Almighty linked lists

As the time for placements has finally come, I am trying to train myself for the lame questions that companies usually ask instead of asking things related to the real talent.

I am a bit (a bit????) paranoid about pointers, linked lists and stuff that involves pointers. I couldn’t really keep up with the data structures because I learnt to use this WONDERFUL language called python. I was not a bond in C/C++ but my skill level was good enough to write basic codes. Though I didn’t submit all my programming assignments, I used to write C/C++ codes for fun especially during third and fourth semester when I was awesomely obsessed with Object Oriented Programming and classes in c++. But I never used pointers even in that period. After fourth sem, I completely switched to python quitting c/c++ totally. I have been doing fun things like my Google Summer of Code, IntelligentMirror, Youtube Caching and other private stuff in python since almost one and a half year. Python is a real handy language when you want develop  projects quickly.

Anyway, I thought I’ll give c/pointers another shot. I picked up EssentialC, Pointers And Memory and LinkedListBasics from Stanford CS Library. Read first two of them from start to end without missing a single word. Read 5-6 pages from Linked List Basics and then thought of coding a very basic linked list with few operations. But unfortunately couldn’t do so even after fighting for one hour. Fifty percent of the time, i was fixing my code because I wrote the damn thing in python style formatting, forgot to declare variables before using them and blah blah… In the meantime Pankaj pinged for the BC session. When I told him the same thing, he said he implemented linked list few days back using arrays … OMG!! pretty easy. huh!! After we returned from canteen, I gave it one more shot. BINGO!!! I did it this time 🙂 I finally wrote some code in C for linked list which finally worked 😀

Loving pointers a bit and looking for exploring more.