2019 in Review (December 28, 2019)
Well, well, well. As you can see, I did not make the 100 days of code (yet). Unfortunately, life gets in the way sometimes. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything. I’ve competed in my 3rd and 4th seasons of NCL in April and November, respectively. And I continue to show my improvement and understanding of cyber security topics even though they keep throwing new types of challenges at us!
Last term one of my classes taught scripting using PowerShell. I wish it would have gone more in depth with actual code and writing more scripts to automate administrator tasks, but it was enough to get my feet wet and I can say that I was able to continue my journey in coding.
Seeing as how my kids are with their dad for this week leading up to the new year, and I have a short break from classes due to the holidays also, I decided to take a stab at Holiday Hack Challenge 2019 KringleCon which can be found at https://2019.kringlecon.com. I think I may have attempted this a year or two ago, but basically got no where (not even sure I figured out how to walk around!) But, after just a couple hours fiddling around, I’ve enjoyed meeting the elves, and attempting the challenges. I am pretty proud of myself for completing what I have so far, and I think I’ll be able to solve more with a little additional OSI because there’s more challenges that I understand (that’s the first step in solving the challenge!) and have a little background in, but haven’t figured out the exact answers yet. So, if you’ve got some time to kill, give KringleCon 2019 a shot!
In wrapping up 2019, I felt defeated that I didn’t accomplish the 100 days of code challenge. But I spoke with someone who made me look at it from a different perspective. It’s not that I failed, but I tried, and I did complete 15 days of that challenge. And I did it on my own accord. It wasn’t an assignment for a class that I had to turn in. I did it in an attempt to better myself. And while I don’t necessarily see myself somewhere where I will be writing thousands of lines of code on a daily basis, I do have an understanding of what programming languages are being used, I can look at the construct of a program and dissect it, and generally I can figure out what it is supposed to be doing. And that has helped me answer challenges I otherwise would not have been able to answer when playing NCL.
Cheers to 2020 opening new doors and starting my career in cyber security!
Day 15 (February 16, 2019)
I’m in California on vacation, so I haven’t been in front of my laptop much. But I had some time this morning to try a Code Wars kata. I thought this was going to be fairly easy, but it didn’t turn out that way. I will have to come back to finish it when I have some more time.
Description
Implement a method that accepts 3 integer values a, b, c.
The method should return true if a triangle can be built
with the sides of given length and false in any other case.
(In this case, all triangles must have surface greater than 0 to be accepted).
My Code
class TriangleTester{
public static boolean isTriangle(int a, int b, int c){
int aSqr = 0;
int bSqr = 0;
int cSqr = 0;
aSqr = a * a;
bSqr = b * b;
cSqr = c * c;
if (cSqr == (aSqr + bSqr)) {
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
}
So the above code checks for right triangles. This was my first attempt at writing the program, but I misunderstood the directions a tad (probably my math brain just going to the Pythagorean Theorem). So the tests passed for some but not all of the number tests. But I had to figure out why it didn’t work for others. So I went back and re-read the instructions. And it just says that it should be for ‘surface greater than 0’.
Try 2
class TriangleTester{
public static boolean isTriangle(int a, int b, int c){
if (a <= 0 || b <= 0 || c <= 0) {
return false;
}
else if (a > (b + c) && b > (c + a) && c > (a + b)) {
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
}
So Try 2 code still isn’t passing all tests. But I ran out of time for now. I will have to re-visit this at a later time. My issue is more from a math standpoint as I can’t figure out what else I need to compute for the code to test correctly. ___________________________________________
Day 14 (February 7, 2019)
So I don’t have anything from Code Wars today. Instead, I was helping a friend with Python. We worked with if/else statements and while loops. A number was passed in, and the program needed to determine if the number was positive or negative and then print all of the integers from that number to zero. It’s been a while since I’ve coded using Python. But the basic concept of loops and conditional statements is the same across most programming languages.
Day 13 (February 6, 2019)
Aye… again, it’s been a few days… I’m failing at this coding every day thing, but, well life. Yesterday I think I technically fulfilled a day coding, as I wrote a script in bash for my Linux class. But I didn’t write about it. I was happy with it, as I had to write it in the vi editor and then execute it. And it actually did what it was supposed to do!!! But I digress. On to today. Jumped on Code Wars and found a kata that I thought might be a little challenging, but then realized the only challenging part was going to be figuring out the math involved. And I am pleased with my work :)
Description
Two red beads are placed between every two blue beads.
There are N blue beads. After looking at the arrangement
below work out the number of red beads.
B RR B RR B RR B RR B RR B
@ @@ @ @@ @ @@ @ @@ @ @@ @
Implement count_red_beads(n) (in PHP count_red_beads($n);
in Java, Javascript, TypeScript, C, C++ countRedBeads(n))
so that it returns the number of red beads.
If there are less than 2 blue beads return 0.
My Code
public class BeadsCounter {
public static int countRedBeads(final int nBlue) {
int redBeads = 0;
if (nBlue < 2) {
return 0;
}
else {
redBeads = (nBlue * 2) - 2;
}
return redBeads;
}
}
I added the B and R above the @ symbols in the directions because in Code Wars they were colored and that didn’t translate here. Looking at the other solutions, there was a way to condense it to one line, but I’m happy with what I came up with!
Day 12 (February 2, 2019)
It’s late but I got it! So I found a kata that I had to do in my Python class a while back. So I knew I could handle this in java too. Overall pretty simple, but it wanted an exception thrown for any input less than 0 or greater than 12. So I had to do some looking on how to implement the exception. I did learn it in Java class, but we didn’t use it other than when we learned it and therefore it hadn’t stuck. I remembered how it worked when I finally found the correct code to implement. This kata was found on Code Wars.
Description
In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative integer n, denoted by n!,
is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to n. For
example: 5! = 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 120. By convention the value of 0! is 1.
Write a function to calculate factorial for a given input. If input is
below 0 or above 12 throw an exception of type ArgumentOutOfRangeException
(C#) or IllegalArgumentException (Java) or RangeException (PHP) or throw
a RangeError (JavaScript).
My Code
public class Factorial {
public int factorial(int n) throws IllegalArgumentException {
// Happy coding :-)
int total = 0;
if (n < 0 || n > 12) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}
else if (n == 0) {
return 1;
}
else {
total = n;
while (n > 1) {
n = n - 1;
total = total * n;
}
}
return total;
}
}
I hit errors when trying the code I had mainly with the exception. Once I had that figured out, the errors were mathematical. I remembered I needed to put in an else if to return 1 if the input was 0 (since 0! = 1) and then I had to keep adjusting the sign and number in the while loop. Brain was no longer functioning at almost midnight, otherwise I may have figured that part out quicker. Again, looking through the other solutions, I could have really condensed my code. But I’m still happy with what I came up with. I do need to start implementing the short cuts to eliminate writing as many lines of code as I do, but seeing it this way allows me to cement the logic in my brain.
Day 11 (January 31, 2019)
Couldn’t focus on homework tonight, so I gave Code Wars a shot. Found a good kata, a little challenging, but something I’m familiar with. It was good practice for me to make sure I still understood how to work through this one.
Description
Find the number of divisors of a positive integer n.
Random tests go up to n = 500000.
My Code
public class FindDivisor {
public long numberOfDivisors(int n) {
// TODO please write your code below this comment
int counter = 1;
int numDivs = 0;
while (counter <= n) {
if (n % counter == 0) {
numDivs++;
}
counter++;
}
return numDivs;
}
}
Overall, the instructions were straightforward. I know there is a condensed way to write my code, but I didn’t feel like going to look it up. The only error I made at first was I had left out the == 0 in the if statement and I got an error about an int can’t return a boolean. My thinking was just true/false but then realized I needed to set the modulus equal to something to evaluate the expression.
Day 10 (January 29, 2019)
I’m back. And picked, what I thought, was an easy kata from Code Wars since I need to leave shortly. There was some chatter about practicing coding by some other students, so it was suggested I pick one and post it. So I did. I needed Google’s help for this one even though it is fairly easy. Apparently, this specific method was not covered in my class, or I did not take good enough notes when we covered this. Either way, my initial attempts failed, so once Google showed me the way, I got the green lights!
Description
We need a function that can transform a string into a number.
What ways of achieving this do you know?
Note: Don't worry, all inputs will be strings, and every string
is a perfectly valid representation of an integral number.
My Code
public class StringToNumber {
public static int stringToNumber(String str) {
//TODO: Convert str into a number
int strInt = 0;
strInt = Integer.parseInt(str);
return strInt;
}
}
Day 9.5 (coding twice in one day!?)
Instead of working, I decided to jump back on ZyBooks and start the last chapter that wasn’t covered in my class last term (thanks to another friend who asked me if I knew of any other Java resources to learn from). So I worked through the first lesson Do-while Loops. I’m not going to post the code, but I was able to work through the two activities provided in the section and passed when it was checked. The low-down of do-while loops is that a condition will execute at least one time.
do {
something
} while (until some condition is met);
So that’s your double-dose of code for today!
Day 9 (feeling like a failure with this 100 days of code thing…)
So, it is January 25, 2019 and I am only on day 9 of 100 days of code. I did open Code Wars yesterday and read through a few katas but my brain was mush and just said to close it before getting frustrated. But I am here today, and I did code something. Semi proud of myself as well (I’ll explain after posting the code)
Description
Given two numbers and an arithmetic operator (the name of it, as a string),
return the result of the two numbers having that operator used on them.
a and b will both be positive integers, and a will always be the first number
in the operation, and b always the second.
The four operators are "add", "subtract", "divide", "multiply".
My Code
class ArithmeticFunction {
public static int arithmetic(int a, int b, String operator) {
// your code here
int total = 0;
if (operator.equals("add")) {
total = a + b;
}
else if (operator.equals("subtract")) {
total = a - b;
}
else if (operator.equals("multiply")) {
total = a * b;
}
else {
total = a / b;
}
return total;
}
So, the instructions also stated to try it without using if statements. Well, I’ll take that fail. I don’t think I understand enough of this to do it without if statements. Maybe with a replace function? I’ll pester my code-knowing friends and see if they can help me figure out another way to do it. So my pat-myself-on-my-back moment: while I was in IT-145 (java) at SNHU, I was trying to do a similar thing of comparing string input but I was using if (operator == 'add') and wasn’t getting the results I was expecting. I was like what am I doing wrong? What am I missing!? A very helpful and knowledgeable friend mentioned to use the .equals instead for string comparisons because the == actually uses the ASCII values to compare so if they don’t match up, the program will throw wonky results. So, from that point, I said I would always remember that because it had been so frustrating to me. So I tried the .equals first in the code above (and it worked!!!)
If I come up with another solution, I will add it here and reference Day 9. Maybe, someday, it’ll happen!
(Just submitted the kata and I see to not use if statements I should have used the switch function! I actually did know that (just forgot about it).
Day 8
So I tried. I really tried. I’ve been sitting at my laptop most of the evening, revamping my resume and writing a cover letter for a job I’m applying for and since I don’t know how to do anything without multitasking I pulled up Code Wars and found a kata I wanted to try. But when I clicked on it (and eventually went back to see what it said) it had failed to load. And it is now really past my bedtime. So I tried. I did. Tomorrow is another day to try again.
Day 7
Yay! Back to consecutive days of coding! There was a kata on Code Wars that was mathematical in nature and I wanted to do it, but it dealt with arrays and I have very limited knowledge and really didn’t feel like getting stuck and frustrated tonight. So the next one was fairly easy - at least I understood the logic and was hoping the way I was thinking it through would work. Alas, it did! =o)
Description
Timmy & Sarah think they are in love, but around where they live,
they will only know once they pick a flower each. If one of the
flowers has an even number of petals and the other has an odd
number of petals it means they are in love.
Write a function that will take the number of petals of each
flower and return true if they are in love and false if they aren't.
My Code
public class OppositesAttract {
public static boolean isLove(final int flower1, final int flower2) {
if (flower1 != flower2) {
if ((flower1 % 2 == 0 && flower2 % 2 != 0) || (flower1 % 2 != 0 && flower2 % 2 == 0)) {
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
else {
return false;
}
}
}
Looking over some of the other submitted solutions, there were some one and two line solutions. Totally didn’t think about the isEven or isOdd functions (is that what they are called?! I’m drawing a blank, but it’s late). But overall, I’m happy with my solution. It’s not too bulky and I was able to include the correct logic, using && and || for the correct expressions.
Day 6 …. only about a week behind …
Again, life. But I’m here. Now. Today (January 15, 2019). Decided to take on an easy kata on CodeWars (and I still had to Google because I realized the method I learned to do this was using a Stream and I knew there had to be a simpler way).
Description
We need a function that can transform a number into a string.
What ways of achieving this do you know?
My Code
class Kata {
public static String numberToString(int num) {
// Return a string of the number here!
String convertNum = "";
convertNum = Integer.toString(num);
return convertNum;
}
}
So, there ya have it. Day 6 completed.
Day 5 (and it’s not January 5th, life gets in the way sometimes)
So, yeah… sometimes my weekends are boring with nothing to do, other times I barely get a chance to sit down. That was this past weekend. My son had a merit badge thing for scouts, I had a hockey game Saturday and Sunday, my wife had a hockey game Sunday, son had lacrosse tryouts Saturday night, daughter went ice skating … didn’t even think about turning on the laptop. Monday and Tuesday were whirlwind days as well. Tuesday I turned on the laptop, but that was to do homework and some other important things I had to get to. So here it is, Wednesday, and I’m on day 5. Now to code.
I get emails from Code Wars with suggested katas. There was one in the email I wanted to try, but when I logged in today, it wasn’t the first one that I saw, and it didn’t come up before choosing this one:
Description
After a hard quarter in the office you decide to get some
rest on a vacation. So you will book a flight for you and
your girlfriend and try to leave all the mess behind you.
You will need a rental car in order for you to get around
in your vacation. The manager of the car rental makes you
some good offers.
Every day you rent the car costs $40. If you rent the car
for 7 or more days, you get $50 off your total. Alternatively,
if you rent the car for 3 or more days, you get $20 off your total.
Write a code that gives out the total amount for different days(d).
My Code
public class Kata {
public static int rentalCarCost(int d) {
// Your solution here
int total = 0;
final int DAILY_RENTAL = 40;
final int SEVEN_DAY_DISCOUNT = 50;
final int THREE_DAY_DISCOUNT = 20;
if (d >= 7) {
total = (d * DAILY_RENTAL) - SEVEN_DAY_DISCOUNT;
}
else if (d < 3) {
total = d * DAILY_RENTAL;
}
else {
total = (d * DAILY_RENTAL) - THREE_DAY_DISCOUNT;
}
return total;
}
}
I liked this kata. It was very realistic and made sense to why I would write a code for this type of scenario. Again, I realize my code is a little wordy. After I got to the else statement, I realized I could have figured total = d * DAILY_RENTAL above the if loop and the amount in total would carry into the loop and I could just subtract the appropriate discount. Starting to come a little easier in certain aspects (even after a several day break!)
Day 4 (I think… yes, today is January 4, 2019…)
So I had some time early in the day and decided to use my time wisely and see if I could knock out some code before going on a dog walk. I perused Code Wars and found a few katas that I should know how to do, but I knew I’d learn better with a little help from a peer, so I kept looking. And whaddaya know, I found one I could handle!
So, since I’ve been taking the long way around in the previous days, I knew I could use a for loop and use the simplified method.
Description
Summation
Write a program that finds the summation of every
number from 1 to num. The number will always be a
positive integer greater than 0.
For example:
summation(2) -> 3
1 + 2
summation(8) -> 36
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8
My code
public class GrassHopper {
public static int summation(int n) {
int i = 0;
int total = 0;
for (i = n; i > 0; i--) {
total += i;
}
return total;
}
}
Had a few slight issues at first, but very minor tweaks and it worked! Looking through the other solutions, there are still ways I could have condensed it further, but overall I’m happy with my solution. I also wrote the code to start with the number given and add one less to it with each iteration. But since addition is commutative, this works! :) So, it’s not even noon yet and Day 4 of 100 Day of Code is finished!!! (Might have some bonus “episodes” later!)
Day 3
So here it is.. another day and I’m still at it. Sometimes I think I get myself in over my head. School is still on winter break and resumes on Monday. So I’ve been trying to get a head start, but was waiting on an email from Cisco. Finally got that today, got my account active and excited to get a jump start on learning Linux.
So…. I really don’t know how long this took me (but it was a lot longer than I thought it would). I almost thought I was going to give it up because I thought I was really missing something (stupid integer division). Here’s the prompt from Code Wars:
Your task is to write a function which returns the sum of following series upto nth term(parameter).
Series: 1 + 1/4 + 1/7 + 1/10 + 1/13 + 1/16 +...
Rules:
You need to round the answer to 2 decimal places and return it as String.
If the given value is 0 then it should return 0.00
You will only be given Natural Numbers as arguments.
Examples:
SeriesSum(1) => 1 = "1.00"
SeriesSum(2) => 1 + 1/4 = "1.25"
SeriesSum(5) => 1 + 1/4 + 1/7 + 1/10 + 1/13 = "1.57"
And wallah my working code:
public class NthSeries {
public static String seriesSum(int n) {
// Happy Coding ^_^
String finalNum = "";
double total = 0.0;
int counter = 0;
int denominator = 1;
double fraction = 0.0;
if (n == 0) {
finalNum = "0.00";
return finalNum;
}
else {
while (counter != n) {
counter++;
fraction = 1.0 / denominator;
total += fraction;
denominator += 3;
}
return String.format("%.2f", total);
}
}
}
Annnnnnnnnnnd of course since I can now see the other solutions, I could have done this all in about 3 lines…. ho hum… I’ll get there. Trying to figure out how to format to two decimal places actually took up a lot of the time I spent on this. I tried looking through the Java documentation but had trouble finding what I needed. So thankfully, to my rescue, a fellow SNHU student was able to help me figure that out (Thanks J.D.!) Now, onto Linux!
Day 2 of 100 Days of Code
I was tired tonight, and have a headache, but I opened Code Wars and found a kata challenge I thought I could handle. And to my surprise (and after finding the missing brace) I did it. I know the point of coding, and especially learning how to code, is not to get it right on the first try. But being that I’m still very much a newbie, when the code I write works the first time, it is a huge pat on my back and reinforces that I actually have learned something. My goal for this 100 days of code challenge is to get more comfortable writing code. And have the confidence to know that I do know what I’m doing so when the code doesn’t compile, I have enough understanding to review it to see where I went wrong and how to fix it.
I love math. So when I find challenges like the one I did today, I feel that I should be able to understand what is going on behind the code (well, other than the fact that I’m the one writing the code). But I am a visual person when it comes to math, and if I am not using concrete figures I sometimes (okay, most of the times) get lost. So while figuring out this challenge, and what exactly needed to be done, I had to use an example with exact numbers. This showed me that my original thinking of just adding one to a total variable was not what I wanted.
Description:
Given two integers a and b, which can be positive or negative, find the sum of all the numbers between
including them too and return it. If the two numbers are equal return a or b.
Note: a and b are not ordered!
My Solution:
public class Sum
{
public int GetSum(int a, int b)
{
//Good luck!
int firstNum = a;
int secondNum = b;
int total = 0;
int nextNum = 0;
if (firstNum == secondNum) {
return firstNum;
}
else {
if (firstNum < secondNum) {
nextNum = firstNum;
while (nextNum <= secondNum) {
total += nextNum;
nextNum++;
}
}
else {
nextNum = secondNum;
while (nextNum <= firstNum) {
total += nextNum;
nextNum++;
}
}
return total;
}
}
}
So my code is wordy. After seeing some of the other solutions, there is room for improvement to condense some of the code. I’m sure that will come with time. I’m just pretty stoked I was able to do it!