Thank You

The end of an assignment marks the start of, not 1, but 2 assignments. The pace of this module is crazy. I am beginning to understand why Prof Ben is also known as the “evil professor”, he reminds me of Brain in “Pinky and the Brain” who harbours an evil intention to takeover the world.

I ran into Prof Ben in Science canteen in the afternoon and this was what he said:

Ben: You all are still alive ah?
Me: The entire week the timings that I left school are: 11:00pm, 11:15pm, 11:15pm, 2am.
Ben: But you look damn happy.
Me: Pain is good, it reminds me that I am alive.

The last line is a quote from one of my warrant officers in the army, who used to be in the Special Operation Force (SOF).

Working on the Facebook application has been, in chronological order, painful, agonizing, fruitful. I have to admit that our application may not be one of a very high level of complexity in terms of programming, but considering our individual background, I would believe that every one in the team has accomplished quite a bit in completing the assignment.

Initially, I was quite pleased to be working with people who have similar personalities. However, after reading the comment that Prof Ben made on Shannon’s blog post, I felt a bit worried that we might be unable to cope with the technical aspects for the assignment as there were effectively only 1.5 programmers in the team.

Reflecting on what I have done…… <<reflecting...>> … <<Done - Not much to reflect upon>>

To be frank, I have not done much other than to create the Invite page (which is merely copying and pasting a piece of code obtained on the internet and changing the variables) and to come up with the style sheet for the application.

Something that I learnt about myself in this project is that I hate the feeling of being unable to contribute – really, really hate the feeling. Therefore, when I failed to get the Publisher to work, I felt so terrible that I decided to seek advice from Prof Ben last Saturday. He suggested that since I have some experience using LaTeX, it would be easy for me to learn CSS which will be critical in creating a decent UI (which I recall Prof Ben describing it as one which “cannot make it” as of last Saturday). My only regret is not being able to learn the relevant languages fast enough to help out in the programming aspects. I hope my team appreciates my contributions (albeit insignificant) to the project.

Here’s a big Thank You note to my team with whom I survived the first ordeal in cs3216.

Jonathan the Magician

You are a wizard, literally and metaphorically. Even till now, it seems magical to me how you manage to lead a team of 4 people, all of whom have little programming experience*, to churn out a Facebook application. As you have mentioned in your blog, I felt that you might have been a bit foolish to have chosen 2 Lone Rangers in your group (clearly, we wouldn’t be able to help much in the programming aspects). However, it turns out that the less we knew, kind of means the more we would be able to learn. I cannot imagine the agony that you and Cong went through to get the code to work. I apologize if I have been unable or took way too long to accomplish some of the ‘random things’ that you tasked. If only I have been smarter.

Shannon the Artist

Your artwork brought life to our application which would be dull without it and your presence lightens the mood within the team. Thank you for the coffee, snacks and ice-lemon tea, (which I have no intentions of paying back in anyway :p) After yesterday’s meeting, I know how to cheer you up le: just show you my matriculation card.

Ken the Mathematician

You are simply amazing! Your dedication to making the application work is admirable, you should catch up on some sleep if you can. I believe, in no time, you will become an excellent programmer, well-versed in multiple languages. It is mind-blowing to know that you just started learning programming only in the previous semester and you managed to be the top 5 students for cs1101s. Lastly, thank you for making the Publisher work, it is something that would never be able to figure out on my own.




*Brief background of my team:
Jonathon: electrical engineer, last computing module was about a year ago.
Ken (Cong): year 1 computing major who started programming about 7 months ago.
Shannon : accountant-to-be, non-programmer, designer.
Me : non-programmer, non-designer.