Somi Singh

What did you do this past week?

I spent the past week traveling to or from interviews, working on keeping up with the readings and material for this class, and trying to maintain a consistent sleep schedule. I had been doing alot of interview prep but had to take a break because of scheduling.

What’s in your way?

Once again, I am running short on time given the number of interviews I am trying to manage. For some reason I keep applying for full-time opportunities that look interesting and I have been having a reasonably successful run at getting responses thus far. This job market combined with hard work and an in-demand major makes the job hunt pretty exciting for the time being.

What will you do next week?

This week I need to finish a project for Big Data, conduct several interviews and take the OOP Exam #1.

What was your experience of learning the basics of C++?

The class has ramped up at a steady and reasonable pace, and in preparing my cheat sheet for the exam, I have found the the material compounds nicely. I feel like we should all start learning C++ as early as possible, given that understanding this language inside and out makes other languages that much easier to pick up.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

The ‘Clockwise/Spiral’ Rule has served me well going all the way back to CS429. When you see a statement such as “const int* const cpc”, read it using a clockwise spiral method starting with the variable name. Thus “const int* const cpc” becomes “cpc is a constant pointer to an int constant”. Essentially you are reading it backwards but the rule becomes even more useful when the declarations become more involved. See http://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html for the breakdown.