Right now i'm actualy seriously consdering withdrawing from one of my course this quarter, this'll be my 2nd time, and i hate to withdraw but i'm not sure if there's even an chance in hell of me salvaging the entire sitution, and to be frank i would just be so much more comfortable retaking the course again in the fall quarter.
anyway you guys are probably curious as of what the hell happened.
all i can say threeword "specular communication failure" i've never been so embrassed in front of the class ever before.
Anyway yes i do like group project as long as the other team members can take their load, and know what they are doing, but my group has absolutly no clue, and they just bombed the entire unit to hell.
Anyway let's begun by descripting what happened.
There's four units, but first unit is only worth an small percent of your grade, then the other 3 unit are large potation of your grade, but unit 2 and 3 works off eachothers, so if you bomb and screw up the unit 2 youre bound to screw up the unit 3, and as fates had it, i end up landing into an group which had no idea what the **** they were doing.
Aproximatly three week ago the teacher divided the classroom up into several group of 4's, and then we all went to the team room which is basically 10 some small room with projector hooked up to an computer and two white board and an table in middle of the room. Theyre used by teams for software engineering courses.
Anyway we got the questions for the unit 2 questions, and i found myself answering a large portation of the question while the rest of my group sat around and complained about not knowing anything, and i was bussy trying to explain things to them and answering the questions, anyway after two day, the questions finally got done, so now were down to one week left to setup the design and implement it in c++.
Okay at first i thought it'll be no problem then i started to run into alots of problem, my team just wandered all over the topic and never did focus on anything, i was standing up the whole time writting down stuff and drawing diagrams to explain my idea for the project, it was going to be an sort of chain obeserver pattern, but that aside we fussed and fessed over the design for two day and i started to get little annonyed.
Then for the second meeting that week, i finally let them have their way and we went on ahead with an hybrid system of my chain observer pattern along with multiple compment in the system. but the way i intended the design to go was that the application would build an chain of rules and pattern and observer and what so ever that is needed, then it would invoke it and the chain would unravel itself and send the proper commands and do the correct things at the correct time, thus as it unraved it would do the job.
Anyway i was pushing for us all to detail out the spec, like instead of just a bunch of names of stuff that needed to be done, i wanted to get an sort of document like, this part, has this following requirement and has this interfance, then that part has some other set of requirement, and interfances and so forth.
And guess what, that document never happened, so it end up in an sort of hocus pocus divison, this one fellow standed up and said, okay you do this and this, then you do this and this, and then said to me do this and this, and i'm like um allright, as long as you can get me the requirement and what so ever that i'll need to do my job, and he's like sure no problem.
Anyway they setup another meeting on friday that i unfortually couldn't attend, then it was weekend, so during the weekend, the only thing i got from them, was this cryptical string of short requirement that was so vanguage that i had no idea what the **** needed to be done for my part of the project, so i tried to contact back but was too bussy for most of the weekend, anyway finally sat down and cranked out the part of project that i was to do as well as i could, i thought there would be several things already existing that i could use, but instead there was nothing so i didn't have much to work on, i had no idea what their code would look like, and the spefication that they gave me was pure ****, it contented of 6 line of comment on AIM and that's it.
So i'm like allright i'll finish what i can do, and show up to the meeting on monaday to merge all our code together into an unitifyed product, allright.
anyway i showed up at the meeting at about 5 pm on monaday night, and noticed as i enter it was almost chaos, some of them were in panic mode because nothing would compile, and i'm like allright no problem we'll just get a list of issue and work though them one by one, then i grab the project requirement that the teacher gave us for the project, in other word it was requirement that we had to fullfill to get acceptable grade for the project. So i'm reading though the requirement and looking up at the design that the rest of my team had adopted, and to my dawning horror.
The design was pure ****, here i had spent an week trying to hammer into their head an good design plan, and we all had our text book that definated the observer pattern and other patterns that were to be used in the project, and i noticed that their code had NOTHING of that in it, which was an problem because it was required by the unit 2 project so...
anyway i'm like whoa, its starting to look bad, then it took an turn for worst as i keept on reading though the requirement and then i compared it to my team mate's design and caught several severe design flaws and they had missed a few important aspect which was seperation of the hardware simulation from the API, and seperation of the "api" from the software appliation that ran the api of some sort.
the way i had envisioned it was that there's this software that does what it need to do and setup an chain of rules and setup an print job for stuff that needed to be done, then pass it over to an API/controler which will take that and interprent it, then as it interprent it will call the "hardware" which is being simulated in the third part.
anyway as i looked at the design they had lumped it all into one massive module and i couldn't really find any seperation, they had application and software code in the hardware simulation's code itself, and had simulation code in the application code.
as i looked at this mess i'm like holy ****, well this might be bad but hopfully we can pull it off, anyway i went on ahead and described the flaws that i found in the design and put it up on the board and then had to leave for my next class at 7 pm. so i left
anyway they agreeded to do an power point presentation because we had an presentation the next day to present our design and so forth, so i told em sowwie i had to run to go to next class, anyway. and consdering the fact that i'm deaf, at the beguning of the unit i notifyed them that i needed an copy of ANY sort of presentation so i can forward it to my interprentors so they can do their job, which is translating what is being said into sign language for me to undestand and translate my signs into voice for the rest of the class to understand.
anyway i went to bed that night, and woke up and checked my e-mail hopfully for this presentation at 7:30 am, nothing was in my inbox other than two picture of the diagram of the design and they were crappy to boot.
anyway i'm like okay... i'll be okay i can wing it and sign slowly and clearly for the interprentors and hopfully do allright and have an LONG discussion with the teacher and the group on what i need to be done so i can do my job effectivly.
Anyway i showed up at class and saw several other group presenting their design and most of them had nice presentation and complement design that in my mind worked good, some had some issues some had some others, but overall from what i saw they all looked quiet good.
then it was my group turn, and to my horror, what came up on the screen wasn't an smart power point presentaion, it was just an monsterity, basically it was bunch of white slides with nothing on them other than huge blob of text taken directly from the book and they were all conflicting and so forth.
one slide said this, then the next slide oposited the first slide and so forth, anyway i'm like oh crap, oh lord please save me from this! anyway eventually the group said, allright here's (my part) and they bought up the slide for the module that i worked on, and due to the fact i never saw the power point i had no idea what was going to be said for my module. so i end up waliking back from the board, standing there like a dumb *** for a min as i readed though that slide, then shaked my head sadly.
anyway i went on to try to wing it as good as i could, by explaining what i did, and what my part was all about and how it was suposed to work, which i did from my memory and how it was suposed to be, which sadly conflicted with what was on the slide, but that slide was blantly wrong.
then finally the teacher got feed up and told the entire group to just stop it, and drop the entire damn thing, to just quit, drop, skip what so ever that presentation, he's like i don't care, just get rid of it and sit down.
you know things are very very bad when you have an entire classroom that is perfectly silent, and you got two interprentors who are very embrassed for you, because they know youre stuck between an rock and a hard spot so they tried to help me out as much as they could.
and its very very bad when the teacher will cut your presentation short and tell you to basically sit down and shut up. so yeah......
anyway after that fiasco was all over i sent my teacher an e-mail explaining what happened and all about the big time failure of communication, then went on with my day to finish my last class at 8 pm that night, the code was due at middlenight. i'm like allright there's probably no chance in hell i can salvage this, but i can atleast try my best.
anyway i noticed they finally got the goddamn code up onto CVS rehopsary, so i'm like cool, downloaded it and loaded it up and started to compile it, then bam over 140+ compilation error poped up, not including warning and so forth, so i'm like oh sweet jesus, this is bad, then i begun to go though the code file by file and line by line, hunting down as much errors as i could.
My code i had no problem with because i had good document, i on top of each methoid i had an document explaining the varriables required, and what that methoid does, then inside the code itself i had comment explaining fuzzy and unclear part, anyway so basically you could read my code and read the comment and have an easier time trying to grasp my logical structure of the code and grasping the logic behide some of my design choices for the code.
but to my horror, NOTHING of their code was even documented, they all had short cryptical 2 or 3 line explaining what this file was for, and then that was it, there was no document in the code, no comment, no nothing, then there's a bunch of cryptical varriable names such as better, and bitters, and then i as i read though i found many many undefined, uninitalized varriables, and so forth, quite a few of the errors were mistyped varriables and so forth, then i went though and found many many dupicate code, they had 2 or 3 IF's stack just copied and pasted all scattered cross the code, and even had one that was right next to eachother that was the same damn copy.
if i was coding i would had only one or two stack of if statement, but they had 2-3 dupicate stack of statement that were the same, often in a list right next to eachothers like someone went little nuts with the copy and paste keys.
then oh god, the code had no syle and indentation, its all scattered all over, one line had 3 space, next line had 15 space, then next line was 8 or 9 entery key down, etc.... had entire page of white space seperating parts of the code from eachothers, then had plenty of idioms and so forth in the code such as the famiour tetary operation which is " ( test ) ? (true) : ( false) " or something like that, it tests something if true does this, if false does that. its the only tetary function in c++ and java. now an stack of if statement can be complex sometime but if properly indented can be easy to read.
however try to manage an stack of tetary statement such as
" (test 1) ? (test2) ? (true2) : (test3) ? (true3) : (false3) : (False2) : (test4) ? (true4) : (false4) "
or something, try to evaulate thaat will you please, its a ****ing headache to evaulate. there's 4 tests, with 8 possiable or so outcome all crammed into one line. talk about headache.
anyway with heavy heart i went on to try my best to fix as much errors as i could, but there were many fundimental flaw or misunderstanding, in other word theyre trying to do something with c++ that's blantly impossiable, theyre taking the ideas from java, and the java idioms and trying to force it into c++ which obiviously will fail.
anyway sorry for this long rant, but i just had to vent the entire thing, and i'm now consdering to withdraw from the course to save my GPA, because i'm feeling very ****ty right now, about the entire course, and would feel alots better to retake it with an better group the second time, an group who actualy knew what the **** theyre doing.
so what you guys think
anyway you guys are probably curious as of what the hell happened.
all i can say threeword "specular communication failure" i've never been so embrassed in front of the class ever before.
Anyway yes i do like group project as long as the other team members can take their load, and know what they are doing, but my group has absolutly no clue, and they just bombed the entire unit to hell.
Anyway let's begun by descripting what happened.
There's four units, but first unit is only worth an small percent of your grade, then the other 3 unit are large potation of your grade, but unit 2 and 3 works off eachothers, so if you bomb and screw up the unit 2 youre bound to screw up the unit 3, and as fates had it, i end up landing into an group which had no idea what the **** they were doing.
Aproximatly three week ago the teacher divided the classroom up into several group of 4's, and then we all went to the team room which is basically 10 some small room with projector hooked up to an computer and two white board and an table in middle of the room. Theyre used by teams for software engineering courses.
Anyway we got the questions for the unit 2 questions, and i found myself answering a large portation of the question while the rest of my group sat around and complained about not knowing anything, and i was bussy trying to explain things to them and answering the questions, anyway after two day, the questions finally got done, so now were down to one week left to setup the design and implement it in c++.
Okay at first i thought it'll be no problem then i started to run into alots of problem, my team just wandered all over the topic and never did focus on anything, i was standing up the whole time writting down stuff and drawing diagrams to explain my idea for the project, it was going to be an sort of chain obeserver pattern, but that aside we fussed and fessed over the design for two day and i started to get little annonyed.
Then for the second meeting that week, i finally let them have their way and we went on ahead with an hybrid system of my chain observer pattern along with multiple compment in the system. but the way i intended the design to go was that the application would build an chain of rules and pattern and observer and what so ever that is needed, then it would invoke it and the chain would unravel itself and send the proper commands and do the correct things at the correct time, thus as it unraved it would do the job.
Anyway i was pushing for us all to detail out the spec, like instead of just a bunch of names of stuff that needed to be done, i wanted to get an sort of document like, this part, has this following requirement and has this interfance, then that part has some other set of requirement, and interfances and so forth.
And guess what, that document never happened, so it end up in an sort of hocus pocus divison, this one fellow standed up and said, okay you do this and this, then you do this and this, and then said to me do this and this, and i'm like um allright, as long as you can get me the requirement and what so ever that i'll need to do my job, and he's like sure no problem.
Anyway they setup another meeting on friday that i unfortually couldn't attend, then it was weekend, so during the weekend, the only thing i got from them, was this cryptical string of short requirement that was so vanguage that i had no idea what the **** needed to be done for my part of the project, so i tried to contact back but was too bussy for most of the weekend, anyway finally sat down and cranked out the part of project that i was to do as well as i could, i thought there would be several things already existing that i could use, but instead there was nothing so i didn't have much to work on, i had no idea what their code would look like, and the spefication that they gave me was pure ****, it contented of 6 line of comment on AIM and that's it.
So i'm like allright i'll finish what i can do, and show up to the meeting on monaday to merge all our code together into an unitifyed product, allright.
anyway i showed up at the meeting at about 5 pm on monaday night, and noticed as i enter it was almost chaos, some of them were in panic mode because nothing would compile, and i'm like allright no problem we'll just get a list of issue and work though them one by one, then i grab the project requirement that the teacher gave us for the project, in other word it was requirement that we had to fullfill to get acceptable grade for the project. So i'm reading though the requirement and looking up at the design that the rest of my team had adopted, and to my dawning horror.
The design was pure ****, here i had spent an week trying to hammer into their head an good design plan, and we all had our text book that definated the observer pattern and other patterns that were to be used in the project, and i noticed that their code had NOTHING of that in it, which was an problem because it was required by the unit 2 project so...
anyway i'm like whoa, its starting to look bad, then it took an turn for worst as i keept on reading though the requirement and then i compared it to my team mate's design and caught several severe design flaws and they had missed a few important aspect which was seperation of the hardware simulation from the API, and seperation of the "api" from the software appliation that ran the api of some sort.
the way i had envisioned it was that there's this software that does what it need to do and setup an chain of rules and setup an print job for stuff that needed to be done, then pass it over to an API/controler which will take that and interprent it, then as it interprent it will call the "hardware" which is being simulated in the third part.
anyway as i looked at the design they had lumped it all into one massive module and i couldn't really find any seperation, they had application and software code in the hardware simulation's code itself, and had simulation code in the application code.
as i looked at this mess i'm like holy ****, well this might be bad but hopfully we can pull it off, anyway i went on ahead and described the flaws that i found in the design and put it up on the board and then had to leave for my next class at 7 pm. so i left
anyway they agreeded to do an power point presentation because we had an presentation the next day to present our design and so forth, so i told em sowwie i had to run to go to next class, anyway. and consdering the fact that i'm deaf, at the beguning of the unit i notifyed them that i needed an copy of ANY sort of presentation so i can forward it to my interprentors so they can do their job, which is translating what is being said into sign language for me to undestand and translate my signs into voice for the rest of the class to understand.
anyway i went to bed that night, and woke up and checked my e-mail hopfully for this presentation at 7:30 am, nothing was in my inbox other than two picture of the diagram of the design and they were crappy to boot.
anyway i'm like okay... i'll be okay i can wing it and sign slowly and clearly for the interprentors and hopfully do allright and have an LONG discussion with the teacher and the group on what i need to be done so i can do my job effectivly.
Anyway i showed up at class and saw several other group presenting their design and most of them had nice presentation and complement design that in my mind worked good, some had some issues some had some others, but overall from what i saw they all looked quiet good.
then it was my group turn, and to my horror, what came up on the screen wasn't an smart power point presentaion, it was just an monsterity, basically it was bunch of white slides with nothing on them other than huge blob of text taken directly from the book and they were all conflicting and so forth.
one slide said this, then the next slide oposited the first slide and so forth, anyway i'm like oh crap, oh lord please save me from this! anyway eventually the group said, allright here's (my part) and they bought up the slide for the module that i worked on, and due to the fact i never saw the power point i had no idea what was going to be said for my module. so i end up waliking back from the board, standing there like a dumb *** for a min as i readed though that slide, then shaked my head sadly.
anyway i went on to try to wing it as good as i could, by explaining what i did, and what my part was all about and how it was suposed to work, which i did from my memory and how it was suposed to be, which sadly conflicted with what was on the slide, but that slide was blantly wrong.
then finally the teacher got feed up and told the entire group to just stop it, and drop the entire damn thing, to just quit, drop, skip what so ever that presentation, he's like i don't care, just get rid of it and sit down.
you know things are very very bad when you have an entire classroom that is perfectly silent, and you got two interprentors who are very embrassed for you, because they know youre stuck between an rock and a hard spot so they tried to help me out as much as they could.
and its very very bad when the teacher will cut your presentation short and tell you to basically sit down and shut up. so yeah......
anyway after that fiasco was all over i sent my teacher an e-mail explaining what happened and all about the big time failure of communication, then went on with my day to finish my last class at 8 pm that night, the code was due at middlenight. i'm like allright there's probably no chance in hell i can salvage this, but i can atleast try my best.
anyway i noticed they finally got the goddamn code up onto CVS rehopsary, so i'm like cool, downloaded it and loaded it up and started to compile it, then bam over 140+ compilation error poped up, not including warning and so forth, so i'm like oh sweet jesus, this is bad, then i begun to go though the code file by file and line by line, hunting down as much errors as i could.
My code i had no problem with because i had good document, i on top of each methoid i had an document explaining the varriables required, and what that methoid does, then inside the code itself i had comment explaining fuzzy and unclear part, anyway so basically you could read my code and read the comment and have an easier time trying to grasp my logical structure of the code and grasping the logic behide some of my design choices for the code.
but to my horror, NOTHING of their code was even documented, they all had short cryptical 2 or 3 line explaining what this file was for, and then that was it, there was no document in the code, no comment, no nothing, then there's a bunch of cryptical varriable names such as better, and bitters, and then i as i read though i found many many undefined, uninitalized varriables, and so forth, quite a few of the errors were mistyped varriables and so forth, then i went though and found many many dupicate code, they had 2 or 3 IF's stack just copied and pasted all scattered cross the code, and even had one that was right next to eachother that was the same damn copy.
if i was coding i would had only one or two stack of if statement, but they had 2-3 dupicate stack of statement that were the same, often in a list right next to eachothers like someone went little nuts with the copy and paste keys.
then oh god, the code had no syle and indentation, its all scattered all over, one line had 3 space, next line had 15 space, then next line was 8 or 9 entery key down, etc.... had entire page of white space seperating parts of the code from eachothers, then had plenty of idioms and so forth in the code such as the famiour tetary operation which is " ( test ) ? (true) : ( false) " or something like that, it tests something if true does this, if false does that. its the only tetary function in c++ and java. now an stack of if statement can be complex sometime but if properly indented can be easy to read.
however try to manage an stack of tetary statement such as
" (test 1) ? (test2) ? (true2) : (test3) ? (true3) : (false3) : (False2) : (test4) ? (true4) : (false4) "
or something, try to evaulate thaat will you please, its a ****ing headache to evaulate. there's 4 tests, with 8 possiable or so outcome all crammed into one line. talk about headache.
anyway with heavy heart i went on to try my best to fix as much errors as i could, but there were many fundimental flaw or misunderstanding, in other word theyre trying to do something with c++ that's blantly impossiable, theyre taking the ideas from java, and the java idioms and trying to force it into c++ which obiviously will fail.
anyway sorry for this long rant, but i just had to vent the entire thing, and i'm now consdering to withdraw from the course to save my GPA, because i'm feeling very ****ty right now, about the entire course, and would feel alots better to retake it with an better group the second time, an group who actualy knew what the **** theyre doing.
so what you guys think
Echoman: If I can create energy from stupidity, the world's power supply will never end...