Week 5 @ Formation (Week 23 of Tech journey)!
Monday, I met a new Fellow, his name was Anthony, we worked on a problem together in Python called, rotate an Array. I believe Anthony did all the dirty work, he got the job done using some slice methods and a little pop and append. It was beautiful in the end and I met a cool person. I then attended Office Hours with Vinit, it was another awesome session, he is so damn good at programming. I have been working on Arrays since then, it's 11:00PM and I must sleep. I am learning the logic and concepts of using In Place algorithms. It's a leetcode problem called Duplicate Zeros. You have to duplicate each occurence of zero, shifting the remaining elements to the right... I will spend more time on it tomorrow. I have to get that ALMIGHTY rest! It's a really good problem! Cya tomorrowz :)
Tuesday, I had a greaaattt Coding Drill session with Kevin from MICROSOFT! My dream company as a child, and kind of still is! Soft spot their! Kevin btw, is E-MAZING! He gave me my first 'Good' rating on my Feedback so far at Formation, in terms of Coding Drills. That feels really really good, I remember my first day at Formation, I could have cried on my way to sleep, the first "Poor" rating to open up my first Drill! HAHAHAHA! That's what I love about our mentors, they don't GIVE you anything, you work and earn it, from Seniors or META engineers. Kevin wore my shoes not too long ago, being a Fellow of mines, he got through Formatio and now works at Microsoft. He has a great spirit and love for helping others, his Coding Drills are also funny, because he has a great sense for humor. What we do is hard, so I try to keep things positive at ALL times. Kevin let our session work as a group to solve the First to K Variations problem. My fellows are smart, and we all solved the problem in two ways, I believe. We used a map, we checked if the element existed, if it did not exist, we put the element in existence. We then did iterated the array again and checked for an equality. After this Coding Drill, I completed some tasks, 4 in total, and I am thankful that Sophie gave me an older tasks, which is good for my memory and practice, called... Array Task 6. I need these refreshers, because it seems like so much to take in. The other tasks were pretty solid as well, one was really tough, but all in all, I am learning!
Wednesday brought another great day at the good ole Formation! I had a Concept Drill Using Set or Dictionary? with a Google SWE with a Masters Degree from Georgia Institute of Technology! Such a goat in my eyes! That's where Formation is different from anything out here. The Fellowship has strong foundation because it builds off the backs of its founders, who both have strong backgrounds, so it pays off. The other bootcamps and things are just ripoffs, I mean, they are charging way more than Formation, but you probably won't be FAANG ready nor have a good grasp of DSA. Blahh. After that, I practiced some old tasks, basic iteration, reverse an array with two pointer method, pair that sums to K, etc. Next, I will practice a hashtable problem and then go to bed!
Thursday, right after saving the blog from Wednesday night, I attempted my Arrays Assessment again on Formation and PASSED!!!! I was so excited, pumped! Yeah, it's basic data structures, but the mindset I had was, I need to try and know this thing as if you married it. I want to know the concepts more importantly, thoroughly. My syntax needs work, being that JavaScript was a thing of the past, since I learned Python, and now switching back to JS in Formation, it's really similar though, and I want to be strong in both languages. Now that party is over, and today I failed my Hash Structures Assessment, as I expected. I just started today, to really try and grasp the concepts, but I've made tremendous progress. I can feel it, once you get one thing, it will pick up, and all things will mesh together. I've heard countless times how important the fundamentals of Data Structures are in the long haul. I still struggle with writing code for in-place algorithms on arrays. Luckily, I got help from some fellows in our study group, so that's a work in progress. I was ready for my 1 on 1 session today, it actually was for 8pm and worked with Hash Structures, but Anthony did not show up, I am optimistic that he doing fine, him and his family. He was a great mentor last time we had a 1 on 1 the week before. I solved a few problems, Jewels and Stones were good, then I did some older Arrray exercises, Subdomain Visit Count was a good hash structure problem, and Matrix Zeroes was a tad bit difficult. All in all was a good day. Looking forward to the weekend, it's going to be HASH STRUCTURES ALL DAY AND NIGHT! Haha.
Friday was a good day, I was really tired from work, then I had a session at 10PM, and it was on a topic that I really haven't studied yet, as I am still focusing on Hash Structures, however, I still learned a lot from a very inspiring mentor and classmates. The session was great, we learned how the stack data structure works? Push and pop from the top and LIFO - last in first out. I did not pass my Hash Structures assessment as expected, as I am just starting to get comfy with the entire concept of using them in code. Today on Saturday, 4 of us from our study group had a few google meets, and worked on some things we are learning. Aaron, Nika, me, and Andrea... worked on Linked List... Hash Structures. It was really beneficial, because it feels like me and Andrea made huge strides in understanding of hash structures, due to our Fellows who are ahead of us, helping out! Also Nika's boyfriend, who has a startup, really chimed in on the Google Meet and taught us some cool things! It was a great moment! Next week, I plan to pass my hash structure assessment, and then move on to Linked List!
Matthew McCane Jr writing his first name for the first time!
Tuesday, I had a greaaattt Coding Drill session with Kevin from MICROSOFT! My dream company as a child, and kind of still is! Soft spot their! Kevin btw, is E-MAZING! He gave me my first 'Good' rating on my Feedback so far at Formation, in terms of Coding Drills. That feels really really good, I remember my first day at Formation, I could have cried on my way to sleep, the first "Poor" rating to open up my first Drill! HAHAHAHA! That's what I love about our mentors, they don't GIVE you anything, you work and earn it, from Seniors or META engineers. Kevin wore my shoes not too long ago, being a Fellow of mines, he got through Formatio and now works at Microsoft. He has a great spirit and love for helping others, his Coding Drills are also funny, because he has a great sense for humor. What we do is hard, so I try to keep things positive at ALL times. Kevin let our session work as a group to solve the First to K Variations problem. My fellows are smart, and we all solved the problem in two ways, I believe. We used a map, we checked if the element existed, if it did not exist, we put the element in existence. We then did iterated the array again and checked for an equality. After this Coding Drill, I completed some tasks, 4 in total, and I am thankful that Sophie gave me an older tasks, which is good for my memory and practice, called... Array Task 6. I need these refreshers, because it seems like so much to take in. The other tasks were pretty solid as well, one was really tough, but all in all, I am learning!
Wednesday brought another great day at the good ole Formation! I had a Concept Drill Using Set or Dictionary? with a Google SWE with a Masters Degree from Georgia Institute of Technology! Such a goat in my eyes! That's where Formation is different from anything out here. The Fellowship has strong foundation because it builds off the backs of its founders, who both have strong backgrounds, so it pays off. The other bootcamps and things are just ripoffs, I mean, they are charging way more than Formation, but you probably won't be FAANG ready nor have a good grasp of DSA. Blahh. After that, I practiced some old tasks, basic iteration, reverse an array with two pointer method, pair that sums to K, etc. Next, I will practice a hashtable problem and then go to bed!
Thursday, right after saving the blog from Wednesday night, I attempted my Arrays Assessment again on Formation and PASSED!!!! I was so excited, pumped! Yeah, it's basic data structures, but the mindset I had was, I need to try and know this thing as if you married it. I want to know the concepts more importantly, thoroughly. My syntax needs work, being that JavaScript was a thing of the past, since I learned Python, and now switching back to JS in Formation, it's really similar though, and I want to be strong in both languages. Now that party is over, and today I failed my Hash Structures Assessment, as I expected. I just started today, to really try and grasp the concepts, but I've made tremendous progress. I can feel it, once you get one thing, it will pick up, and all things will mesh together. I've heard countless times how important the fundamentals of Data Structures are in the long haul. I still struggle with writing code for in-place algorithms on arrays. Luckily, I got help from some fellows in our study group, so that's a work in progress. I was ready for my 1 on 1 session today, it actually was for 8pm and worked with Hash Structures, but Anthony did not show up, I am optimistic that he doing fine, him and his family. He was a great mentor last time we had a 1 on 1 the week before. I solved a few problems, Jewels and Stones were good, then I did some older Arrray exercises, Subdomain Visit Count was a good hash structure problem, and Matrix Zeroes was a tad bit difficult. All in all was a good day. Looking forward to the weekend, it's going to be HASH STRUCTURES ALL DAY AND NIGHT! Haha.
Friday was a good day, I was really tired from work, then I had a session at 10PM, and it was on a topic that I really haven't studied yet, as I am still focusing on Hash Structures, however, I still learned a lot from a very inspiring mentor and classmates. The session was great, we learned how the stack data structure works? Push and pop from the top and LIFO - last in first out. I did not pass my Hash Structures assessment as expected, as I am just starting to get comfy with the entire concept of using them in code. Today on Saturday, 4 of us from our study group had a few google meets, and worked on some things we are learning. Aaron, Nika, me, and Andrea... worked on Linked List... Hash Structures. It was really beneficial, because it feels like me and Andrea made huge strides in understanding of hash structures, due to our Fellows who are ahead of us, helping out! Also Nika's boyfriend, who has a startup, really chimed in on the Google Meet and taught us some cool things! It was a great moment! Next week, I plan to pass my hash structure assessment, and then move on to Linked List!
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