CITS2002 Programming and Systems - Project 2 Feedback
Q: Do you have suggestions/comments to assist the planning of the 2nd
CITS2002 project for next year?
Keep doing what you're doing.
Thanks :-)
Run a tutorial session on how to start the project, to give everyone
a basic idea of how to approach the problem code-wise.
Extra tutor supervised lab sessions during the last week the project
is due, to help nut out the little errors which prevent your code
from working as desired. Otherwise it can take hours/days (& most
of your sanity) to figure out that you need something to be a
pointer, or you've put the wrong variable into a fseek or fwrite.
Either release the project sooner, or have it due at the start of
study week to give extra time to work on it. Many units have
projects/reports (often of equal or greater value) due around the
same time, so even though I worked consistently on the project, I
couldn't complete it to my satisfaction given the constraints imposed
by other unit course work.
I think the project should be more detailed in order to help the
students to have a general understanding.
Not directly related to the project, but I can't find a better place
to say this -- It would be really nice if lecturers (in general)
would release all their teaching content as a .tar/.zip file (with
the option to include/exclude lecture recordings) instead of having
to scrape through the webpage. But thumbs up for having an external
webpage that didn't require LMS login.
Two simple suggestions: make it more difficult content wise, or
make the deadline 1 day.
The project was teaching/providing practice for a number of things
like pointers, structs, multiple source files, system functions,
etc. But I would say that about 40% through is when it stopped being
about these things, and started being about simply putting all the
bricks together in the right way. Ie, the student soon had to think
more about how this particular puzzle wanted to be put together,
than about new coding/OS concepts. Since that took the majority of
the time/thought, I found that to be a bit of a dull grind. A lot
of "You've already applied this, now apply it again in another
direction. And again." It did make for good practise as a result
however.
Seemed large for its 20% relative to other units' assessments.
However it appears as well that the amount of thought that went
into its creation is also greater than for other units' assessments,
and that is much appreciated.
Don't assume every student has prior knowledge of programming. Also
try to make the labs more interactive - maybe have the tutor explain
the main concepts for the first 10-15 minutes so it's easier for
the less-experienced students to learn what they need to.
The time required to be spent on projects seems to be quite high
relative to other assessments. If there is a way of reducing this
(maybe it's a function of programming experience), then it will
achieve the right balance between interest, challenge and assessment.
There was a bit of duplication on the discussion board (a few days
apart), so a little more cross-thread linking would avoid having
to ask/answer the same question twice. Overall, much letter
discussion on Project 2 than Project 1 so this might mean it was
more easily understood and people had a better handle on it.
It might have been better if the sample program was fully up and
running a little earlier, that said having something like the viewer
is very useful for confirming the correctness of a solution.
Overall the second project is a good project. It did relate to the
material that was taught but I feel like my programming skills is
not up to par to finish the project. However, as for the first
project I wish that had a more general case rather than infusing
operating systems concepts into it.
Q: Any comments or suggestions about the nature of the project?
I found this project quite enjoyable as it gave interesting insight
into the nature of file systems.
The viewer was exceptionally helpful and I found the assignment to
be rigorously defined which aided in understanding the requirements
of the program and assisted in my development of a solution.
This was, hands down, the most enjoyable project I have ever done
being both challenging and interesting.
I found the project very difficult, particularly as to how to start.
Significant time was spent trying to: firstly, understand the
problem, and secondly how to go about starting. The 'put' function
was definitely the hardest, but once that was done, the others could
mostly be derived from it. The project was also particularly tricky,
because very minor mistakes could cause errors or improper output.
The sample viewer was a life saver, and really helped to determine
if the program worked correctly. However, it also gave a false sense
of security, as whilst manual entry using the viewer showed things
to be working correctly, my code failed to run on the tester, and
this was something I only found out in the last couple of days. It
would have been better if both programs required the same input
structure.
I found the project too repetitive, elementary, and ultimately too
easy. When I saw the assignment, I thought to myself, "is this
high school?" In order to stop myself from falling asleep while
doing this assignment, I had to drink 5 cans of Red Bull a day
(don't do this kids). Then again, I went to Perth Modern.
You did go over a few different parts of the project during
lectures/tutorials which was better than last project, but I still
found it very very time consuming and insanely difficult for a unit
that you need no pre-requisites for.
The project outline was more detailed and clear than the first
project which make it much easier to complete to spec.
I found the project to be very much a learning experience with
regards to how files are actually stored. It confirmed to me how
all files are really just a sequence of bytes and what they are for
depends on how they are interpreted.
Useful topic - giving insight into the inner workings of the computer
in a practical way.
The operating system concepts involved seemed much easier than the
first project. Also as many source files were included already
choosing how to structure the project was not too tricky.
Too Hard
It was some good stuff, felt like more of a hard slog than the first
project though which I felt was more enjoyable to solve.
