Last minute project panic

delta555 · 10 Feb 2006 at 11:54

Ive been working on my second year C++ lab (pivot sort, mortgage calculator and maze solver) since the last term. It has been going steadily, but then i fell ill for a week and couldnt work, so i was essencially a week behind on my schedule. So for the past 3 days i have been working really hard to finish the code and the technical report for them. We have to submit it in paper and via internal network. So, the deadline for the web one is 5 this afternoon, and on the website it didnt even mention the hand in date for the print out version.

so i was in the computer lab in between lectures at about 10 this morning, and some of the people from my course come up to me and say 'you do know its in for noon'

AAARRGH

I was planning on having the whole afternoon to finish it.

Long story short, i finished all the tweaking of the code, and the finishing touches to my report. Its not as good as if i had the whole afternoon, but im at least moderately happy with it. And i handed it in at 11:45.

Anyway, has anybody else had any close calls with handing in coursework?

Visage · 10 Feb 2006 at 11:58

I remember my masters dissertation pulling 3 all nighters in a row, getting it bound and handed in with about 10 minutes to spare.

Given that i'd had a year to do it, it was a shocking piece of time-management. I'd like to think i've improved since, but i havent.....

semi-pro waster · 10 Feb 2006 at 12:11

Pretty much all of my first year while doing Computer Games Technology I was handing work in either just before or even just after deadlines(I did have an excuse as the uni network died) although my tardiness was at least in part due to a lack of interest when I realised I didn't like the course much. I still passed though

Since I changed subjects I've been better and always handed in on time if not a couple of days before, still some close calls but nowhere near as bad.

Brynn · 10 Feb 2006 at 12:14

I payed someone to do some C++ programming I had to do

Vonhelmet · 10 Feb 2006 at 12:15

When I was at Durham I wound up doing a group project in my final year. It was a web based PHP photo gallery thing. All the mixed science types (like me) got put in one group and I was the only one who was even half good at programming and certainly the only one who knew PHP.

I managed to get the two girls in my team (the advantage of being with mixed scientists - about the only fitties in a comp sci class) to learn PHP and do some coding, and realised one of the lads would never get it, so got him doing documentation and testing and stuff. The problem was the other lad, who claimed to be good at programming, but wasn't.

In the crunch weeks of the project I was putting everyone's code together, testing it, fixing it and so on. This lad finally concedes to me, after much nagging, that his code isn't working at all. On the final night we all stayed up in one of the labs and worked solidly. Heh. We got in trouble with the premises officers for trying to bring a load of beer in to the computer lab, so after a while we gave up sneaking it in and had to go stand in the car park and drink it like a bunch of scallies. We ordered pizzas at about 2 or something absurd. The girls and the other guy left at about 4 and me and inept lad stayed till 9 in the morning (deadline at 12 - yay) while I recoded about 800 lines of non-functioning PHP. I must have been writing pure garbage by the end of it, but it just about worked. I made him sit there and watch because I was so hacked off that he'd strung me along and left me in the lurch.

Bottom line - it worked. Just. We didn't get that good a grade for it. I did get extra marks for having done the vast bulk of the work though.

On reflection, I should have just done some research and taken some GPL software like Coppermine or Gallery2 and changed a few bits around. After all, they always went on about code reuse in our software engineering lectures!

big_white_dog84 · 10 Feb 2006 at 12:33

I usually get the work finished at least the day before, but I find that printing and binding is always more time consuming than you think - I always devote at least a full working day to printing and binding substantial reports.

CLAWS · 10 Feb 2006 at 12:47

Oh boy some fond memories...

Oracle assignment. Given 3 months to do it. Didnt have a clue on what to do and how so just left it.

Waited until the weekend before the absolute hand in time (monday morning at 09:00 when all the coursework bins are emptied to be sorted out).

48 hours of non stop work, copying from books, the web and just general waffling. There were 3 groups of 4 in one bedroom. We all had laptops and 2 printers amongst us. Managed to get it done and ripped it all the way to UCE Digbeth from Handsworth and had it handed in for 08:58.

Got 85% for it - Thanx Jam - RIP old friend