Growth Notes: 4th August, 2025 - 22nd August, 2025

Data Structures and Algorithms

I solved the following problems on Strings, Two-pointers, Sliding Window, Binary Search, Recursion, Linked List, Dynamic Programming and Trees. The primary focus was to revisit recursion and dynamic programming, understanding how to write recursive and iterative approaches and calculate time and space complexities:

1. 31. Next Permutation
2. 2748. Number of beautiful pairs
3. 279. Perfect squares
4. 257. Binary trees
5. 162. Find peak element
6. 143. Reorder list
7. 662. Maximum width of binary tree
8. 713. subarray product less than k
9. 110. Balance binary tree
10. 148. Sort list
11. 647. Palindromic substrings
12. 6. Zigzag conversion
13. 231. Power of tow
14. 2024. Maximize the confusion of an exam
15. 12. Group anagrams
16. 131. Palindrome partitioning
17. 518. Coin Change II
18. 863. All nodes distance k in binary tree
19. 877. Stone game
20. 53. Maximum subarray
21. 62. Unique paths
22. 63. Unique paths II
23. 64. Minimum path sum
24. 198. House robber
25. 120. Triangle
26. 213. House robber II
27. 416. Partition equal subset sum
28. 144. Binary tree preorder traversal
29. 931. Minimum falling path sum
30. 342. Power of four
31. 22. Generate parentheses
32. 78. Subsets
33. 784. Letter case permutation
34. 39. Combination sum
35. 40. Combination sum II
36. 1323. Maximum 69 number
37. 930. Binary subarrays with sum
38. 390. Elimination Game

Practiced sorting algorithms - Bubble sort, Insertion sort, Selection sort, Merge sort and Quick sort, though I'm not quite sure that I clearly understood Merge and Quick sort.

Databases

Studied in-depth Normalization, De-Normalization, ACID properties. I used GPT's study and learn mode for revision. Also solved the following problems:

1. 197
2. 1581

Computer Networks

Revised OSI and TCP/IP model, functions, protocols and working of each layer in the OSI model. Protocols - DHCP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, HTTPS, ARP, IP, Ethernet, etc.

Operating Systems

Revised OS theory - process scheduling algorithms, critical section problem, memory management - partitioning, segmentation, paging and Deadlocks.

Object Oriented Programming

Revised few important concepts in OOPs:

1. Constructors - No argument, Parameterized and Copy Constructors, shallow copy, deep copy.
2. Inheritance - Why we need inheritance, Types of inheritance, operator overloading, function overloading.

Aptitude and Reasoning

I missed my weekly target in aptitude, though I've completed almost all topics of Arithmetic, I need to practice more Logical Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning topics.

1. Percentage
2. Blood relations
3. Verbal Classification
4. Surface area and volumes
5. Numbers
6. Essential Part
7. Pipes and Cisterns
8. Mirror images
9. Classification
10. Coding and Decoding

Footnotes

1. The past few weeks were rough - faced rejections, failed tests, lots of submissions. Hence the delayed post. Now that I look back, I'm surprised that I still managed to solve many many problems than I was assuming, covered many concepts in almost all the subjects.
2. The direction change happened on 7th August, when the thought came to my mind - "I've been following the schedule since past week or so, let's take a break today". Turns out the same thought occurred for a few more days after and before I could realize I had went too far in a different direction. When I did realize that I've not been following schedule, I rebelled and did the exact opposite thinking that I couldn't recover what's left. I should've continued as normal the day I realized and put what's left in backlog to bounce back.
3. And when I think too much instead of acting, I find Joker asking to my face : "WHY SO SERIOUS?". So I say, "Why so serious?", don't blame for why you failed, instead accept that you DID failed, and ask yourself "What should I do to NOT fail again?. Believe that you can change and bounce right back with Growth Mindset.