scott wrote:

> The best part was the robot design project.  We were put into teams of 6 
> and told to make a robot that drove around a track marked by white lines 
> on a black board and picked up containers.  The containers would either 
> be empty or full, and we had to move the containers to the appropriate 
> bin.  In most teams 2 people actually made the robot mechanics, 2 did 
> the electronics (motor drive control, interface to PC, etc) and 2 did 
> the software.  Was really good fun, especially as the quicker your robot 
> completed the task the more points you got.

We did a "software development project". This is where a team of (IIRC) 
6 of us got together to plan, design, build and test a "large" piece of 
software, and exhibit it at a show.

Of course, of the 6 people in the group, I was the only one who knew how 
to program. So this "project" consisted of the following:

- We all sat round a table, and we're like "OK, so what are we gonna make?"
- After a while, we decide what to build, and generate a few design 
ideas. "Do you think you can do that, Andrew?" "Yeah, probably." "OK 
mate, sounds like a plan."
- I sit in a corner by myself, building and testing the program. Every 
now and then another team member will casually ask me how it's going. I 
tell them it's going OK. They smile and nodd, and wander off.

Fortunately, for this particular module, most of the marks are for 
producing all the pretty GANT charts and all the project-management 
garbage, and not for actually producing a working product.

[The urge to insert something about software consultants here is 
overwhelming!]

Which is just as well - my "product" was a trivial job searching engine 
that would have taken about 3 seconds if I had used a real database 
engine rather than manually full-scanning flat files held entirely in 
RAM. >_<

Can you spell "not scalable", "lost update problem" and "security"?

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