Hi all!
I’m back with more summer series here. I spent last week talking to many of you on Discord and email about a few different topics, thanks for chatting! Some of it was about coding, a lot of it was about course planning and scheduling.
First up, a few links about fall scheduling in case you haven’t seen them:
Notably there is a form just for you (incoming transfers):
As a general reminder, it is never too late to start engaging with the CSE summer series stuff – no pressure and no deadline. Feel free to reply here or on Discord 2 weeks later, a month later, etc. (Some of you have, thanks!)
I think I’ve replied to everyone who sent in a form response from the last few weeks, but I still check this form! So it’s not too late to say hi here, either:
I also got some requests to chat one-on-one; I’ve opened up some appointment slots for that over the next few weeks (I scattered the slots around on different days/times to hopefully accommodate a range of schedules).
Worth saying up front that I don’t have special powers to get your transfer credit approved or get you into a class you want, but I’m happy to give advice, find the right person to ask, chat about UCSD CSE, or just say hi!
I didn’t get many replies for last week’s AI-on activity (I did for the code! See Discord for discussion), so I want to re-advertise it — it uses the same tools as CSE29!
To try it:
Open the Codespace (free programming environment via GitHub in your browser):
https://codespaces.new/cse-summer-series/summer-lab
Open lastword.c and follow the numbered steps at the top of the file. If
you finish lastword.c and want more practice, try tree.c as well
The “AI on” part: Paste commands that don’t make sense (or even screenshots) into ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini / Copilot’s free tier and ask what it does before you run it, then run it and check whether it told you the truth. Being new to a terminal is completely expected for many of you; the assistant is there to be your guide. Then reach out to me if you get totally stuck (one or two of you did, thank you for reaching out!)
You can also try opening Copilot (for me, it’s open on the right panel and says “Chat” at the top when I open the Codespace), and ask it for help doing things within the codespace directly – ask it about the files, the README, the commands, and more!
Ask AI how to use gdb to find these bugs – what does it say/what do you
learn? Can it find both? How does it differ from ASan?
Reply via email or on Discord with any or all of:
tree.c,gdbI’m also making a Google Form where you can send in responses, which might be easier:
Same deal as before: try it with your own brain and typing first.
This short video walks through a recursive function that processes a tree:
The coding problem for the week is Symmetric Tree:
https://leetcode.com/problems/symmetric-tree
Do it in whatever language you like, then share your solution by replying to this email, DMing me on Discord, or submitting to the Google Form. I’ll discuss a few next week with interesting things I saw.
🔗 Links and Resources
Happy August! Joe