310 shitstorm

Possibility of extension?
I know that the entire project is on a tight schedule, but would there be any possibility of getting an extension for deliverable 1? I feel like just taking all of the information in has taken a while. Sorry if its out of place but I thought there would be no harm in asking. Thank you!

--COMMENTS--
Anonymous 19 hours ago
If the project is extended, can some bonus be offered to groups who are willing to have their version as of the original due date be the one graded (ie. commits after Monday noon would not count towards their mark)?

My partner and I are putting a lot of effort into trying to meet the deadline despite pressures from other courses, and to that end we already have above 70%+ tests passing and anticipate to be 90%+ passing by the end of tomorrow.

	REPLY:
	Anonymous 53 minutes ago well if there is an extension you get the benefit of being able to test your more as it is limited to every 12 hours unlike others who are struggling to figure out how parsing works etc. which probably will be able to test their code once.

Kristina Bukharova 16 hours ago
I just want to give my two cents. I know asking for an extension can be seen as lazy, and I'm planning to work hard to meet the deadline, but I do think we were thrown really far into the deep end on this one.

I feel like I lacked a lot of the context necessary to start on the Deliverable until far too late. It was hard to really understand what the project did or what was being asked. For example, I only recently understood that we are making a service where some external person will submit to us a dataset for storage, then query their data. It may sound silly, but without having somebody explain to me in plain terms what the project actually does, it was hard to know where to start. Before, I only knew that some POST request (whatever that is) would occur (somehow) and we would have to return data based on some query. Oh, and also we need to store a dataset to disk (whatever that means) and return error codes and make unit tests, all in Typescript (new unknown language with foreign syntax) using Promises and something called asynchronous calls. It was all very overwhelming. The lectures mostly covered the theory behind unit tests and how to write them, and some fun facts about Javascript, but nothing really relevant to the service we were creating.

In a real world scenario, if we were given this as a project on the job, somebody would have given us the background, big picture, and context of the service. They would have walked us through the code and explained how each component interacts with each other. I really don't believe that this experience prepares us for the working world. If the goal is to help us learn, then I believe an extension would be an appropriate action, as well as dedicating more lecture time to going through the structure of the code and explaining concepts such as REST, HTTP verbs, queries, asynchronous programming, and dataset storage (how to choose a good data structure...). This was briefly done in the last lecture and I would like to see more of it, but not as rushed.

In the first few labs, the TAs were unfamiliar with the code as well, so getting help was difficult. I do appreciate the detailed instructions in the description of the Deliverable though! And the enthusiasm and energy of the professor.

Honestly, the problem is probably the disconnect between the professor and students. He probably didn't realize how completely unaware we were of all these concepts, and that we needed a lot more hand-holding and introduction that he thought. But we do! This is all foreign to me, at least.

Also, I'm still not entirely sure what we need to submit for Deliverable 1, or how to know if we're "done"...

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm giving it my best shot but my understanding of the task and project as a whole is still murky. I can try to push through the confusion and code up something that runs and kinda works, but I won't be learning anything of value. I'll just be writing hacky code and hoping that I write enough of it by the deadline to get an okay mark. I don't even know how to phrase my questions. I just know that I want to learn and actually understand what I'm doing, and make intelligent, informed decisions in my code. Currently, I can't do that with what I have been given.

Those are my thoughts. I'm tired of being thrown into the deep end and desperately scrambling. Why can't we learn first, then apply the concepts in assignments second? Why are assignments given before the knowledge is obtained? It's so backwards. I have to code first, understand later. I can finally see what a lost opportunity that is.

I guess what I'm saying is, for once, I don't care about the mark. I'm ready to get my 60% on Monday. I'm just honestly saddened that I am not being taught. Code first, learn second can't be the best technique to turn us into good developers. Please, give us some time to understand before making us submit hundreds of lines of code, so we can actually submit work that we're proud of.

Thanks for reading through this. Hopefully it gives some insight into what some of us are feeling.

	REPLIES:
	Anonymous 15 hours ago Well said. Couldn't agree more.
	Anonymous 15 hours ago 100% agree with this
	Anonymous 15 hours ago same here
	Anonymous 15 hours ago Completely agree
	Anonymous 14 hours ago I think there is really a big gap between what is considered as prerequisite of this course, and what we really need to know to get started on the project. In previous offerings of this course, I think students were given the option to choose a framework (e.g. Ruby on Rails or GWT).  I honestly think Node.js is a very good choice but the problem is that we need to cover a lot before even getting started. Of course this may not be an issue to many people who have prior experience on Javascript or Node.js in general, but for people coming from CPSC210, it's really hard to get on board with all these new concepts in such a tight deadline. I personally spent too much time just to figure out how Promises work and how I should handle Async calls.
At least It's good to know that I am not alone in this :)
	Anonymous 13 hours ago Same here, this course range greatly exceeds the pre-req of it (ie. CPSC 210). It seems that if people don't get previous experience in CO-OP or part-time coding with node.js, they can hardly manage to even just give a start in the project. This is really unfair to my perspective, because we are all students, we are here to study and not supposed to be "experienced" and pick up everything on our own.
	Anonymous 3 hours ago I agree

Anonymous 5 hours ago
I agree with the comments above. My partner and I are already finished and have gotten 96 on the private suite and anticipate getting 100 by Monday, so whether or not the project gets extended really doesn't affect us. That being said, I can definitely see how for people new to JavaScript, completing the assignment by Monday would be an impossible task. There are too many parts, and the base project was not really commented, so for those new to JS it might take days to even understand the existing code. We were fortunate enough to both be experienced with JavaScript so that this was not too bad, but we would have been overwhelmed otherwise. I think the only reasonable way for this to be due on Monday for everyone is if there was at least a bit more hand holding, for example if a post is made to guide students through each step required to complete the project, without going into too much detail.

	REPLIES:
	Anonymous best post ever
	Anonymous 3 hours ago Very good points totally agree