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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.

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