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Meh, I kind of just wanted some advice from TLers. I know I'm not known, but I may as well try, right?
I'm currently a 2nd year Computer Science major, and my biggest class is Software Engineering, which is where you study about software project design, software standards for functionality and GUI design, dealing with the work place with regards to meetings/projects/presentations, and proper software architecture.
But I'm not looking for ways to improve my grade or anything.
I have a project group of 3 people (this includes myself). I guess we're stereotypical, at least according to a buddy of mine who already went through the class; one guy has no idea what he's doing (admits it too), one guy acts like he knows everything but doesn't do his share of work and really doesn't understand anything (never shows up for class), and I do the majority of the work because I'm forced to.
While the know-it-all is trying to better his workload (finally), and the guy who can't program is handling all the required documentation for the final presentation, I'm stuck having to rewrite a poor prototype we had for our software that is supposed to write code for you, basically just like how an IDE such as Eclipse or NetBeans will, but obviously less powerful, although it should create a class and everything a class needs to compile, with comments included and the ability to load/save projects and write them out to a .java file (this is for Java, by the way).
Well, dammit, the guy who knows-it-all made the prototype, and I had about 9000+ arguments trying to tell him it was a piece of crap. The thing was coupled (which isn't good) beyond reason and EVERYTHING was public in it, plus he had some unnecessary classes added in. He was proud of himself too, and thought I was ridiculous for saying it didn't make sense. Not only that, it took me a long time to figure out how the code worked, thanks to no documentation. Man, editing that to make it readable and presentable was horrible. I'm not a great coder myself, but the stuff he messed up was basic stuff we were learning in that class. Not only that, it didn't even fit in with our original UML designs (which is preparatory diagramming that shows relationships with all the objects in your project).
Needless to say, the teacher told us a full redesign was necessary. It wasn't a terrible grade because the presentation was good, but it was our worse one (70%) and it's horribly unfit for the final presentation.
So I have to switch over to code I wrote that we didn't use originally because I couldn't get something to work, but eventually figured out. It follows design patterns more aligned with what the teacher wants, but I have to tell him that all that code was useless. I mean, I guess I don't know how to do it. Just tell him? Being blunt tends to be a problem. Or should I share with the teacher his incompetence throughout the year?
I don't want to have another damn argument with this guy. I had way too many coding the prototype. And if he doesn't listen, then we'll end up with 2 finished projects and a shoddy presentation. Plus he gets a grade for not doing shit.
So, how do you tell people news like that? Got any advice to lighten the blow/avoid an argument? Any way to avoid hurting his pride?
Or will I just have to take it?
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You can try to switch the blame over to the teacher. You can say that you appreciate his code, but this class is all about pleasing the teacher so you guys have gotta suck it up and just do what it takes to get you the grade.
What works for me is to tell my project partners that "i talked to the teacher personally but he wants this." and when they respond "that's retarded" then you just say "yeah i completely agree but I rather get a good grade right now then making this into a bigger issue."
Sort of a "uniting under the common evil" kind of thing.
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Ahh... I was in a similar situation this semester as well, but in my communications class. We tried talking to the teacher about it, but she pulled that "you guys are adults, handle it yourself" crap on us. As much as hate to say she was useless for saying that, I can't exactly blame her either. I was in a group of 4, and one of my partners did his share of work, while the other two were complete imbeciles. I tried to compensate for their lack of work and help, but we still ended up getting 33% on the final presentation. Every member of the group shares the same mark, so there was no way I could have gotten a decent mark despite me doing more than my share. It really sucks and it's an unlucky situation, but I don't see what you can honestly do. You can talk to them about it and try to reason with them, but if they don't clean up their act there's nothing you can do.
+ Show Spoiler +I had about 9000+ arguments !!!
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On April 26 2010 15:47 Grobyc wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I had about 9000+ arguments !!!
I swear we really had that many back-and-forths. Instead of trying to fix the code I had already started, he isolated himself and wrote all his own code. Then he told me to edit it and make a presentation out of it and left. It sucks because he didn't really do shit with the other 3 presentations before it. I mean, at least he tried on this one, but his efforts were in vain. Now I have to break it to him that his code wasn't useful. If he refuses to do anything, then yeah, I just have to deal with it, especially with the deadline approaching fast.
On April 26 2010 15:43 shindigs wrote:
You can try to switch the blame over to the teacher. You can say that you appreciate his code, but this class is all about pleasing the teacher so you guys have gotta suck it up and just do what it takes to get you the grade.
What works for me is to tell my project partners that "i talked to the teacher personally but he wants this." and when they respond "that's retarded" then you just say "yeah i completely agree but I rather get a good grade right now then making this into a bigger issue."
Sort of a "uniting under the common evil" kind of thing.
Well, at least the other member agrees with me. And really, that sounds like he'd buy it. He has that whole "Just get it done," personality. He just wants it his way. I guess I want it my way too, but I did try to fix his code at the very least, but that was before the teacher expressed his concern with it.
Basically, imagine a jumbled mess of classes and odd organization that did work, but was useless to the user because it didn't really tell them intuitively what did what unless you had tons of documentation and comments. Plus, the classes all relied to heavily on each other, and couldn't do anything alone. Not that they needed to outside the scope of the class, but the point of the class was to make cohesive code that could work well together, but also work alone.
Thanks for that idea.
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EPT
