Today we had our second online test of Data Structures and Algorithms, according to some, the most important CDC of all. Hell, I have not even given the first online test.
I am a kind of person who would do anything to deny the idea that LUCK plays a major role in your life. Whether it is Cricket, Politics, Campus Interviews or the ever happening Tests here in BITS. And yet again, I faltered and was proved wrong.
We had the most complicated data structure to program, Graphs and its characteristics. Till last night, I coded it fully, wrote around 550 lines of code to implement its characterics fully and THIS program was running fine. It executed briliantly and showed all the expected results. This, I did myself when many were busy copying the program from somewhere else(If you are reading this and are hurt by this statement, then allow me to be rude for sometime and abuse me personally later!!!).
I came to believe at that point that I can crack the paper.
Guess what! A similar program was given and mine did not even compile at the time of evaluation!!!!
It happened like this. I made the full program. Compiled it successfully and executed it. It was running brilliantly without any errors. I sensed a very high score within my grasp. Then I added one more “function” to do the housekeeping job which was just a formality. After doing this, I could not recompile the program because the time was up. Although my program was complete but it wasn’t compiled.
Then came evaluation. I was getting full in almost all the components for evaluation. I lost some marks in algorithm implementation because my implementation was what I found easier for me to do in this little time and it was working correctly but I was not supposed to use that implementation. But the thing which hurt me and surprised me the most was that when it came to compile, my program refused to do so.
The housekeeper “function” which I added after initial successful run of the program curiously contained an error. And that was an extra “(“.
Got ‘0′ in compilation.
Some suggest that I should not have dead stopped at time up and should have corrected this minor mistake by taking one more minute when others were taking 10 more minutes even after time out…
But then … did I deserve 11 out of 18 …
I thought I got overconfident. I somehow chose to ignore the fact that writing 550 lines of code, even though fully by yourself, is nothing when compared to the fact that in industries, several thousands of lines of codes are being written…
But I will bounce back … Sarkar down ho sakta hai … out nahi …
Thanks to your 550 lines of successful C code, which fetched me ’some marks’ in the lab, which otherwise seemed to be impossible. Learnt a lot by going through your nice style of coding…..the basic things which we were expected to learn in CP2 itself. Those lines of code have motivated me a lot to start efficient coding from today itself.
And ya, Good luck for your Lab1-makeup.
Me too got a zuk because of an extra -> in the code.
You are not allowed to commit even slightest of the mistakes. After all, it takes only one mistake to undo the good done before. Thats what BITS teaches us, though the time limit sometimes feels too rigid and unnecessary. But again we know that they are rigid and harsh to separate those who are better and faster than the others.
Good to see that you are resilient! Dont feel bad. happens all the time to the best of the bests. Sachin was given 3 lbw’s w/o it being very convincing. there are times when things are good and when things are bad. It is these ups and downs that make life interesting and tasty. what wud u prefer? a boneless slab of chichken or a tandoori???