Introduction
She also felt that it is important to seek the advice to be a just-so-so contest player scoring 36 points over 13 hours compared to top players scoring more than 280 in less than 2 hours. Read those data - less than one hours 10 minutes, top number 1 - Gennady.
What are the missing parts she should work on next?
A lot of professional WTA tennis players are very good at changing coaches when they deal with up-and-downs. What does Julia do for this case? Should she change her coach? She is self-coaching and writing blogs to keep tracking of her progress.
Need a therapy after the contest. Remember the favorite video she watched about Roger Federal talking about his early age, throwing tennis racquet in front of thousands fans. Take some time to learn from Roger Federer.
Watch this video to get entertained. Roger Federer - top 10 smiling after points lost, link is here.
Talent talk
Where is the talent? I like to find some drills to work on to help myself to cover the weakness of talent.
Watch the video - tennis funniest moments ever. Link is here. And read the article - waste time is healthy in big data term, link is here.
Data structure talk
Julia met a same person for the second time in less than 30 days through mocking experience, and then she learned a few things through 30 minutes. Friendship forms quickly after the first experience.
Case 1: She likes to design a data structure to return a list of pair integer numbers in the array, she said that since it is the unknown size, she likes to declare C# IList<string>, and then "why it is string?" The peer asked, Julia said that because there are two numbers, I like to encode and decode like a + b; otherwise I like to use Tuple<int, int>, the peer just typed that you just use this one IList<int[]>.
Julia never uses this one before, but it is so good ride once she uses it. Story is short, better give a good name "int[] beats string".
Case 2: Julia likes to change HashSet to a Dictionary<int, Object>, and then the peer asked, can you make a minor change to fit the requirement; Julia was told to finish the coding, and do a whiteboard testing using a test case. Do mocking algorithm really need Dictionary that complicated?
Through the discussion, Julia learned that it is a good practice to write simple code. Be more organized!
Transcript is here. Later it will be compiled to C# code.
Recurrence formula talk
It comes out that the recurrence formula is challenging for those 3 talented programmers in the world last weekend. In other words, Julia used the same algorithm to interview two people last weekend.
Her first interviewee was troubled, confused, since the problem statement is wrong, and Julia had difficult time to step in and give good hints to guide, since Julia had a math degree but it is like the muscle to fat story, she also got confused on recurrence formula in those 30 minutes. But then second time to use the algorithm, Julia was more determined to apply recurrence formula, no more playing with test cases. Just write down clearly the formula first.
The interviewee is much quickly to take hint, and then write code. She felt those two difference. Less experienced one is much more easy to try new things.
Also Julia learned the algorithm quickly, when she interviewed second person using same algorithm, she wants to make the difference. She learned that good interviewer should do something to help out.
Whiteboard technique
From the contest to the leaderboard by Microsoft to a blog writer -
Google intern and interview blog is here. Whiteboard talk is excellent.
Bronze medal talk
It is the time to celebrate Julia’s fifth bronze medal,
Julia got a bronze medal for world codesprint 10. How to express the feeling of
bronze medal? Julia likes the hard work she put in those hours, and she did so
much work and tried again and again for new ideas to break through the hurdles.
She is more experienced to play contests now compared to last year.
Julia takes time to enjoy her status right now, one day she
will easily make over 30% or over 100 points and come back to look at the stage she is in.
Honestly the contest is like school home work, and bronze medal is for Julia to
celebrate a grade “C”, but she tries to get grade B – silver medal, one day she
can get grade A. Julia scored 36 point (360 maximum points), 10% scoring.
Julia likes the competition because it is fair, open and her
peers are all over the world. Compared to take algorithm course in university to learn more, she does not need to figure out who is the
professor in the university, fair or not fair on grading. All she has to do in the competition is
to work damn hard, write down something, either a blog, or code or analysis. Dedicate a few hours on each algorithm in the contest. From there she can continue to work on after the contest.
Psalm 126:5 Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.
Julia sowed, teared, reaped, sung, weeped, carried.
do you think that it is also good idea to declare var queue = new queue<int[]>? row and col can put into the array new int[2]. Therefore, we do not need to encode a key and then decode the key to row and col two variables. I am learning data structure and try to speed up coding. – Jianmin Chen
It's a matter of preference. I tend to use primitive types whenever possible, but if using
Psalm 126:5 Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.
Julia sowed, teared, reaped, sung, weeped, carried.
Follow up on data structure talk
In previous data structure talk, Julia shared the story about mocking experience. The peer coached her to use int[] instead of using string or Tuple<int, int>. Such a wonderful coaching through mocking experience.
Afterwards, Julia asked her favorite algorithm coach JS1 on code review about using int[] data type compared to string related to Queue. Here is the algorithm question on code review.
It's a matter of preference. I tend to use primitive types whenever possible, but if using
int[] seems easier to understand than using a single int, then you should do that. Note that using a single encoded int leads to a simpler visited array as well. – JS1 
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