Sophomore Fall Semester Reflections

Having completed my first year, it’s now time to start my second year at USC. Looking forward to taking another C++ programming class (CSCI 104) as well as my first hardware class (EE-109).

This past semester has flown by extremely quick. Over the course of the past semester, I have been able to start developing a foundation within the Computer Engineering aspect of my major. Within the hardware class(EE-109), the class was extremely lab heavy. However, through the labs, I was able to get a better grasp on how to use the components within my kit box which included resistors, LCD Display, Rotary Encoders and more as well learning how to create a stopwatch and how to use Pulse Width Modulation to name some examples. For the final project of the class, while it was most certainly the most difficult assignment from the whole year as we had to work everything from the bottom up with no assistance, we were tasked to create a speedtrap which utilized 2 photoresistsors and LEDs which marked the start and finish areas on our breadboard. We would then display the time it took for the both sensors to trigger once the start sensor was triggered, By slowly completing small components of the project, one all the small tasks were completed and then integrated, I ended up with a functional speed trap .

In addition, I also took another C++ course for the third semester in a row. The main thing that I was able to draw from this course was the usefulness of recursion compared to iteration. Recursion would demand a whole lot less code for the same result as well as potentially save on the runtime aspect. This was especially prevalent when I was working on the assignment where I had to attempt to create a Wordle Solver which utilized backtracking to achieve all the possible combinations with the given input of the number of characters, the yellow characters as well as the green characters and their locations. While this assignment took time (like all assignments), I enjoyed the process of creating the solver and can now use it to cheat in Wordle as well!