Data Structures and Algorithms in JavaScript Agenda and Scope

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>> Bianca Gandolfo: What are we going to be doing over the next six days? I'm thinking forever, this is the longest workshop I've ever taught. This is Day zero is today and we're gonna be doing Recursion and Object Oriented JavaScript. This is just a review of these topics, so it's not a deep dive.

[00:00:22] And this is going to be necessary in order to continue on with the class. You don't have to master it today, but these topics are gonna come up over and over again as we go through. And so this is a pre-req for all the following five days, right.

[00:00:37] Everything else you can kind of pick and choose and come or go. But day zero, which is today, if you don't have extensive experience with recursion or creating classes in JavaScript, then today is gonna be really valuable for you. Awesome, so what is this class? This class is a practical introduction to JavaScript, it's a carefully curated class based on me helping hundreds of engineers get jobs as software engineers, and all these MOOCs.

[00:01:15] I did basically, like stole a bunch of syllabus on line of all major universities and took all the main topics and found the ones that were the most repeated, and then packaged it up for this class. So it is a combination of the interview stuff and also what you would be learning in a university.

[00:01:35] So it's a good starting point for those of you who are gonna be interviewing soon, those of you who don't have a traditional computer science background. Those of you who are just wanting to level up with your JavaScript and apply what you know to maybe something that's a little more abstract, right.

[00:01:49] We're not gonna be jQuerying, selecting, and toggling stuff in this class. We're gonna be creating abstract data structures and doing operations on them. And number five, I'm gonna keep saying this, super useless if you don't complete the exercises. All nice to have the theory down, but it is really, really important and I say this over and over again, because for some reason it doesn't quite make it.

[00:02:13] Or maybe people don't know, but they just don't commit, they're on the cliff. They're like, okay, I want to jump in the water, I have to jump. If I want to learn data structure and algorithms, I have to write data structures and algorithms. You just have to do it.

[00:02:29] It's kinda scary and It's kind of intimidating. A lot of people approach this topic like they are about to jump off a cliff, right. It's very very intimidating for a lot of people and I hope that we can have a conversation together and make it a little bit less intimidating.

[00:02:45] That is really up to a lot of you to sort of engage me, ask questions, throw back your understanding of what I just said. So that we can have this be more like a learning laboratory and not like me standing here talking at you about all this theoretical bullshit that maybe you don't care about.

[00:03:02] You know what I mean? So let's engage each other, let's talk about it, I'm not a scary person. For those of you online, I'm only like 5'0" so not intimidating, I don't think. Yeah, so I encourage you to make this, own this experience, own what you don't know.

[00:03:21] Rehash if you just want to feel like rehashing, that's awesome, I appreciate that. It also makes me feel less lonely up here, if you guys talk to me.
>> Bianca Gandolfo: All right, so what is this class not? Even though this is a six day class, might seem like, my gosh there's so much, is not every data structure and algorithm ever invented.

[00:03:47] Believe it or not, people spend years and years studying this topic, there's books and books this thick covering this topics. So it's absolutely not realistic to think we are going to cover even 10% of all of the data structures in an algorithm field. My implementations are not gonna be the best solution for every case.

[00:04:12] There's going to be different cases in which you're going to apply your data structures and algorithms. And we're going to talk about them, all the different cases and try to help you reason about which ones to choose and how you should go about it. But the solutions are not gonna be the only way to implement them.

[00:04:26] There's going to be all kinds of different styles, you can find them on the internet, I encourage you to, you know, to investigate and to widen your understanding of different ones. Again it's not math heavy or theoretical, this is not the end. If you're studying for a technical interview, this is not the end, this class.

[00:04:46] You do this class, you do all the exercises, and you're like okay, great. This is not the end, there's so many resources out there for different interview questions. All these question banks that I encourage you to do because there's lots and lots and lots of different questions. And again practice and actually coding it out is going to get you there.

[00:05:04] And lastly, I'm friendly and I'm nice but this isn't necessarily smooth and friendly. It's going to be a lot of content. And so you know sometimes we're gonna have to speed through some things and you might be left to answer your own questions. That doesn't mean don't ask me questions, please try to ask me questions.

[00:05:24] But we might get to the end for example of the day and I'm like crap we have to finish this content and we might just speed through it. And you know we can always talk after class for questions that I might have had to skip, but just know that that might happen, and I'm sorry but sometimes that happens.

[00:05:43] Cool, any surprises here? No?
>> Speaker 2: People are getting the wrong set of slides it appears, they're not seeing those slides.
>> Bianca Gandolfo: So these slides are linked here.
>> Speaker 2: And when they go there, they get a 404.
>> Bianca Gandolfo: Interesting. Let's fix that, are they?
>> Bianca Gandolfo: Very odd, let's see if I can help.

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>> Bianca Gandolfo: Hm.
>> Speaker 2: It could be just not published or something, private.
>> Bianca Gandolfo: Yes, so there should be a password. Let's, private, usually I have a password predict, but I'll just make it public for now.
>> Bianca Gandolfo: All right, it is released to the world. Everyone should have it now.

[00:06:46] Thank you for your patience.