The Making of a Grad Course Project

Projects are an inseparable, typical, all-encompassing, essential, fundamental, constitutional... (alrite alrite I agree I Googled those synonyms!) of a graduate CS student's life! So here is how they are begun, made and ended!

You get up one fine sunny day and try to deceive urself into thinking that you have many more hrs of peaceful sleep left when actually u hav just a few mins. The cell-phone alarm you set yesterday night at 4.30 a.m. rings and u realise its 9.30 a.m. U curse urself and the alarm and put it on snooze and try to get back to that dream u wer having (abt a maal ladki/ladka??)

The phone starts ringing again! U are nt one bit surprised tht ur internal clock is so jumbled up it can't count the minutes right and snooze time is over! But surprises, its a phone frm ur project partner (the one who got up early and attended the lecture u intend to watch on video!). "The next assignment is out! And due in a week!"


Gayi waapis raaton ki neend and gaya waapis din ka chain! So then it begins this way :-

• First 2 days, do nothing abt the project bcos u already hav other imp tasks and a week is like an eon to some1 used to working at the speed of light b4 submissions.
• Next 3 days, try getting something done but mostly gossip around in the lab. Atleast the framework is ready.
• 4th day, panic bcos u cudnt understand nething in the lecture abt the project. Finish ur coding as fast as u can without a damn to whether it will run or not.
• 5th day, its a Friday and the prof. tells u in class tht the deadline is postponed to Wed bcos the test driver is nt yet up :)
• 6, 7th day, wait around for the test driver. Heck, its ur weekend neway. U can spend it watching Race or lecture videos. Something at the back of ur mind tells u "Coding khatam hui is statement mein koi information nahi hai"
• 8th day, the test driver is out. Start testing ur project.

The testing starts with compiling the code. U get 600+ compilation errors at the first go bcos u forgot what u named ur functions and variables half way thru the project! So u fix compilation errors...300...210...91...83...44...17...3...2...1...segmentation fault! Oh tht last part comes after all compilation errors are gone and u start the program. I'm never gonna code for rockets, missles, bombers, etc. for this very reason u kno!

Then u rush thru the debugging with GDB and lots of couts and more frustration and more Gatorade and more curses at PuTTY, WinSCP, ur proj partner (he/she curses u too :) ). Then is the "Bachao!" time when you start calling and buzzing other teams on GTalk abt doubts and more doubts. So in the hope of getting ur project up and running u rush on Sunday aftnoon to college but don't understand any of the explanation tht others giv neways.

Then u find out there r no buses to come bak (those with a car or a cycle ignore this!) so u curse RTS (ur delighted to find a live target for ur frustration...not a little black & white window for a change!)

So after a lot of exhaustive (for u) testing, the project is up and running just fine! Then u discover another bug 1 hr b4 submitting! After some high BP, frantic calls and frantic buzzes on GTalk, u discover its a bug with the test driver. "Bewakoof" TA...cursing him/her for almost giving u a heart-attack u fix it. Nw the proj is surely up and running and u submit it!

U forget abt this after a while till u receive a 0 in the proj and are called by the TA for a demo! A prog tht works just fine and is running in top shape receiving 0??!! U confront the TA incredulously! On running the TA's test cases u find a bug in ur previous assignment's code.

Oops! Hehe!! "I'll jus fix it and show u a demo again." Thank God for nice TAs, ur marks r increased to 100 and there ends the story of ur project. By the time u fixed the bug and re-submitted the project and sent a mail to the TA, its 4.30 a.m. U set the alarm for 9.30 a.m. and try to get back to that dream u wer having (abt a maal ladki/ladka??).....