A sad realization

2007-10-01 journal

I came to the conclusion today that I'm going to have to evaluate how I interact with other programmers in a team, and then play off my strengths to really make something happen. I seem to do pretty well with debugging and quick problem assessment when helping others, but I don't do well with explaining code I'm working on to others.

I guess I should provide some context. I'm in the competitive programming class at my college, and we practice coding in teams once a week in preparation for a contest in November. We're given a set of problems to work on, and then we have to work in teams of three to accomplish said problems within a time limit. We're allowed to use Java, C++, and C to code them, but we have to keep it to a single source code file (so we need to stick with what we pick.) I've been coding in C since I don't remember much Java; my younger teammates are sticking with Java.

Tonight, I was working on a problem called W's Cipher. It provided a glimpse into the world of cryptography, a world which I am not terribly familiar with. I would have preferred an easier problem, but I deferred to my teammates, letting them take the easier problems. It's slightly frustrating being an older CS major, because everyone expects you to be a better coder, a better problem solver, and to have both a broader and more indepth knowledge of the field. I suppose in some ways, they're right... but, asking me to solve these complex problems in two hours on a Monday night is taxing, to say the least. If I apply myself enough, I can actually sit down and figure these things out, given enough time... say, eight hours?

Ah well. I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

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