©1996-2009 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74) Whether Mark Twain actually said this is debatable.
I have discussed most of the projects many times at length over the last decades on BIX which retained all postings in archives.
Pretty well everything I have to say about each project is spelled out here. I don’t have extra material to give you, unless I explicitly mention it. I don’t have the time to lead you by the hand through a project. If one project is too difficult to tackle at your current level of skill, pick a simpler one.
If you are unemployed, or just out of school, you might hone your skills by tackling some of these projects. They are more like the real world problems you will be given in the workplace. In the real world you have to write the specifications too. They are not handed to you on a plate the way they are in school. I give you many hints on how to solve the problems, far more than you would get in the workplace. These problems are intermediate in degree of hand-holding between school and the workplace.
I would be happy to implement any of these projects for you, for a fee, though I do not do homework.
Students imagine I have complete detailed specs written on every class. The key skill students must learn is writing the spec, and doing the overall design of a decently large project. Any boob can code given a detailed class specification. In the real world you are never handed tidy perfectly-specified little problems than can be handled with two or three pages of code. In the real world, you won’t even get project outlines anywhere near as detailed as I have given you here. They will never contain any implementation hints as my outlines do. You have to pull teeth to get even the vaguest information about what the program should do. You have to write prototype systems. Only then are your users smart enough to tell you what they really wanted, or are you smart enough to suggest to them possible options they might enjoy.
My advice for a student who thinks a project is too difficult, is to create a sub project that he thinks he might tackle successfully, or try a simpler different project entirely. After that experience, he can add a bit more complexity. Trying to solve the problem all at once just leads to overwhelm. Don’t feel embarrassed that the sub project would have no practical use. It is just a stepping stone.
Though I have no additional materials to send you, I am willing to answer specific questions about the projects. I will normally add that material into the project descriptions for others too.
For team projects underway you can join Asynchrony, Enhydra or SourceForge.
When I was in high school, my teachers arranged a number of field trips to the local University Of BC. On one of the trips, we visited a zoologist who had a filthy aquarium full of African frogs. One of them was dead and floating on the surface. It was clear from the researcher’s responses to my questions that he was completely indifferent to the welfare of the frogs, and that he was proud of this indifference. I was baffled. I felt intense affection for small fish, amphibians and reptiles. How could he be so curious about his frogs and yet not care about them?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
 |
You can get the freshest copy of this page from: | or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror) |
| http://mindprod.com/project/projects.html | J:\mindprod\project\projects.html | |
 |  Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to
Roedy Green :
 | |
| Canadian Mind Products | ||
| mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43] | ||
| view Blog | Your face IP:[38.107.191.100] | |
| Feedback | You are visitor number 365,697. | |
