Major project: Does it pay off? (1 Viewer)

[Danskies]

I've got two weeks left until I have to submit my MDP, and I'm still rushing to get enough functionality into the program (my teacher's famously unpredictable and whimsical about what impresses him) and compile all my documentation.

All up I've probably spent upwards of 100 hours on this project, when you consider the time spent designing it, programming it and doing the torrents of documentation - all for 25% of my assessment mark. Compare that to the recent English assessment I had, where we sat in a room for 75 minutes and wrote an essay worth 15%, or the speech I did for Modern that took me 5 hours the previous night to right and 5 minutes in class to present that was worth 20% (and which I went spectacularly well in). How does that work?

Friends of mine at other schools have said that basically all they're expected to submit is the finished product, the source code and a 5-10 page "report".

And then recently I discover that, unlike all other MDP's, it'll be marked by my teacher, not external markers! There goes equality!

So here I am readying literally hundreds of pages of various documentation of the stages in a desperate effort to successfully compete with the other members of my class - which is extremely difficult, as there's only six of us!

How the hell is this a fair situation, and is it in any way worth it? I'm having a lot of trouble justifying this to myself; my trials start next week, and this is due smack in the middle of them. I should be spending all my time working on them, not some stupid bullshit flash game!

Let's have none of that "should have finished it over the holidays" nonsense - in the last week of term 2 they sprung 5 unexpected assessments on me when we'd been told there was nothing left until the trials!

 

[DeathB4Life]

i also feel like ive put in way too much time into the project. so far probably ~35 hours programming, +~5 hours documentation, +~5 hours just learning to get the feel of VB (compared to my other two partners who have probably spent a total of around 4-8 hours)

in terms of (time spent:total weighing), i feel like ive wasted alot of time, but also learnt a fair few things.

 

[hstanley]

I am being accelerated for SDD, and I feel like I have the same sort of teacher! One thing is good enough, then its not good enough, and I have to start all over!
Well mine is due tomorrow, and I have set aside most of my year 11 tasks to work on this. I have been told to study at least an hour a night and it is really affecting my other subjects.
And only for 25%! If it was worth more it MIGHT add up to the amount of hours I have put into this.

- HS

 

[Mountain.Dew]

i can empathise with all of you here. when i did the HSC, most of my classmates had the same problem with their tasks. they all had to rush through their documentation and projects. i find one major problem - documenting your process as u go along!

u were suppose to document and comment WHILE you are working on your project, not as a last minute 'report' or something u do at the very end. documentation is there once u started the project until the final seconds of its completion. if u are spending too much time churning out pages and pages of notes to get it to look like 'documentation', u have it the wrong way around. THIS IS A WARNING TO 07ers and 08ers. never leave documentation to the last minute!

at this time, sadly there is no choice but to continue on with what you are doing.

it is also a good idea, at the end, to write up a page reflecting on your project - what went really well, what went wrong, what could be improved. this should be a last entry in your process diary and make sure your teacher sees it and reads it!

 

[Danskies]

You're definitely spot on with the documentation tip there Mountain Dew, but even having done probably about 60% of what is required while I was doing the project, I feel that it just detracts too strongly from the actual project. Internal and intrinsic documentation is easy, but the endless flowcharts and structure diagrams and DFDs and IPO charts are a pain and don't help at all - the only genuinely useful tool is the data dictionary.

The first thing they teach you about the structured approach to development is that its prime disadvantages are that it requires a lot of time, a lot of money and, most importantly, a large team; that said, they then proceed to make us use the structured approach for our MDPs! Very silly.

 

[Mountain.Dew]

You're definitely spot on with the documentation tip there Mountain Dew, but even having done probably about 60% of what is required while I was doing the project, I feel that it just detracts too strongly from the actual project. Internal and intrinsic documentation is easy, but the endless flowcharts and structure diagrams and DFDs and IPO charts are a pain and don't help at all - the only genuinely useful tool is the data dictionary.

hmmm i would disagree with that. your process diary (or whatever u want to call it) is a listing of all your thoughts, ideas and musings on paper - all these ideas are the sole contributors to your project, assuming u document all important stuff relevant to the project. hence, your progress and/or completion of your project should be, theoretically, a reflection on your thought and decision making processes - and all this wacky stuff must be documented.

im not trying to have an argument with you, i just felt that your statement doesnt seem...'right'. i wish that no harms were done to you, Danskies!

and your point about the endless diagrams - i guess this is up to the school to decide whether to have these models or not. i know that i didnt have to, but definitely the gantt chart, data dictionary and source code is part of standard criteria.

peace, M.D.

 

[Danskies]

Oh, I absolutely agree on the progress diary - I've filled two entire notebooks full of ideas and ramblings which I'm in the process of typing up and making coherent, and my official "log book" is about 25 pages long.

My main problem is with the diagrams and such. Here's a sampling of things we need to hand in that I don't understand the purpose of and basically think are a waste of time:
- DFDs
- system flowcharts
- prototype (why the structured process would have a prototype confounds me)
- hierarchy chart
- BNF, EBNF, railroad diagrams (a definite 'what the')

There's quite a lot of other stuff but I couldn't entirely be bothered to find the sheet right now.

I loved doing this project, and I have a hell of a lot of documentation, but the nature of my teacher is such that even if I hand in hundreds and hundreds of pages of documentation he won't award me over a certain level if I'm missing one single irrelevant design tool, even if I've made up for it many times over with the rest of what I've done.

That's why I was so disappointed to discover that it's internally marked. Imagine the uproar if Art, Industrial Design & Furnishing, Music or Drama were marked internally!

 

[live.fast]

hey wud u mind sendin me ur major project? im in yr 11 and im doing one too, and i need an idea for what sumfink like dat wud look like at da end...i mean da documentation, i dont actualli want da program lol

just need a 'format' for my major project!

=)

 

[Mountain.Dew]

Oh, I absolutely agree on the progress diary - I've filled two entire notebooks full of ideas and ramblings which I'm in the process of typing up and making coherent, and my official "log book" is about 25 pages long.

DONT TYPE IT UP. there is no need to do that. a log book is meant to be messy, and have all these random doodles on it. this is a better reflection of your ideas and ramblings than trying to type it up. if you want to type it up as data backup, sure, no problems, by all means, DO TYPE IT UP. but please dont type it up for the sake of making it neat for the teachers to mark.

that comment aside, i strongly suggest that important 'events' or turning points in your entire project-making process (e.g. using a new language, pondering on what format to present your solution, etc...) should be neat and/or typed.

My main problem is with the diagrams and such. Here's a sampling of things we need to hand in that I don't understand the purpose of and basically think are a waste of time:
- DFDs
- system flowcharts
- prototype (why the structured process would have a prototype confounds me)
- hierarchy chart
- BNF, EBNF, railroad diagrams (a definite 'what the')

the purpose of doing all these models is, i suppose to get you to practise your modelling for the actual HSC exam. i guess this would be the teacher's rationale. u are doing the project, and at the same time, studying for the final exam. just my opinion.

 

[Sober]

I did my entire project in 3 days (including documentation etc.), around 1500 lines of code. However I have wasted ridiculous amounts of time on personal recreational coding projects.

 

[dddman]

bullshit, typical boser. acting all tough and shit so that ppl think hes a fucking champion well its quite obvious hes a pure dickead

 

[ianc]

Before you start throwing insults have a look at my final project, it will run straight in the browser if you are using firefox: Link

jeez, looks pretty good for 3 days work (although it crashed my computer when i clicked "render")



Yeah I agree, it's not worth putting in hundreds of hours into the major project, because it is after all only another assessment task. Calling it a major project is a mistake anyway, because it's not like the externally marked projects of D&T and Art which are actually important.

You'll probably end up with a very polished product in the end if you did put in an exorbitant amount of time; but think of all the time that has taken away from other equally important subjects.

Anyway, it's more important to stay up to scratch on theory work than to get hung up on 1 assessment, as this is what will ultimately count in the trial and the HSC...

 

[priesty]

our Major Project was worth the same amount as our Trial HSC Exam so my class was compelled to put heaps of effort into it. But, our teacher gave us approximately 3/4 of a term to work on it in class, so many of us were able to get a very polished product in the end, and the theory we have already mostly covered anyway so we are ready for trials and for the HSC exams.

so i guess you have to look at weightings that your internal assessments have in order to decide whether or not its worth puting in as much effort.

 

[syper]

And here is something I did in my spare time: 3D Tetris

nice game

 

[Danskies]

DONT TYPE IT UP. there is no need to do that. a log book is meant to be messy, and have all these random doodles on it. this is a better reflection of your ideas and ramblings than trying to type it up. if you want to type it up as data backup, sure, no problems, by all means, DO TYPE IT UP. but please dont type it up for the sake of making it neat for the teachers to mark.

Oh how I would love not to type it up.

My teacher is what many people would refer to as an 'idiot', you see. Anything that's not completely immaculate and, essentially, perfect, is not taken account when marking - it's completely and utterly ignored, as if it's not there. Even when he marked 5% of the project at the four different stages of the process (which were wildly out of proportion with the time required to complete them and seemed to ignore the fact that SDD is not in fact my only subject) he wouldn't accept flowcharts / diagrams / notes / log book entries if they were handwritten (however neatly), and if the amount of it that was typed up was less than met the assessment criteria for that stage, he would N-Award us - all because for a small check-up worth 5 out of the total 100 for the project set an an inappropriate and unfair time we decided to use a pencil and ruler to do a structure diagram instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a decent software package.

I was going "gg" quite a lot.

At any rate, it's finish now, to the detriment of my results in most of my trial exams.

 

[hstanley]

yeah, my log book was two exercise books stuffed with drawings, thoughts, pictures etc stapled together

 

[watkinzez]

Seems like it paid off for me. 36/40, second in class.

 

[nato4]

totally beat you watty... 64/70 overall 37/40 for phase II...
best way to do sdd is:

s p r e a d i t o u t . . .

over the year then you get less pressure. alternatively just be as ulti good as me and win because of your attractiveness/fact that you wear glasses...

 

[Mountain.Dew]

totally beat you watty... 64/70 overall 37/40 for phase II...
best way to do sdd is:

s p r e a d i t o u t . . .

over the year then you get less pressure. alternatively just be as ulti good as me and win because of your attractiveness/fact that you wear glasses...

hahahahahaha 'attractiveness'...'wear glasses'

no, u are right, nato4. THIS IS ADVICE FOR HSC 07ers spread out your project over the year so u get little bit by little bit done. just chip away at the block, and eventually, you will get it done when the time comes.

 

[watkinzez]

totally beat you watty... 64/70 overall 37/40 for phase II...
best way to do sdd is:

s p r e a d i t o u t . . .

over the year then you get less pressure. alternatively just be as ulti good as me and win because of your attractiveness/fact that you wear glasses...

Hey. Hey.

Hey.

Screw you.

Yeah.