This is my first coding assignment for my software engineering class that started today. It’s going to be a really good semester.
UPDATE: I got my grade back and
“100″
Since this post has gotten some attention, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that this was just the first half of the assignment.
The second half, which we weren’t made aware of until the day we were meant to turn this one in, was to trade USB drives with the person sitting next to us and MODIFY their “unreadable” code without getting any help from them.
This was to teach us two things:
1) In this field, you’ll spend more time working with code written by other people than you will writing original code from a blank slate. The people who wrote the original code will probably not be around to help you. Learning to read code is IMPORTANT, even if it seems unreadable.
2) There is a strong brotherhood/sisterhood among programmers and software engineers. Respect that bond when you’re writing code and documentation. In my professor’s words: “When you write code, pretend that the person who will have to maintain it after you’re gone is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live.”
This class and professor are incredible.
*This is beautiful omg*
So, I do documentation, not coding, but here is an actual project I worked on for two years:
“We don’t know what [25-year-old system] actually does, and everyone involved in making it is retired or dead. We just put data in and then wait for outputs. But we need to replace it with something that does the *exact same thing* but on a modern code base. Here’s all the old code, reverse-engineer that into requirements.”
I am very, very glad classes like the one OP is taking exist now.
