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So it’s here – the day most of the class has been hoping never came – the day to put the Theory of Computation into practice.
As one of our teachers is gracious enough to quote in class every now and then, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." Which makes it all the more confusing – does it imply that even if I study theory, I won’t be able to implement it in practice as both are different in practice!?
Another quote to substantiate this by Falk Bruegmann, “In theory, that's science. But in reality, science is sometimes practiced differently.”
I think our teacher would agree with Robert Grossblatt's variation, “Theory and reality are only theoretically related.” Which implies we need to study theory to pass the exam.
But in the words of Trygve Reenskaug from the University of Oslo, "In theory, practice is simple." So cheers buddies, the exam paper would be easy tomorrow… But then again, Alexandre Boily says, "But, is it simple to practice theory?" No need to ask us..
Loads of confusion but I guess we can follow Jan van de Snepscheut, a Dutch Mathematician, who says, "It may come out all right in practice, but it'll never work in theory!" This quote sounds highly relevant in our context – things never work out in theory for us (at least for me), but it should work out in practice when we sit in the exam hall tomorrow. So what’s the need to study theory, wasting hours of precious time?
And last but not the least, I think our quote (at least mine) would go something like this, “All I care about is passing this exam. I've lost the ability to discern theory from practice.”
As one of our teachers is gracious enough to quote in class every now and then, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." Which makes it all the more confusing – does it imply that even if I study theory, I won’t be able to implement it in practice as both are different in practice!?
Another quote to substantiate this by Falk Bruegmann, “In theory, that's science. But in reality, science is sometimes practiced differently.”
I think our teacher would agree with Robert Grossblatt's variation, “Theory and reality are only theoretically related.” Which implies we need to study theory to pass the exam.
But in the words of Trygve Reenskaug from the University of Oslo, "In theory, practice is simple." So cheers buddies, the exam paper would be easy tomorrow… But then again, Alexandre Boily says, "But, is it simple to practice theory?" No need to ask us..
Loads of confusion but I guess we can follow Jan van de Snepscheut, a Dutch Mathematician, who says, "It may come out all right in practice, but it'll never work in theory!" This quote sounds highly relevant in our context – things never work out in theory for us (at least for me), but it should work out in practice when we sit in the exam hall tomorrow. So what’s the need to study theory, wasting hours of precious time?
And last but not the least, I think our quote (at least mine) would go something like this, “All I care about is passing this exam. I've lost the ability to discern theory from practice.”
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Now this is a post only people who know about KVJ and KG Halli in Bangalore would be able to relate to. Nevertheless, it might make a good reading. So I’ll continue scribbling…
So not long back I wrote this post on how Kapil Sibbal’s decisions are going to leave the class X teachers jobless ( ”KG Halli Culture” - en Route to Transition???). And in the words of one of my school teachers, “allow them to spend more time at the canteen and outside, rather than correcting answer scripts and taking remedial classes”. And she did say that the Café Coffee Day guys would hear of it and it would result in the inauguration of one of their outlets in KG Halli! “There’ll be a Coffee Day in place of the Swati bakery.” (I really have no idea where this Swati bakery is – perhaps the residents of KG Halli would be generous enough to enlighten me about it)
That time, it sounded too far-fetched to me. Coz I never believed (or rather didn’t want to believe) that the X board exams would be scrapped. But now the decision has been taken – and X class teachers are en route to being relieved from majority of their workload. Though I’m not sure many are happy with this. As Sherin ma’am (she was my English teacher in school) said when I asked her whether I should congratulate her on this, “You have to wait for a year before the congrats coz it’s only from 2011. Think of the stuff we are going to have in XI minus the class X screening.”
However, if this results in a Café Coffee Day outlet being opened in KG Halli, I’m all game for it (incidentally, I don’t drink coffee – I only go there to eat donuts). I can at least say, “Look at the brighter side of this debacle…”
And congratulations to the class X teachers in advance… perhaps we can have a longer chat the next time I drop in at school.
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Sometimes I get a feeling that I’m living in two worlds – the Bangalore/Hosur one and the Warangal one… Both are exhilarating in their own ways –but there’s no doubt in my mind if I’ve to choose one. But I really miss the Bangalore days while I’m in Warangal – can’t say the vice versa is true, coz I get to enjoy home-made food while I’m in Hosur (Hosur and Bangalore mean the same to me), which is a rare luxury in Warangal…
Finally…it’s almost time!
And it’s that time of the year again when we start anticipating our Dushera holidays (I guess I can call them holidays) to go home (it’s an opportunity to get away from this place, even though it’s only for a week or so). And this year has been especially bad – the food court, the time table with 2-5 classes almost everyday – loads of trash…
So I guess I’m just counting the days till September 24 (that’s the day I’ll be leaving). Finish off the midsems and then just run off….
Good food, good food…and good food!
Now that sorta seems repetitive – but considering the satanic avatar named Food Court, sitting on top of us – it’s a huge relief to be able to go home and eat like a prince. Gotta stock up while we are at home coz we’ll be condemned to the same hell once we get back…
So three cheers to home-made food…
Tripping to Bangalore!
Another opportunity to get back with the old crowd – the ole “warhorses of X-C” as I call them. Another opportunity to visit my favourite teachers and have a nice long chat with them. Another opportunity to get to Landmark and check if there’s some good book on sale. Another opportunity to hog in McD and Subway (I really hate Warangal for being such a desolate place, right in the middle of nothing – now I wonder what’s the middle of nothing!?).
Cheers buddies… “Sayonara” to Warangal ones in advance and “Tadaima“ to Bangalore ones….
Finally…it’s almost time!
And it’s that time of the year again when we start anticipating our Dushera holidays (I guess I can call them holidays) to go home (it’s an opportunity to get away from this place, even though it’s only for a week or so). And this year has been especially bad – the food court, the time table with 2-5 classes almost everyday – loads of trash…
So I guess I’m just counting the days till September 24 (that’s the day I’ll be leaving). Finish off the midsems and then just run off….
Good food, good food…and good food!
Now that sorta seems repetitive – but considering the satanic avatar named Food Court, sitting on top of us – it’s a huge relief to be able to go home and eat like a prince. Gotta stock up while we are at home coz we’ll be condemned to the same hell once we get back…
So three cheers to home-made food…
Tripping to Bangalore!
Another opportunity to get back with the old crowd – the ole “warhorses of X-C” as I call them. Another opportunity to visit my favourite teachers and have a nice long chat with them. Another opportunity to get to Landmark and check if there’s some good book on sale. Another opportunity to hog in McD and Subway (I really hate Warangal for being such a desolate place, right in the middle of nothing – now I wonder what’s the middle of nothing!?).
Cheers buddies… “Sayonara” to Warangal ones in advance and “Tadaima“ to Bangalore ones….
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So I’ll start off this blog with a post about today…ie. 12/09/09...
So we had the IBM Technology Day, organised by IBM in collaboration with our college – the one and only, NIT Warangal. All of the III year B.Tech students were asked to attend compulsorily, but not even half of them turned up – I was among those who did turn up at 8:30 in the morning. As expected, the event didn’t start before 9:30 (I think we need to remember – nothing starts on time except classes and exams).
“Where are the kits we were promised!?”
So we were told we would be given kits worth 500 bucks. But all we got was a scratch pad and a pen – I think all-in-all they would be worth 15 bucks – maybe I misheard the numeric value. Nevertheless, it wasn’t that bad of an experience – frankly speaking, I was reading Shakespeare throughout the first lecture. After that, I was really thankful for the tea break – I don’t drink tea, but I did get to eat 5 samosas. The second lecture on data warehousing was good enough to divert me from my reading and captivate my attention for an hour or so. But as expected, an hour was too little to teach too much – so just the basics and then it was time for lunch.
“Does anything ever start on time here!?”
So we went for lunch, having been told to get back by 1:15. But going there we realize we won’t be able to start eating only by 1:15. That too a rice-only lunch, with the curries going horribly wrong. It would’ve been a catastrophe but for the ice-cream. “I scream ice-cream!” It was worth it, even though it was only vanilla (I prefer butterscotch).
So we finish our lunch and by the time we had finished it, very few in III year were still interested to get back to the seminar hall. The majority of us dragged our feet back to our hostel rooms.
“Why did I go back!?”
I had just changed my clothes and came online when James pings me on Gtalk and says they’re distributing free T-shirts at 4pm. Course I wanted to check it, at least outta curiosity. So we go all the way back to the seminar hall – for nothing! The T-shirts were prizes for a technical quiz – and I knew I had made a grave mistake by coming back, considering the level of my technical knowledge! Anyways, I decide to stay on – I felt too lazy to go back alone. On top of all this, we had an extempore – well, something which they called an extempore – it didn’t fit my definition of an extempore. Followed by a hell of a quiz (it was hell for me coz I knew nothing), but still many managed to get hold of T-shirts. Then finally, after all this – if you think they let us leave, you are mistaken. They wanted feedback from us – which took another half an hour!
All-in-all, something worth attending if you have free time, but definitely not worth the Saturday before the mid-semester exams….
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So here we are in NIT Warangal - supposed to be among the elite in India, second only to the top IITs. Yet we see companies coming for placements and interns and returning, recruiting one or two on their way. Some even return without recruiting anyone. So who is to blame – the college or the students!?
Why Are We Not Taught That is Required!?
Nowadays, companies recruit only if a candidate is worthy enough – they don’t come with the aim of recruiting ‘n’ candidates to any campus. So the students have no choice but to strive for excellence in all the spheres. Yet, even the best falter at the crucial steps more than once….
As far as computer science is concerned, they concentrate mainly on data structures and algorithm analysis. Even then, we are taught only data structures, leaving the algorithm part to get lost in the mist of ignorance. If anyone feels I’m exaggerating, I’ll say this – I attended three rounds of interview when Amazon.com came for interns and for every algorithm/pseudo code/working code they asked, they wanted me to analyze the time complexity (and also the space complexity in certain cases). They expect the most effective code even if it takes a little more time to develop – something our curriculum never stresses on…
Obsolete Syllabus!?
The course syllabus seems to be hardly in sync with the current industry expectations and standards. The first year syllabus can be justified since it is the same for all the branches. But I wonder why we studied network analysis and maths in second year – I don’t say they are completely irrelevant, but do we really need to sacrifice subjects like object oriented programming for them!? Everyone expects a 3rd yr CSE student to know about virtual functions, placement new, multiple inheritance, etc. But we were hardly taught these subjects, as we were “busy deriving Norton’s Law or finding Laplace transforms”. I wonder why these subjects are never mentioned in the placement and intern interviews if our college considers them so important!?
And now, in 3rd year, we are studying “Theory of Computation” – which even the teacher feels bears very little relevance in the present scenario. And “Microprocessors” which seems to be a repeat of last semester’s “Systems Programming”. Since we spend our time like this beating around the bush, it’s no wonder many are unable to comply with the required standards.
Can We Really Study All This On Our Own!?
The other side of the coin – everything can’t be taught in the college, students have to study on their own. But do they really expect to study the core subjects on our own, while on the other hand, irrelevant subjects are taught in class. I accept a teacher can’t teach everything - it’s our responsibility too. We can study on our own after we are taught 40%, but you can’t expect us to do the same after being taught only 10%. Even now, if it’s possible, I would like some faculty of the CSE dept. to spare some time and teach the basics of algorithm analysis and object oriented programming to the 3rd years. Or we might be in for some more ducks when companies come for interns.
It’s too late for anything to be done for us, but hopefully the authorities would accept the change in the corporate world and the change would be reflected in the curriculum, so that at least our juniors would be able to match the expectations….
Why Are We Not Taught That is Required!?
Nowadays, companies recruit only if a candidate is worthy enough – they don’t come with the aim of recruiting ‘n’ candidates to any campus. So the students have no choice but to strive for excellence in all the spheres. Yet, even the best falter at the crucial steps more than once….
As far as computer science is concerned, they concentrate mainly on data structures and algorithm analysis. Even then, we are taught only data structures, leaving the algorithm part to get lost in the mist of ignorance. If anyone feels I’m exaggerating, I’ll say this – I attended three rounds of interview when Amazon.com came for interns and for every algorithm/pseudo code/working code they asked, they wanted me to analyze the time complexity (and also the space complexity in certain cases). They expect the most effective code even if it takes a little more time to develop – something our curriculum never stresses on…
Obsolete Syllabus!?
The course syllabus seems to be hardly in sync with the current industry expectations and standards. The first year syllabus can be justified since it is the same for all the branches. But I wonder why we studied network analysis and maths in second year – I don’t say they are completely irrelevant, but do we really need to sacrifice subjects like object oriented programming for them!? Everyone expects a 3rd yr CSE student to know about virtual functions, placement new, multiple inheritance, etc. But we were hardly taught these subjects, as we were “busy deriving Norton’s Law or finding Laplace transforms”. I wonder why these subjects are never mentioned in the placement and intern interviews if our college considers them so important!?
And now, in 3rd year, we are studying “Theory of Computation” – which even the teacher feels bears very little relevance in the present scenario. And “Microprocessors” which seems to be a repeat of last semester’s “Systems Programming”. Since we spend our time like this beating around the bush, it’s no wonder many are unable to comply with the required standards.
Can We Really Study All This On Our Own!?
The other side of the coin – everything can’t be taught in the college, students have to study on their own. But do they really expect to study the core subjects on our own, while on the other hand, irrelevant subjects are taught in class. I accept a teacher can’t teach everything - it’s our responsibility too. We can study on our own after we are taught 40%, but you can’t expect us to do the same after being taught only 10%. Even now, if it’s possible, I would like some faculty of the CSE dept. to spare some time and teach the basics of algorithm analysis and object oriented programming to the 3rd years. Or we might be in for some more ducks when companies come for interns.
It’s too late for anything to be done for us, but hopefully the authorities would accept the change in the corporate world and the change would be reflected in the curriculum, so that at least our juniors would be able to match the expectations….
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Arun
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One good thing about NIT Warangal is the number of companies that come for placements and interns (this is, of course, without considering how many they recruit). So we had Goldman Sachs and then Amazon coming for interns. I, incidentally, made it to the interviews of both – and flunked out in both. And here I’ll write about the Amazonian debacle (should I call it so) as it is still fresh in my memory. The GS one would be followed up later…
The Aptitude Test – Stepping Stone to Failure!?
So on the 20th,we had a hard-core technical aptitude – full of stacks and queues and trees and algorithms. A joy for the technically sound, but a disaster bell for the others. We had two rounds – one objective and one subjective. And I got 17 in both (I got to know my scores later when I saw my answer script during the interview). So a total of 34 on 90, and still I qualified – guess that says a lot about the level of questions and the level of correction. And we got the results at 2:15 AM… Don’t think anyone expected that, or anyone was awake to expect that! It was just by chance (or maybe it was fate) that I woke up at 2:30 and saw the sms.
So there it was – interview the next day, ie. 21st at 10:15 AM. Four were shortlisted – and we hoped at least one would make it. Not to be… The count remained a big ZERO. Anyways, I’ll tell about my interview – maybe it’ll help others.
1st Round!
My first round started at 2 PM (true, I was sitting-doing-nothing for 4 hours)– and by that time, others had already got their results of their respective first rounds. So these were the questions asked to me :
• There are 25 horses. Maximum 5 horses can run in a race and you’ll know the top 3 of each race. How many races (min.) will you need to find the overall top 3?
• There is a doubly linked list in which the back-links are ambiguous, ie. they need not point to the previous node – they can point to any node occurring before the current one. Write a function to make a copy of it. (Mind, they want the moist efficient one)
• What are the four basic concepts of OOPS?
Guess that was all – rest was just beating around the bush.
2nd Round!
Perhaps the best of the 3 rounds I faced. Duration 3PM - 4PM.
• Can a knight move from one corner of the chessboard to the opposite while visiting each square once and only once?
• What are the different sorting mechanisms?
• What is bucket sort?
• Which is the most efficient sorting mechanism?
• Tell me the algorithm of quicksort.
• Write a fully functional code for mergesort.
• Minimum spanning tree algorithms – Kruskal and Prim's.
• A singly linked list branches at a certain node into two. Identify the branching node in least possible time.
• There is an array of size ‘n’ having integers 1 to n. But a certain integer ‘l’ is missing and another integer ‘k’ is repeated twice. Find ‘l’ and ‘k’.
He literally ground me to pulp – but I managed to scrape through somehow.
3rd round!
The worst round – and perhaps which brought about my downfall. I was the only one left to attend this one – everyone else had been eliminated. I was hoping it might be non-technical. But alas! How wrong I was…
• Can an object of a base class be initialized using a function of a derived class?
• In Amazon, we maintain records of the pages viewed by customers on each day in a file. I’ll give you the files for two days. I want you to create a list of those customers who visited on both the days and at least two distinct pages. Which data structure would you use?
That was all – quite a short one. But I had to wait for two hours for this one.
I guess I learnt quite a bit – but it was disappointing falling down at the last hurdle. But there’s always the next chance!
The Aptitude Test – Stepping Stone to Failure!?
So on the 20th,we had a hard-core technical aptitude – full of stacks and queues and trees and algorithms. A joy for the technically sound, but a disaster bell for the others. We had two rounds – one objective and one subjective. And I got 17 in both (I got to know my scores later when I saw my answer script during the interview). So a total of 34 on 90, and still I qualified – guess that says a lot about the level of questions and the level of correction. And we got the results at 2:15 AM… Don’t think anyone expected that, or anyone was awake to expect that! It was just by chance (or maybe it was fate) that I woke up at 2:30 and saw the sms.
So there it was – interview the next day, ie. 21st at 10:15 AM. Four were shortlisted – and we hoped at least one would make it. Not to be… The count remained a big ZERO. Anyways, I’ll tell about my interview – maybe it’ll help others.
1st Round!
My first round started at 2 PM (true, I was sitting-doing-nothing for 4 hours)– and by that time, others had already got their results of their respective first rounds. So these were the questions asked to me :
• There are 25 horses. Maximum 5 horses can run in a race and you’ll know the top 3 of each race. How many races (min.) will you need to find the overall top 3?
• There is a doubly linked list in which the back-links are ambiguous, ie. they need not point to the previous node – they can point to any node occurring before the current one. Write a function to make a copy of it. (Mind, they want the moist efficient one)
• What are the four basic concepts of OOPS?
Guess that was all – rest was just beating around the bush.
2nd Round!
Perhaps the best of the 3 rounds I faced. Duration 3PM - 4PM.
• Can a knight move from one corner of the chessboard to the opposite while visiting each square once and only once?
• What are the different sorting mechanisms?
• What is bucket sort?
• Which is the most efficient sorting mechanism?
• Tell me the algorithm of quicksort.
• Write a fully functional code for mergesort.
• Minimum spanning tree algorithms – Kruskal and Prim's.
• A singly linked list branches at a certain node into two. Identify the branching node in least possible time.
• There is an array of size ‘n’ having integers 1 to n. But a certain integer ‘l’ is missing and another integer ‘k’ is repeated twice. Find ‘l’ and ‘k’.
He literally ground me to pulp – but I managed to scrape through somehow.
3rd round!
The worst round – and perhaps which brought about my downfall. I was the only one left to attend this one – everyone else had been eliminated. I was hoping it might be non-technical. But alas! How wrong I was…
• Can an object of a base class be initialized using a function of a derived class?
• In Amazon, we maintain records of the pages viewed by customers on each day in a file. I’ll give you the files for two days. I want you to create a list of those customers who visited on both the days and at least two distinct pages. Which data structure would you use?
That was all – quite a short one. But I had to wait for two hours for this one.
I guess I learnt quite a bit – but it was disappointing falling down at the last hurdle. But there’s always the next chance!
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Arun
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Food, clothing & shelter aka roti, kapda aur makaan – the basic necessities of life. Now coming to the situation in hand – the average hosteller. Of course, the college can’t provide clothing to us. But they are in-charge of food and shelter while we are in college. Till last year, we used to curse both our shelter and our food – but now we realize how wrong we were to curse the food. Now the curse is upon us….
7th Block with I Mess!
That was the situation last year – a hostel which seemed as though it was built during the reign of the British, filled with cracks and a mess which seemed a little below average in a fleeting glance. But however bad we said it was, it was always full during lunch hours. In fact, people had to reserve places for the next round. Such was the demand… And the monthly special messes were really a treat to a connoisseur of good food.
In spite of the hostel and the mess being on the two extremes of the college campus, no one had second thoughts about walking the distance – for we knew what awaited us there! And now even though the “food court” is a stone’s throw from our rooms, we think twice before going there to eat…
1K with Food Court!
This is the situation this year – a grand hostel room, a comfy bed, a cushion chair, well-furnished cupboards, a computer table, 24hr internet connection. We couldn’t have wished for more. But as the principle of equivalent exchange states (I’m speaking alchemy I guess) – “In order to obtain something, you have to give something of equal value in return”.
So the “something of equal value” we had to give was our food. The crowded mess gave way to a deserted food court. Many left it and began eating outside (including me). But, however one may praise the food outside, it’s a pain going out each and every time just for the sake of filling your stomach. In case a class gets extended or your teacher leaves you 10 min late from the lab – you are cursed to attend the afternoon classes on a hungry stomach…
Do we really deserve to be sentenced to a life befitting of a prince but with the cuisine suited for a pauper!? Perhaps we do – coz some of us chose to run away to eat outside rather than strive to improve the situation and the rest remained unfazed. Or perhaps, it is just the principle of equivalent exchange…
7th Block with I Mess!
That was the situation last year – a hostel which seemed as though it was built during the reign of the British, filled with cracks and a mess which seemed a little below average in a fleeting glance. But however bad we said it was, it was always full during lunch hours. In fact, people had to reserve places for the next round. Such was the demand… And the monthly special messes were really a treat to a connoisseur of good food.
In spite of the hostel and the mess being on the two extremes of the college campus, no one had second thoughts about walking the distance – for we knew what awaited us there! And now even though the “food court” is a stone’s throw from our rooms, we think twice before going there to eat…
1K with Food Court!
This is the situation this year – a grand hostel room, a comfy bed, a cushion chair, well-furnished cupboards, a computer table, 24hr internet connection. We couldn’t have wished for more. But as the principle of equivalent exchange states (I’m speaking alchemy I guess) – “In order to obtain something, you have to give something of equal value in return”.
So the “something of equal value” we had to give was our food. The crowded mess gave way to a deserted food court. Many left it and began eating outside (including me). But, however one may praise the food outside, it’s a pain going out each and every time just for the sake of filling your stomach. In case a class gets extended or your teacher leaves you 10 min late from the lab – you are cursed to attend the afternoon classes on a hungry stomach…
Do we really deserve to be sentenced to a life befitting of a prince but with the cuisine suited for a pauper!? Perhaps we do – coz some of us chose to run away to eat outside rather than strive to improve the situation and the rest remained unfazed. Or perhaps, it is just the principle of equivalent exchange…
