Library System Evaluation
The next section is a personal opinion and critism about 451 and the projects in general. It is not intended to be entirely part of the evaluation. If you are blind and don't like to hear negative comments, you might as well head back to the Evaluation Index
Otherwise, scroll down a few pages...(I could have made a nice link, but
since Web quality means nothing, just use that scrollbar. Down.)
The Web
It saves a forest, and is kind of fun. However, I'm a little bitter about
several things. First of all - the asthetic quality of the documents played
absolutely NO part in the marking. Say what you want about the Grading
scheme; there were no points taken off if a document was crappy.
Do I sound Bitter? Damn straight. This is my chance to bitch and I intend to.
People took their reports, stuck them all into one massive file, and then put headers around it. This is pointless. If you are going to use the Web, use it properly. The advantage to using the Web is that you can finally divide the massive documents into small pieces, and only print or read the sections you want. You can leap to other sections, or read the whole thing. People who just lump it into one file are just being Web-Lazy IMHO. No credit is given to people who actually make an effort to use the features of the Web.
The course overall. Well, the idea is good. But, I hate to say it, the way the marks are distributed sucks. Making these huge documents that no one actually reads is pointless. Isn't that what the industry is learning? That you have to make documents that are practical, and will actually be used. Our system rocks, (That means it is good), and we did it by using the documentation as a minor guide. Not as a bible.
If it was up to me, the grade of the final system would be weighted much more heavily. In other words, if the Supplier doesn't document and doen't get feed-back, they will get nailed in the presentation, not by someone with a marking pen.
This should make it a little clearer: We got B's on our documents. Our final project kicked butt and satisfied all the customer requirements. The customer group was stunned, and couldn't come up with anything to say that we missed. So they had to ask about things that we added and were optional. I just bet that they get nailed on their mark, which is unfortunate.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have a group that has gotten A's on every single document. Their final project was a disaster. They skiped functions and entire sections. The thing crashed repeatatly. But I'll bet my bacon that they get a better mark than Nexus. That is my beef with this course, and I can say it is felt by many other members, both within and outside Nexus Corp.
Any group who blames bombing or crashes on their operating system should be taken out and shot. Using the old "Windows is to blame" is crappola. If you arn't confident in the OS, then don't use it. It's called Blame Shifting and it's something the North American culture is real good at. This extends to professors, polititians and eveyone else.
Oh, getting Midterms back before finals would be nice too...
Now that that is out of the way, I have to say that the course wasn't that bad. Doing a semester project in a large group is a practical experience that can only help in the real world. I mean that. Sure it was tough, but I think it was worth it. Just felt too much like an english class.
Now all we need is a unix editor with a decent spell checker.