guide to Computer Science by James Maa
- James Maa's Productivity Hacking Guide
- How I Manage My Time by Ivan Smirnov (No, we're not related, but he is a really good friend of mine!)
- Success and Failure by Ivan Smirnov
- Writing Professional Emails by Ivan Smirnov
- Life After College by Ivan Smirnov
Internships and Interviews
- From r/cscareerquestions: internships FAQ and resume advice.
- Curated, though not comprehensive, list of companies accepting applications: intern.supply
- Passing the average intern interview requires knowledge from CS 1114 and CS 1134, so plan to study ahead.
- The most popular interview prep book is Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. It's worth getting.
- Freshmen are at a heavy disadvantage compared to sophomores and juniors and graduate students.
- Take advantage of freshman-specific programs. See this blog post about it.
- If you get rejections, don't take it personally. Many of us do! Try again next year.
- "The Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions" by Steve Yegge, former engineer at Amazon, currently senior manager at Google
- "Get that job at Google, also by Steve Yegge
- How To Get Hired -- What CS Students Need to Know, by Dan Kegel
- Google's Tech Dev Guide
- These videos are made by Google about their interview process, however most other companies follow a very similar pattern with similar questions:
- How to: Work at Google -- Candidate Coaching Session for Technical Interviewing
- How to: Prepare for a Google Engineering Interview
- How to: Work at Google -- Example Coding/Engineering Interview
- List of coding interview tips
- List of practice questions: link 1, link 2, link 3
- Interview Questions with an online judge: Leetcode
- Anonymous interview practice with engineers from real companies: interviewing.io
- Tips for Technical Interviews, by Ivan Smirnov.
Week 1 Python review
Week 2 OOP, generators, & list comprehensions
Note: Please use the correct form corresponding to your section. You must submit each form within the first five minutes of the lab period. This is your attendance grade.
- 11am check-in form
- 2pm check-in form
- Week 2 slides
- Note: You may not use the Fibonacci numbers generator in these slides for HW 1.
Week 3 Runtimes, orders of growth
Week 4 Recursion
Week 5 Recursion cont'd, analyzing MyList
Week 6 Midterm #1 review
I've updated the tips section above with some advice. Please go read! And make sure to keep practicing problems. GOOD LUCK ON YOUR EXAM!
Week 7 Stacks & Queues
Week 8 Linked Lists
Week 9 Binary trees intro
Week 10 Binary tree traversals, midterm 2 preparation
GOOD LUCK ON MIDTERM 2!
Week 11 Binary Search Trees
Happy Thanksgiving! Eat plenty of turkey. 🦃
Week 12 AVL, hashing
Week 13 Review lab, Priority Queues and Heaps
Week 14 Priority Queues & Heaps, final reviews
- 11am check-in form shoutkey: potato
- 2pm check-in form shoutkey: the
- Check the 12/12 lecture slides in the resources above.
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR FINALS! Get plenty of rest, eat well, and don't cram at the last minute.