This week has been very disappointing. The second project was due this week and it was the first project in my entire college career that I could not complete. This is the first major assignment in 7 years that I will have gotten a zero on, and it is not because my program didn't work. On my own machine it got the correct output and passed many peoples acceptance tests, and many more random ones that I created.
I will be getting a zero on this project because I couldn't get the online resource, UVa to run my solution in less than 3 seconds. All of Wednesday afternoon and evening (8 p.m. – 3 a.m.), Thursday (9 a.m. – 5 p.m.) and Friday afternoon (2 p.m. – 7 p.m.), was spent trying to fix this issue. All of Friday I was working with the grader of the project, and nothing we could do worked to get my solution accepted on UVa.
Understanding that it is a requirement for the project there should be a penalty for it not passing UVa. Why though, is it one of the requirements for not getting a zero. This class is entitled “Object Oriented Programming” and I am so disappointed that I will not be able to receive any credit for the work I spent on this project. This isn't a dent that will cause me to fail the class, but it is incredibly unlikely that I will be able to get an A.
This project is an example of why I have mixed feelings for Glenn Downing’s classes, both Software Engineering and OOP. I love the logistical way that is classes are organized and run. His lectures are engaging and the uses of quizzes are great. It’s the subject matter of everything that puts me on edge. I feel that thus far we haven’t really discussed anything in context of Object Oriented Programming. Our reading has been over this subject, but it never seems to come into context of what we talk about and do for the class.
I would love to have class lectures that expanded on those readings. I would love to have the projects be discussed in scope of what the book talks about.
As an example this project would have been great. It was fun project to design from an OOP standpoint. You had multiple structures to implement and use; the ballots, candidates, ect. The sad thing is that we never talk about this nor will we do a post mortem in class about what would have been good or bad.
I was hoping this class would be more related to its subject matter than software engineering, but it seems that it may not be. It is still early in the semester, so maybe things will be different. We will just have to see.