Group mates you end up with on a computer science project

For anyone majoring in CS or CSE, working on a group project is a rite of passage that they all have to go through. All group projects have their own highs and lows, and computer projects are no different.

Here's a list of the types of people you might come across and have to work with while doing one.

The one who's above all this

This is the person who's so good at programming that it makes you wonder why they're still studying in the same class as you. They probably have enough knowledge to teach the class themselves, and have done several projects similar, if not better, than the one your group has decided on.

Give them enough caffeine and in twelve hours, they'll have the whole project ready. It's highly unlikely that they will be so charitable and will most likely take on the more complicated work while being the team's mentor.

The newbie

This is the first time they've found out the difference between front and back ends, and spend the entire duration of the project learning everything from scratch. It's extremely hard to assign any kind of work to them, because they're still teaching themselves how to code by watching YouTube videos, but they're getting there. It's a lot better than the next few categories of people.

Template copier

The only thing this person has bothered to learn is how to copy content from GitHub. Since they can't be bothered to do any of their own work themselves, they wait until the last day to directly copy and paste someone else's hard work. They're the bane of the rest of their team, because they can get the others into trouble over this. It's just plain dishonourable to steal from another project. 

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PROGRAMMING FOR THE FUTURE

The overly realistic one

Choosing a topic requires one to select something that can be applied in a real-life context. But there's always going to be that one person who tries to add as many components to the project as they can. For a moment, they forget that this is just a university project and there's no need for them to make it so complicated. They're usually held back by deadline constraints and the team's combined skill level. If they could, this bunch would try to build a time-machine using an Arduino Nano. 

Aspiring frontend engineer

When the project is first announced, the faculty will most likely encourage everyone to just use a template from the internet for the front-end while providing proper credits. But that's not how this person rolls. They've probably spent months studying up on HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap, and have such a strong passion for it that they will try to make the front-end from scratch. Somehow, they're so skilled at their craft that they don't waste as much time on it as others assume.

The inartistic backend developer

The antithesis of the aspiring frontend engineer, they'll do everything in their power to use the most basic HTML that they can while focusing heavily on the backend. Whether it's because they don't care about looks or just don't know how to implement templates, their side ends up becoming the worst part to debug, since it's hard to see how much of it is actually working. It's an aesthetic nightmare.

Namreen is sick and tired. Send a reminder that life goes on at: [email protected]