Compiler Project Review

I am currently in a Translation of Programming Languages class. The primary focus of the class is on building a compiler. My class, all six of us, decided to be one single team. We then decided to create our own language which we would compile to Java bytecode. We have been severely behind schedule the entire semester. Recently, I have been thinking about some of the reasons why.

I believe the largest problem was our use of the waterfall lifecycle model. It was not our intention, but we fell into it nonetheless. This caused us to attempt to develop components from start to finish without error on the first try. Not a good idea. The other problem is we have six people on the team. There are not enough different pieces to each component for all six people to be working on one component. An agile pursuit would have suited us far better. Towards the end of the semester as we have started to make progress, I have seen us shift a little more to such tendencies. The nice part about it is it gives us more parts to work on. This allows us to divide the team up rather than clustering on one component and getting in each other's ways.

The second largest problem we are having is lack of documented project management. Everyone is kind of off working on their own random thing and we randomly bring it together in the svn. However, there is no rhyme or reason to what different people are working on. We have a wiki for documenting decisions, plans, et cetera, but we have not made proper use of it. It probably would have been a better decision to use some sort of project management software to accompany the wiki. One example of the software I am referring to is Trac. This would have let us keep better track of our different requirements and bugs. From there, we could have potentially had a better idea of who would be working on what.

We have had a few other problems along the way such as our use of Subversion for version control. That being said, these other problems have been minor in comparison to the two problems I discussed above or they have been a consequence of those problems. Moral of the story: Software Engineering and Project Management is important!

My Experience with Death

For my Perspectives on Death & Dying class, I had to write a paper on an experience with death. Here is my paper:

It was midday one Saturday in February of my junior year of high school. I was hanging out with a group of friends playing some games. It was the usual routine when we were not off on some school activity. My buddy, Chris, got a call. One of our friends had been shot in a hunting accident. It all seemed a bit surreal. Surely, he was going to be alright. We continued playing games as if things were not too shaken up, but phone calls kept coming. As the day progressed, the story changed. Our friend had committed suicide.

I have a thousand stories I could tell regarding that day and the week following. The Sunday morning church service was awful because he was not there. Sunday night, I was at Pizza Hut with people I had not hung out with in years. Monday night was a special church service which had more in attendance than I have ever seen in twenty one years. The wake resulted in a line of people stretching out the front door and down the sidewalk. There was a school gathering. A group of my friends walked out the front doors of the school in the middle of the day on Monday. We skipped the second half of Wednesday too. There were no repercussions. They still held class on the day of the funeral, but it was pointless. The cemetery was packed. There was an empty chair at graduation the following year.

Out of all of this, perhaps one of the most important thing I learned is suicide is not simply about the individual. I watched a town of 2,500 people come to a screeching halt in a single weekend. When the topic of suicide comes up in any sort of conversation, my mind starts looking at all the people around me who would be affected. Let me just say it is a long list that stretches across the continent. Not because I am important. Just because that is the effect it has on every single person we know. When I go home on holidays, I still have a few momentos sitting in my bedroom. When Chris and I hang out, I see our friend's baseball glove sitting on his desk just below a picture of them. When I was home for Christmas, another high schooler had committed suicide. Everyone at church was expressing their sympathies. Turns out I knew his brother. Did I mention my friend committed suicide on his mother's birthday?

The other major lesson I learned was how quickly it all happens. The expression “one minute they are there, the next they are gone” is not something to be taken lightly. I remember one night in junior high when a game of hide-and-go-seek had broken out on a city block. My friend and I hid out behind Chris's house just talking about life because the game was not all that exacting. I remember baseball games, making silly videos, and the hours spent playing Golden Eye on the N64. Never even thought about the idea we would not graduate together. Quite honestly, up until that point, I had never thought about anything like that. I was too busy pushing through high school to get into a good college, build a career for myself, and setup the rest of my life. I guess you could say I learned to “stop and smell the roses.” It became alright if I was not playing my best during a tennis match. Taking time to get away from school work and play a few hours of videogames during a stressful week was not blasphemous. I still find myself buying a new videogame during finals week. I put off writing this paper on Monday night because my girlfriend and I had a carton of ice cream in the freezer.

I guess what I am trying to say is take a moment to look around you. When you find something you like, take the time to enjoy it. It will not be there forever.

Stumbling in the Dark

I frequently have to write journal entries about things I have read for my Perspectives on Death & Dying class. This week we read Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - A Pocket Guide by Elizabeth Harper Neeld. I have not written anything new in a while so here is my journal entry for this week:

“If anything, this time of Stumbling in the Dark feels worse than the original crisis-, the news of the loss itself.” (Neeld 2003 12) I thought the name for this phase was perfect. I remember the week following my friend's suicide in high school. I could not describe it any better. It really was worse than the original day. The first day was not too terribly shaken up simply because I could not comprehend the news. The following days found me completely clueless about how to handle myself. The first day back to school was ridiculous. It all seemed pointless. It was as if I was just putting on an act. I really did not care to be there, but at the same time, I preferred to be there over sitting at home staring at my wall. My nights were filled with as many distractions as possible. Not one moment was dedicated to homework because that would have meant sitting down by myself. There was Pizza Hut, ping pong, movies, videogames, pool, and so on. A group of us took a couple half days off from school to just run around town. Many of these things we had never done before and would never do again.

Neeld mentions an “increase in accidents” as being normal. (Neeld 2003 12) There was a special church service one night that week. On the way there I was involved in a minor fender bender with a couple other classmates. It was not my fault, but I do not doubt for an instance that I would have been able to prevent it if I were more focused. We did not bother even stopping to deal with the accident. Everyone of us knew where the others were going. Once we got to the parking lot, we glanced at our bumpers, had a minor discussion, and left it for our parents to deal with.

It was the same night as the church service that I got into a fight with my girlfriend. She thought I should seek consolation and comfort from her because she was my girlfriend. I essentially stiff armed her in an effort to stand on my own. It does not surprise me since that is a normal reaction for me in my high school years. However, at the time, I was just stumbling in the dark.