Blogs!

Written by Armaan Hirani

This week was almost entirely working on Collatz, both in a good way and a very frustrating one. Spending so much time on a single problem really made me slow down and think about how complex software can be when getting past working code. What stood out most to me was how much of a reliance there is on infrastructure and tooling as opposed to just clever logic written in code. Between setting up the CI/CD pipeline, using checktestdata, and making sure things all worked together, the experience was very similar to that I've had in industry. It was a reminder that in practice, code is such a small piece of software engineering.

Working through a couple of the in class quizzes, I realized how important it is to remember some basic and quick arithmetic in the scope of computation (i.e. that 'n >> 1' is equivalent to 'n / 2', or that 'n & 1' is equivalent to 'n % 2 == 0'). Some quick little bits to produce huge savings in time complexity and computation at a bit and hardware level. Also, being reminded about some bit manipulation tricks to count trailing zeroes and speed up computation made a switch click in my brain that flooded memories of computer architecture and learning about all these little things. A walk down memory lane wasn't something I was expecting from a project here, but it was great.

My tip of the week is another invention from the folks over at Google DeepMind, but not Genie 3. This week, I want to talk about WeatherNext2. Using AI and ML algorithms, this is one of the most advanced weather prediction algorithms ever created. It's being rapidly integrated into every way you interface with the weather across all Google services, and it's wicked good at what it does. Given the insane freezing we've had in the last 5 years, that I had never seen in my life before. Many of us can agree that being able to predict the weather accurately in times where we're getting more and more wild forecasts is extremely important, and this is doing just that.

Written by Armaan Hirani

The idea of Docker before this week has always been one that's more foreign to me. I had always associated it with the idea of containerization, but never realized the usefulness of being able to just pull down an already configured and working environment with all my relevant tooling and needed dependencies ready to go.

It took a little while to comprehend, but after doing some personal experimentation on my own with mounting physical volumes to virtual Docker space, was my biggest a-ha moment this week. When learning about it in class, honestly I was very confused. It took a good bit of searching on Youtube and Google to understand all that was happening and how it worked, but now that I do I see the usefulness of it through and through. I found a lot of use in a video by "Ethereum-Blockchain-Developer | BlockOnAir", linked here. It's only 10 minutes, but definitely a very worthwhile watch.

Moving on, to Collatz optimizations. When dealing with large problems, I've realized that I tend to focus heavily on the bigger picture. This week's lectures were a great reminder that sometimes smaller optimizations can lead to massive improvements in efficiency through and through. Pairing this with optimizations previously mentioned in passing, and doing more research about the subject, my current working solution is far more advanced than the ones that I attempted while first attempting the Problem on Kattis as well as working on the assignment. I completely forgot how useful it is to know some quick math skills and their relation to binary manipulation, and this was a great reminder to that skill.

My tip of the week is something from the folks over at Google Deepmind: Genie 3. They describe it as "A new frontier for world models" capable of creating entire three dimensional game spaces based on a single prompt, combing hyper realism and animation together in ways that are rarely seen outside of Hollywood levels of production. I spent some time on the website over the last couple of days after hearing about it from my roommate, and it's safe to say, I'm shocked.