Ganeshnomicks

Archive for June, 2009

And the results are…

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Over the past three months I have given several exams(engineering entrances). I have been preparing for these exams for more that a year(two technically, one seriously).  Now that all the results I thought I’d post it here.

  • 12th Boards - I scored 90, 93, 95 respectively in phy, chem and maths. I got a 93 in Informatics Practices(computers).
  • IIT-JEE - Extended Merit list with a rank of 42000. I wasn’t well during the exams so its not a bad result.
  • VITEEE - This one was pleasantly surprising, i got an all India rank of 3800. I was eligible for 2nd round counseling and had booked my tickets, but(fortunately) aieee results came before the counselling so I cancelled my plans of going to vellore.
  • GUJCET - This is the entrance for getting into gujarat colleges. I got a merit rank of 174.
  • AIEEE - I got a state rank of 260 and all India rank of 14k. This was quite good  but I am yet to know whether it would be good enough to get me computers in SVNIT.
  • IcfaiTech ATIT - It was an easy paper. In the result they didn’t display any rank but congratulated me for being eligible for counseling. Its a pity they didn’t display the rank, not that I was interested in going to icfai but I was expecting a good rank in this.
  • MHTCET - I scored 123 in this and am too lazy to check my rank.
  • COMEDK - Scored 110 and got a merit rank of 1200 that makes me eligible for first round of counseling.
  • BITSAT - I scored 236 and I don’t think its sufficient for getting an admission into bits.

The ones in bold were my prime focus.

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Cracking Informatics Practices : Programming Methodology

Friday, June 19th, 2009

We had a subject called Informatics Practices as a part of our school syllabus which included Visual Basic and SQL programming. Most of the students passed the exams by memorizing the code snippets instead of understanding them. I believe that its easy to score in this subject by just understanding a few basic stuff.

In this series of posts I’ll take up some most commonly asked problems in examinations and give an in-depth review of all the steps involved.

In this post I explain the sequence of steps to be followed to make the programming smooth and to maximize scoring in exams.

  1. Create the skeleton first. The skeleton is a working program upon which we are going to build our program. Its the basic outline(syntax) of the procedure, function or whatever is asked. Make sure that the skeleton is able to take inputs and display an output. This step is critical as it usually carries 1/4 to 3/4 of the total marks of that question.
  2. Understand the Logic. Now that we have a program that takes inputs and gives an output we need to find a process that the input must undergo for us to get the desired output. For this understanding the logic of the program is important. You may require penning down your ideas for this.
  3. Translate the logic by the means of the programming language. After having understood the logic its time to get down to the dirty stuff. You need to translate your logic/ideas by the means of the programming language(Visual Basic or SQL). This is the step where all your programming knowledge comes in handy.
  4. Testing. Testing is easy if you are doing practicals.  But if you  are writing an exam on paper it can become a little tricky. First try and detect and eliminate syntax errors. Then, take up any value for the input and then go with the flow, try and understand the changes that the variable undergoes and see to it that they are as desired, check the semantics.

Additional tip to maximize scoring:

  • Comment. Comments help  in making your program more readable. It also enhances your scoring, so make sure you comment whenever possible.

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Posted in Informatics Practices | 2 Comments »

Facebook introduces usernames

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I  know Techcrunch may have reported it ages ago, but I took a while to notice it. Facebook has introduced usernames hat now allow profiles to be accessed directly via a url like http://facebook.com/username.

My Facebook Profile. Cool eh?

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Beautiful Text-Editors For Programming Productivity

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

One of the reasons why I loathe Notepad for doing my programming is because of its unpleasant looks. I believe that to be productive while programming its important to choose a text-editor that renders my codes beautifully. The syntax highlighting not only helps me eliminate syntax errors but also makes the code look pleasant.

For the past two years I was having Oracle as a part of our computer course in my school. I realized that the reason why I didn’t like the SQL*PLUS editor that is bundled with the package was because of the bold courier fonts. So I switched to a much beautiful courier font and it made the code much readable. It is a bit trivial to change the fonts in oracle but this trick makes it possible.

I use PHP Designer 2007 for most of my programming and I love its subtle, elegant looks that blend naturally, giving the code primacy. Please post the text-editor you use whose beauty enhances your productivity.

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Posted in Programming Productivity | 1 Comment »