Looking back, my biggest struggle this semester I think has been with trees and linked lists. But mostly trees, since that’s what the bulk of the course has been addressing.
And it hasn’t even been with trees themselves, because the idea behind them is very simple. It’s my inability to slow down and force myself to draw some pictures before sitting down to code it. Skipping the pictures never works, I always have to go back to them eventually, but I’m always far too stubborn to start with them. The same often happens with math problems – I try to derive a formula off the top of my head even before I’ve gotten confirmation that I have any clue what’s going on. Why? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why do I keep bashing my head into the wall instead of looking for a door?
Now that I think I finally understand what the pruning technique is asking for on assignment 3, I forbid myself from opening the computer until I have filled up a page with pictures and diagrams and haphazard explanations. This assignment is short and the concepts behind it are simple. I’m not allowed to waste more time struggling with my lack of patience for pen and paper than I need time to actually complete this. It’s the final stretch! Have to make it count.
From what I’ve seen on other people’s SLOGs (particularly here, here, and here), what they struggled most with is recursion, but after that struggle, now realize how incredibly convenient it is. Account for a few base cases, and then have the function call itself until it reaches them. You write comparatively little code given the task you want to accomplish and get some powerful results out of it. Pretty cool stuff (y’know, when you take a few steps back and don’t feel like tearing your hair out over it).
Slogging it out 