DueDates -- Revisited

The 2nd part of our original assignment was quite interesting. Compared to the previous assignment, this had a little more head scratching and brainstorming, which is great! 75% of the code wasn't done for us which left room for different approaches and logic models across the various groups in the class. The code review that just took place was great insight on how other groups approached the assignment. Since I have a little more experience in programming with scripting languages, php and perl, screen scraping and string manipulation is something that I toy around with a lot. I did feel that a good portion of the assignment had to deal with date comparison; I also had a good lesson in how Java handles string/date differentiation. Luckily, Arthur and I were successful in implementing all the requirements to the assignment. The Hudson service was also introduced to us this time around. Incredible tool. I found it to be a great help because of its ability to automatically build the system every time there is a commit and sends email if the build contained and error. This takes out the frustration of tracking down the last person to commit and troubleshooting code. Upon completion and a code review done by DueDates-Purple, my partner Arthur went ahead and restructured the system by making a separate "library" package. A great improvement for modularity and robustness.

Arthur and I spent almost everyday talking about the project over AIM chat client but meet face to face on some occasions. Most of our ideas were effectively communicated to each other and ambiguity was non existent. A huge part of our communication was through Mac OS X Leopards iChat client were we could speak and look at each others screen to troubleshoot code. Again, the tasks were split based on the issue log that we updated on GoogleCode. We committed code almost everyday at least once a day, tackling issue after issue. There isn't anything I would really change as far as the process of how Arthur and I get things done. we

The next time around, I think it would be great if we could actually work with more members. Pair programming is something that I have practiced over the past years, but working on a system with a bigger team would be great. I do predict that this would be harder because we would all have to meet on our free time to communicate effectively. Since everyone is on the go and will probably have conflicting schedules, perhaps a group based message board would help? Chat rooms?