Programming is not easy, Whats the biggest project you've committed to?

[jetbuster]

Thought I'd share my story of this year.

At the start of the year for the degree I'm in we form groups and commit to a year long project.

Being foolish undergraduates we decided we would make an application to digitize all of the rules for a Table top RPG Pathfinder (Think D&D if you aren't familiar) because we thought it would be fun and a breeze. My god were we wrong, just a small example that I have been working on this week:

 

A Class has features,

each feature has an effect,

each effect can affect any part of the Character which is a 20+ field class...

Some features have more than one effect,

some classes have effects you can only get if you are a specialization of that class....

and we need to read all this stuff in from tab separated values.

 

It's a bigger undertaking than the team who is making farm management software..

 

Can anyone relate?

 

[LukeTim]

Absolutely. I began writing a piece of software "for fun" whilst at Uni which was a kind of sort of visual simulation of evolution by natural selection, using C# and XNA... The idea was it was a very simple model so therefore easy to get your head around, and so that would help people understand how the whole process works. It probably could have maybe been considered for some sort of art installation, too... if I ever finished it.

However, I got as far as simulating the process of reproduction and mixing genes together to create a child and everything... and then I realised that I was going to have to begin coding some AI... but I simply wasn't ready for that. I left it after that. My approach, from a software design perspective, wasn't particularly great as it was... Perhaps one day I will go back and try again. I should be able to do it with all the experience and new knowledge I have acquired since.

[Ciccioo]

the stuff i'm currently working on feels very very overwhelming to me

 

background: i was interested in programming since before i began studying for that, so came the obvious choice of going to a high school that was oriented to a programmer carreer

i came out of that school, and while going to university (with 0 success because i'm dumb) i started working for a small-medium company in which me and another guy a couple years older than me were the only [part time] programmers

That's both cool and crappy because every achievement is your achievement, that you reached on your own, but when there is a problem or a choice to be taken, there is nobody to tell you that you're doing something stupid

 

so, we put together a system that spans from a web frontend (with all the stuff that comes with it: login, permissions, logging, a management part, a data elaboration/overview part), a simple c++ server that collects/sends data from/to places over the internet, and places over the internet that happen to be PLCs with a local logic and need to be hopefully robust

 

when i'll be gone, and some other guy will have to work on my stuff, i'm really curious to know what he will think about that

and i really wish i could work with an experienced developer, because the system never stops getting bigger, and as much as i try to keep everything clean and simple, time costraints don't allow me to actually fix what needs to be fixed/improved

[Oddball]

Maybe its because I'm a half assed backwards degenerate but I get less and less motivated the higher up the language is. For example I could program x86 assembly all day, I could sit down and write C for about an hour or two and I can't stand more than 30 mins of java.

[network_engineer]

Been building a web2print ecommerce application for the last year.  My focus has been on the continuous integration system.  Went into it with zero CI experience.  Coming out of it with expert understanding - I built a solution which has been responsible for nearly 20,000 automated deployments.

 

Brainsplosion.

 

Still working on the application, it's very modular - which lets several teams work concurrently.

[BaSkA]

After working with abap and cobol I must tell you guys: you know nothing, john snow.

 

Programming such things you mentioned can be time taking, long, big, boring but not complex.

 

Complex are systems that envolve A LOT of different parts of a company or that just don't have much documentation to help you out.

 

When you have a compiler that tells you what's wrong, where's the mistake and even gives you advice on what to do, boy you're lucky.

 

I get it sometimes you get into problems with c#, java, c, c++, phyton, etc but those are languages that have so much help and documentation online that you can't imagine how difficult it is to face a problem and have to read a book(physically) to try to understand what's wrong.

[Builder]

I thought you meant what's the largest OSP you've sent a git commit to...

 

I was going to say Debian but then I realized that's not what you meant.

[jetbuster]

After working with abap and cobol I must tell you guys: you know nothing, john snow.

 

Programming such things you mentioned can be time taking, long, big, boring but not complex.

 

Complex are systems that envolve A LOT of different parts of a company or that just don't have much documentation to help you out.

 

When you have a compiler that tells you what's wrong, where's the mistake and even gives you advice on what to do, boy you're lucky.

 

I get it sometimes you get into problems with c#, java, c, c++, phyton, etc but those are languages that have so much help and documentation online that you can't imagine how difficult it is to face a problem and have to read a book(physically) to try to understand what's wrong.

We are using java 8 and javafx so most of our debug is actually just stack-traces because of how my google-foo is bad/there isn't much on javafx, Thank oracle for their compiler, but nothing else

 

I thought you meant what's the largest OSP you've sent a git commit to...

 

I was going to say Debian but then I realized that's not what you meant.

Ha well its always good to hear what other would think of my titles, so many stack overflow post have been deleted for "not being questions"

[Builder]

Ha well its always good to hear what other would think of my titles, so many stack overflow post have been deleted for "not being questions"

Yes. For open source people it sounds like you're trying to rank us by the biggest projects we've contributed to.

[deviant88]

I started learning C# as a hobby mostly(or to try something really challenging)at end of last year and i think of giving up,i understand programming very well,but i just cant remember most of what i code,i feel like wasting time,there are so many freaking components and so many different ways to code the same program.

My idea was to use Unity and C# to start creating a video game as i like,that i cant find anywhere on the www.Not gonna happen i guess.

At least im trying,cause i really love the idea of coding anything not just games.

[CyberBro]

My dissertation for university...

[rockking1379]

alright so my biggest project is actually one i still work on. the uni i am attending needed new software for the mailroom to manage and track packages on campus. so far their database of info has roughly 25 thousand packages and the system is only 15 months old. not UPS or FedEx scale here but to me that is a good amount of data to be handling. currently i am working on rewriting some aspects of the software that were either poorly written or not generic enough to allow future expansion easily. its written in java which isnt my favorite language but it allows me to quickly develop and deploy on multiple platforms easily.

[rockking1379]

We are using java 8 and javafx so most of our debug is actually just stack-traces because of how my google-foo is bad/there isn't much on javafx, Thank oracle for their compiler, but nothing else

I'm using javafx in my mailroom software. It looks so much better than swing and I find it runs very acceptably. Some things are a bit tricky, but use the javafx studio to create layouts. Saves you fair bit of time I think.

[Nuluvius]

,,,when i'll be gone, and some other guy will have to work on my stuff, i'm really curious to know what he will think about that...

 

Or girl.

 

Similar story to mine actually. I chose to go out and get a real job rather than go on a placement/internship while on my degree. I ended up working in a very small company where bad practices were prevalent and time pressure was intense. It did not help that the owner was a micro manager who was terrified of change and very reluctant to trust.

 

I digress, I can't actually comment on what I consider to be the biggest project I have committed to sadly.

 

Our works define us and we shall live on through their various machinations.

[Arphenyte]

Creating a game in C with borlands compiler (Turbo C) both in text, and graphics mode.

Or at least I tried too till I reached 3k lines, and said f*ck this sh*t...

[Hazy125]

Not too long ago I made a website that had to be able to easily handle the purchasing and selling of thousands of products... The back end was fucking insane :'(

[LePawel]

Will be developing RTS game mechanics for my dissertation, am preparing for that now, will have to make another game in a group in the meantime.

Biggest project so far, attempt at cloning C&C Generals... progress? Strong 0.01% (4-5 months of semi-casual work, while learning the engine I'm working in )