Friday, May 31, 2013

Why should one take part in programming contests?

This post is only for students who are interested in math, puzzle solving and programming.

Why do students avoid programming contests?

1) New to online learning
2) Afraid of problems
3) Feeling shy to see their name lower in the ranklist
4) Academics
5) Entertainment
6) Girlfriend 


Why should one take part in programming contests?

1) Its competitive and fun.
2) At the end of every contest, you learn to solve atleast one new problem.
3) Finish laboratory exams quicker. 
4) The preliminary written tests in symposiums are equialent to the interview questions. More you take part, more likely you will crack the interviews.
5) You can turn any idea into a code.
6) You can be the first one to bring India a gold medal in ACM ICPC, the world's biggest programming contest.
7) You will take efficient and right decisions in your real life.


Don't do it for money. Do it only if you have the passion
The path to success is not just MARKS -> GRADES -> GPA -> INTERNS -> JOBS -> MONEY -> MARRIAGE. You have to aim higher.

Friday, May 24, 2013

What is it like doing a final year project at CEG

I'm currently working on the thesis of my fyp and I felt like writing a blog post about how I feel now.
I didn't do the project. I bought it outside for money. Because I didn't have a good idea for a project. When I was in 2nd year, I really got inspired by one of my seniors' final year project on image processing which takes a video of a cricket match (without audio) as input and produces a video with auto generated commentary. He had a great idea!. He was able to find some IEEE base papers on image processing and could have faced the further troubles.

The first trouble that we face is, choosing the project guide. Every project guide can handle only two teams. We are forced to choose a project guide sooner even if we don't have any idea of what we are going to do. My project guide was good in networks. Me and all my team members were bad at networks. But if we chose a project without involving networks, it would have been rejected/ignored. Our current fyp panel wants us to have at least 5 base papers (should take the results of 5 other projects and improve) which clearly restricts the students' creativity. 

How CEG final year projects are

I really respect those projects which actually help some people. But I lacked in idea. I didn't want to waste 6 months in my teen age to do a project which is of no use. I also didn't want my teammates to lose marks because of my attitude. So I bought the project for money.

I know that Ok you bought the project outside. Y are you still frustrated? is the question in your mind. Here is me answering

There are 3 project reviews. For each review, we had to face most of the following problems

1) Preparation of ppts and documentation for 2 days
2) Waiting for project review at the review hall for 2 days
3) Postponing of the review date several times 
4) Meet the mam at least twice before every review in which the professor wants you to change the ppt and documentation repeatedly.
5) Have to take several printouts.
6) We must not attend any interviews on all such timings.
7) We must concentrate on our font size and alignment 75 percent more than how much we concentrate on our code.

Even if you cross all those hurdles, you have to climb the everest called THESIS (Project report). You have to prepare a book about your project with at least 50 pages. You have to understand that preparing a book of 50 pages is 51 times harder than typing 50 pages. You will be forced to spend at least 2 weeks and 500Rs for this paper work. Finally this book goes to the dustbin.


Disclaimer:
Note that ppl who didn't buy the project, dayscholars could have faced more troubles.