TOTN Blogs

What to follow for solving CP and/or Data Structures Problems?  1. Type Code Fast! “Quickly as Possible” - This boils down to how much you have practiced problem-solving and how fast are you able to code up the solution! Just improve your typing speed and practice typing on a daily basis. This is going to help you a lot. It helped me a lot to be more productive by solving more and more problems if I am able to type things faster. Link to 10FastFingers - https://10fastfingers.com/ 2. Identify the type of the problems quickly This comes with practice and patience. As and when you start solving more and more problems, you would be able to identify properly which problem comes under what category. Which data structure would be suitable for what problems. Whether this problem belongs to Dynamic Programming or will the Greedy Algorithm work for this problem? Should I use Insertion Sort here or the Merge Sort algorithm. Should I use a Balanced Binary Search Tree here or should I use a ...

  Direct Questions and Answers, no BULLSHIT!!! What skills do IT companies look for in the candidates that they are interviewing?  IT companies lookout for various technical skills and soft skills in candidates. In soft skills, communication skills are very important, other soft skills also include the presentation skills - the way you present yourself to the interviewer, Team Work, Writing Skills, Leadership - if you have taken any initiative on your own and have met the expectations of your target audience. In technical skills companies expect the candidates to know their core subjects compulsorily. The core subjects include subjects like - Data Structures and Algorithms, DBMS, Computer Networks, Operating Systems, etc. Apart from that, they need to have a good understanding of the concepts of C and C++, Core Java and other language fundamentals. And most importantly they should be able to code ( for coding profiles ).  When should I seriously start preparing for placem...

  TIPS FOR PLACEMENT  (from my experience)  Practice writing code on white paper  - This is a very important point that I am mentioning here. Start developing this habit from the early stage itself. Most interviewers will give you a piece of paper to write down the codes and the ideas that are running through your mind. They cannot provide you with a laptop each and every time you come for getting interviewed.  Know your resume  - Technical skills are the must to mention there. Don't bluff and write about something that you merely spent just an hour learning about. Also, mention the projects that you made during your engineering life and be ready to explain it down to the T.  Talk out loud  - Interviewers want to understand what is running inside your god damn brain. If you simply sit in front of him for half an hour or so, a direct impression that you are stuck goes into the mind of the interviewer. Which is not a good sign. Instead, if you expla...

  The simple answer is -  NOT REALLY! The companies coming to the college expect a candidate to  know the core subjects first . The  core subjects include  subjects like - Data Structures Algorithms Database Management System Operating Systems Computer Networks Apart from these, there are few other subjects which you  should have a good knowledge of  -  Software Development Life Cycle  Coding and the programming languages ( C, C++, Java etc )  Software Testing  Design Patterns ( optional )  System Design ( optional ) If the candidate is not thorough with these core subjects, then most of the time even if the candidate has done a lot of work in the different fields. It is often neglected. Most of the big companies ask for the  knowledge of computer science fundamentals  and the  core subjects.  Now coming to the projects! If you have a project in Machine Learning ( ML ), then it is  very good .  It ...

  In this blog post, I will be describing what I did that helped me in my 2nd year of engineering at UVCE. During the break between the 2nd year starting and the ending of 1st year 2nd semester examinations, start learning something apart from C++ or the usual basic programming that you had known all this while. Competitive programming  should go side by side. Keep nourishing your implementation skills and keep solving more and more problems on Competitive Programming sites. ( Codechef, Codeforces etc ). It might be frustrating at the start, but then it is a must.  Develop problem-solving skills  from the start itself. Apart from that,  learn a skill using which you can make projects.  I had chosen web development. ( Later more will come, but then just start with something). So, I started learning the basics of web development. How the stuff works internally. GET, POST requests and all. What happens behind the scenes when you click a button on the browser. ...

  What should I be doing in my first year of Engineering at UVCE?  Hello everyone, This post is for the  first-year  people since I get a lot of questions to me regarding what the students should be doing in their first year.  I live near Murugeshpalya Airforce camp. Even people near my house, ask me the same questions ( from the time they got to know that I am already placed in a good company and have won several competitions here and there ).  There are 3 advice which I would like to give! Again, it is all subjective. But then I will speak about the things that worked for me and will work for sure for most of you out there.  The very first piece of advice would be: Focus on Academics and  pull up your aggregate the maximum you can.  Yes! Go after the marks in the first year.  There are some reasons for the same:-  First of all, as the saying goes -  Work hard now and bear the fruits later. The same applies here. If you mainta...

  Usually, the tension for placements starts coming when we are in the 3rd year of our engineering life. But then I have also seen many people getting tensed in the first year itself. Asking various questions on placements, what should they be reading, which language they should focus on, and blah blah !!!  I will be like: " Saans Lele Bhai Pehle ! " (Bro, take some breath first!).  However, coming to the main question  - What should I be doing when I am in the 3rd year of engineering life?  I would divide this into 2 parts - 5th semester  6th semester  The answer to this question is totally subjective. But then I will talk about  what I did  during my 5th and 6th Semester of engineering, to be in a stable position for being ready for the placements season.  5th Semester  I tried to  do more and more projects  this semester. Making projects helped me realize the different aspects of developing something.  I learned ho...

Blockers to Learning Things?  Writing a new blog after a long long time!! Not sure, how many people actually read these. But then whoever reaches till these blogs, hopefully they find it worth reading. :)  Many of the students asked me over Instagram or LinkedIn as how to even be focused while preparing for placements. It's usually some distractions that take over them like Social Media or when they try to stay focused they are not able to achieve what they had planned for the hour.  This article is focused around the very 2 points above!  Just analyse as to why you will be on Social Media for hours? When you waste a lot of time on Social Media, it CONSCIOUSLY or UNCONSCIOUSLY? Is it because you get bored from everything around and you start to scroll through the Instagram Reels? Or do you have some person to chat with for long hours? Or is it like you prefer scrolling posts on Instagram or Facebook rather than studying that Tree Data Structure because, one -> you...

Well Well!   I don't consider myself successful yet, but then I have been reading a lot about the habits that most of the successful people have in common!  Waking up early - Almost every other article about success that I stumble upon, this trait is the most common among them! That is - Waking up early!  This is because when you wake up early, you have those extra hours in your hands which you can use for your productive work. A person spending 6 hours daily on Competitive Programming is likely to be a better Competitive Programmer than a person who spends just 1 hour or so.  Some of you might complain that when I try to wake up early, I will be sleepy for the most part and won't even get any concentration to do my work! How is it even beneficial for me? The matter of fact is you have trained your body for waking until late at night and sleeping till late in the morning like a PIG.  Just do an analysis of whether you actually are more productive after 12...

Yes! You answered all the questions that were thrown to you, you solved the Bit Masking Problem almost 90%, You successfully traced down the recursive call for the QuickSort Question that was thrown to you, you also managed to answer that Dynamic Programming Problem which no one else in your batch was able to do! Still, when the results came out, your name was NOT there in the Final Selection List for the company. There might be others for who you might subconsciously think, how come he got selected, and you didn't.   In this post, we are going to look for an answer to this question, as to where might be the problem!  In a nutshell, the interview is nothing but  how you can convince the interviewer that you are the right fit for the job, with the limited knowledge that you have! You cannot know everything. And that is perfectly fine. It doesn't matter if you don't remember those complex git commands, or you forgot the standard definition of Thrashing in Operating Sys...