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‫So in this video, I'm going to do a quick course overview and talk about how you can get the most out

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‫of this course.

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‫Please watch this video to the end.

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‫In the last half of this video, I'll talk about how to access the coding exercises, which are very

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‫important.

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‫So this panel on the right is what you would see in the course in the browser.

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‫And I do have some students that don't want to cover anything conceptual.

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‫They just want to get right into writing code.

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‫If that is, you go directly to the Linked List section and start with a constructor video.

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‫So there'll be two things I'm going to cover here.

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‫First, I'm going to talk about why you should come up here and do these two sections before you get

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‫to the link list section.

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‫And then I'm going to talk about how to access the coding exercises.

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‫So first let's talk about Big O and Big O is a way of measuring how efficient your code is.

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‫And I'm going to give you just a quick example of where we might apply that.

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‫Let's say you're writing an application and you're trying to decide should you store your data in a

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‫linked list or a doubly linked list.

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‫So you're looking at a singly linked list first, and the most important thing to you is being able

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‫to remove the last item as efficiently as possible.

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‫Is a singly linked list going to be most efficient or would it be better to use a doubly linked list

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‫with this?

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‫Be more efficient when you remove the last item?

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‫Now it just so happens that a doubly linked list is much more efficient at this particular task.

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‫And we'll get into all the reasons for that when we get into the course.

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‫But the important thing here is the way we're going to talk about this efficiency is going to be the

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‫language of Big O.

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‫So there are three different reasons you should watch this section.

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‫First, we're going to be talking about the big o of everything we do with every data structure and

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‫every algorithm throughout the course.

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‫And we're going to be having quizzes on it and spend a lot of time on this topic.

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‫So that's the first reason you should watch this section.

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‫The second reason is you can see just right here, if you're making decisions on what data structure

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‫to use in your code, you need to understand this if you're going to write efficient code.

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‫So that's reason number two.

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‫But there is a third really big reason.

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‫There's 100% chance when you go into a coding interview that they will ask you questions about big O

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‫And now this next topic here, classes and pointers is very short.

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‫It only has two videos in it.

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‫One is an introduction to classes and the other one is on pointers.

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‫So first, let's talk about classes.

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‫Every data structure we create in this course will be using a class.

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‫So when we write the code for a linked list, for example, we're actually creating a linked list class.

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‫So it's important to know the basics of how classes work.

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‫But the other video pointers, this is something that trips up a lot of students.

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‫So, for example, if I ask a lot of students to show me where head and tail are in this diagram that

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‫will say this is head and this is tail, and that is actually incorrect.

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‫And the reason is that neither head nor tail are nodes.

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‫Head and tail are both variables that are pointers that can point to a node.

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‫So head is this pointer.

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‫Now, it just so happens that it is pointing at this node, but head is that variable that points to

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‫that node.

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‫And when you have a variable that's a pointer.

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‫It has some characteristics that are different than variables that are say, like an integer.

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‫And it will be important to understand those differences.

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‫So now let's move to the final topic in this video, and that is the coding exercises.

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‫So I'm going to come up here to the Linked List section and I'm going to open this and then we're going

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‫to come down here to the constructor.

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‫And as I mentioned earlier, this would be the first place where we are really writing code in the course.

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‫And I'm going to click on this resources tab and you can see that we have an exercise and solution file.

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‫And if you click on these, these will download and then you can import those into whatever coding environment

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‫that you're using.

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‫So this is one way to access the coding exercises, but I do have some students that don't want.

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‫To download a file and import it.

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‫They just want to do it in the browser in the course.

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‫And if that's the way you want to do it, just scroll all the way to the bottom.

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‫And at the bottom there's a section called Coding Exercises.

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‫So I'll open this and then you can see up here that same coding exercise for the link to list constructor

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‫is down in this section as well.

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‫So for the coding exercise, you either download the exercise from the video under the resources tab

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‫or you do it down here you don't do both.

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‫And the reason is these will both be the same exercise either way.

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‫So if you want to get the most out of this course, as soon as we get done with a video where we're

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‫going through code immediately, do the coding exercise and reinforce that learning.

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‫So I took a lot of time in creating these coding exercises and they are designed to give you an opportunity

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‫to write the code for each topic as quickly as possible.

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‫And I think you will find these to be more efficient than writing all of the code from scratch.

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‫And with that, that is our quick course overview.