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Surprisingly enough, this can even happen in academic environments that should know better. Though far from the level of difficulty presented by jacquesm, the

by othello 16y ago

Surprisingly enough, this can even happen in academic environments that should know better. Though far from the level of difficulty presented by jacquesm, the same thing happened to me with an end-of-term project a few years back. We had to make a small piece of software in Java. Most of my mates were going for boring stuff, such as sudoku solvers or small neural networks to play the likes of Connect four. I wanted to make a Gameboy emulator. "You can't do this", said my professor. "At least not in two weeks' time." Well I don't remember much besides coding during those two weeks, but guess what - after 14 days, my program could boot Tetris. No sound, granted, but it was playable. My professor was quite the sore loser though - he considered the program incomplete since it only booted a few roms, didn't have sound and could crash randomly. I ended up turning in a gameboy rom dissassembler instead, complete with GUI and breakpoints setting. Still, never believe that "you can't do that".

ladon86 16y ago
That's almost the exact experience I had in my first term of university. Everyone was making connect 4 and sudoku and they told me I couldn't write a Doom-style raycasting engine. That was the reason I had to do it! It didn't even count towards course credit, but by the time I submitted I'd built everything, with an in-game level editor and reflective surfaces (all software-rendered). It was way beyond what I had ever achieved, and completing that project totally changed my view of what was possible.
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  The first engineer we hired got the job even though he us still in school for exactly that reason. He had a hardware assignment to build a bios: he built a real OS on top of that with a compliler just to finalize it in his mind. Make sure that story comes through on your resume.
- archgoon 16y ago
  That is quite impressive. How long do you believe it took you to accomplish that? You said a term, when did you start, and when was it due?
  - ladon86 16y ago
    Hmm, a term was about 10 weeks so I guess this must have taken about 4 or 5 weeks. But I was working on it a ridiculous amount. My friends called it "Ray" and would leave funny drawings on my desk depicting them partying while I played with Ray. Or if I had been partying with them, they'd all groan when we arrived home and I set to work. But it was definitely worth it.
SoftwareMaven 16y ago
That is an impressive accomplishment. I've never been a "fast" coder like that. I've never met a problem I couldn't solve or code I couldn't figure out, but, as my iOS app can attest, I'l can't crank the code like that. There may be one important lesson in that experience, though (not that I believe the prof was trying to teach it): complete, rock-solid software with few features beats glitzy, bug-filled software with many features. Users will never know what they are missing.
lysium 16y ago
Happend to me with my master's thesis. Professor told me to do self-localization of soccer robots based on greyscale images and assigned me to a PhD student. PhD student said "This can't be done, at least not in real-time" and was angry about his professor because he now had to look after me somehow. Of course, he didn't. Six months later, my program could self-localize a soccer robot based on greyscale images, in real-time. On large fields and with varying light sources, which the previous, color-based algorithm couldn't. Unfortunately, PhD student was a sore looser and still gave me a bad grade. Professor didn't help.
Florin_Andrei 16y ago
Good for you. For my final thesis in college my professor made me change my mind. My initial project idea was a music instrument, a polyphonic digital synthesizer (TTL-only, no processors). I had a single wavetable "voice" implemented in silicon already, as a proof of concept. Instead, he convinced me to make a boring sawtooth variable current generator for his lasers. :( Grrr, I wish I didn't listen to him.

by othello 16y ago

ladon86 16y ago

That's almost the exact experience I had in my first term of university. Everyone was making connect 4 and sudoku and they told me I couldn't write a Doom-style raycasting engine. That was the reason I had to do it! It didn't even count towards course credit, but by the time I submitted I'd built everything, with an in-game level editor and reflective surfaces (all software-rendered). It was way beyond what I had ever achieved, and completing that project totally changed my view of what was possible.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago
The first engineer we hired got the job even though he us still in school for exactly that reason. He had a hardware assignment to build a bios: he built a real OS on top of that with a compliler just to finalize it in his mind. Make sure that story comes through on your resume.
archgoon 16y ago
That is quite impressive. How long do you believe it took you to accomplish that? You said a term, when did you start, and when was it due?
- ladon86 16y ago
  Hmm, a term was about 10 weeks so I guess this must have taken about 4 or 5 weeks. But I was working on it a ridiculous amount. My friends called it "Ray" and would leave funny drawings on my desk depicting them partying while I played with Ray. Or if I had been partying with them, they'd all groan when we arrived home and I set to work. But it was definitely worth it.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago

That is an impressive accomplishment. I've never been a "fast" coder like that. I've never met a problem I couldn't solve or code I couldn't figure out, but, as my iOS app can attest, I'l can't crank the code like that. There may be one important lesson in that experience, though (not that I believe the prof was trying to teach it): complete, rock-solid software with few features beats glitzy, bug-filled software with many features. Users will never know what they are missing.

lysium 16y ago

Happend to me with my master's thesis. Professor told me to do self-localization of soccer robots based on greyscale images and assigned me to a PhD student. PhD student said "This can't be done, at least not in real-time" and was angry about his professor because he now had to look after me somehow. Of course, he didn't. Six months later, my program could self-localize a soccer robot based on greyscale images, in real-time. On large fields and with varying light sources, which the previous, color-based algorithm couldn't. Unfortunately, PhD student was a sore looser and still gave me a bad grade. Professor didn't help.

Florin_Andrei 16y ago

Good for you. For my final thesis in college my professor made me change my mind. My initial project idea was a music instrument, a polyphonic digital synthesizer (TTL-only, no processors). I had a single wavetable "voice" implemented in silicon already, as a proof of concept. Instead, he convinced me to make a boring sawtooth variable current generator for his lasers. :( Grrr, I wish I didn't listen to him.