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So a potential employer has asked me to write a game in flash as part of the interview. He said following tutorials is fine but all code must be your own, fairly standard. So naturally I go find a relevant tutorial and follow it to the letter the first time around to make sure it all works and I understand how it works. Then I go about trying to code the thing again from scratch for submission but I find that the tutorial did a lot things in what I feel to be the most optimal way.
So I find myself in a predicament where deviating from the tutorial and trying to write original code will end up having the code be complex for the sake of being complex and different. Doing the things the most optimal and simplest way results in my code looking essentially cut and paste from the tutorial, which makes me nervous and feel guilty.
The original tutorial was done entirely in 1 file in an essentially procedural manner so the main difference between my work and the tutorial is that mine is split into classes in what I feel to be a fairly logical layout where everything is designed for optimal re-usability, extensibility, and readability.
However, like I said before, there are a number of functions that might as well be copy and pasted they are so close. It feels like I'm trying to break down a "Hello World" program and rewrite it so it looks original. The tutorial's stuff seems like it's as simple as it can be done and doing largely anything else would be making things more complex and less optimized for the sake of originality.
So, what should I do? Do I turn it in knowing full well certain functions look borderline identical to the tutorial and be prepared to defend myself by saying what I've said above. Or do I make the program needlessly more complex and less optimized for the sake of originality?
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Just use the code. The functions that you have trouble with looks to be fairly low level work which can be implemented with a bit of time and effort. Just comment the code and explain what the function does so you can prove that you do understand it.
Any decent software employer will not expect you to code everything from the scratch as in a work environment you are unlikely to code common low level things.
Unless you can think of a way to implement the function in a different way to reduce complexity or overhead. And if you do that make sure your interviewer sees it.
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Thanks for the advice. We'll see how it goes.
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Generally you go about doing "program x" by learning how to program x rather than using someones implementation and working backwards. Now you see the original as the holy grail of perfect coding so you have a somewhat distorted view compared to as if you'd learned the principles and built it from the ground up. As long as your code is original (no copy/paste), clean, commented and reusable you should be fine.
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CA10830 Posts
lol R1CH sick icon hahaha
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- Make sure the code chunk you're copying is open source/freely available.
- Make sure it's just a small section of your program, include it, and cite the source in a comment.
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Thanks guys.
Off topic: That is indeed a badass icon R1CH, MTG rules.
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EPT
