Murray: A study in the greater internet fuckwad theory.

So I am currently studying 433-440, Advanced Software Engineering Project. It's essentially the final year, piece de resistance of the University of Melbourne's Software Engineering course. This whole year subject is a lead on form 433-340 Software Engineering Project, whereby teams of six SE students were given a "real world" client and were asked by them to create a product under a full Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) engineering methodology. This year, we are organised into larger teams of thirteen and given a similarly arranged, supposedly harder client project.

I will refrain from commentary on the course itself - I'm still doing it, and I have too much respect for the staff who run it to make my usual snipping commentary about the weltzschmertz of the world with respect to the course.

My focus is the interesting community we have in the works in the ICT building. All of us software engineers in the same level have worked together at some point in time, and some of us have known each other for six years or more - especially considering that half the six teams are run by Melbourne High School alumni, like myself. Even if we don't know someone, we know half the people in their team - so we have many opportunities to get introduced all around.

We all work together in the same building, on the same level, in the same set of 4 rooms or so. It's a delightful thing to stroll into uni, pop into ICT, receive and give a chorus of "hellos!" as you seat yourself down to spend a few hours coding, documenting or playing Tetris or DOTA.

Since the social aspect of this interaction is very rewarding, it was not long before an unspoken agreement emerged as to the use of the rooms - 2.12, the room with the best computers, ended up being the social interaction room. Less work than usual was done in this room, but it was always full of people wanting to have a bit of fun and groups doing some light hearted discussion about the events and progress of the subject. Some work probably did get done, but pretty much all of the time wasting Facebook, Tetris, DOTA and other idle activities were spent in here. This left two other rooms - 2.13 and 2.17 mostly devoid of people, with banks of available workstations to any who needed.

In addition, room 2.14 was the 340 room (for students doing the 3rd year subject) and 2.16 was the sauna room, due to an unfortunate placement of very large windows in a room with a small enclosed space and inadequate ventilation. 2.15 and 2.18 were the open-plan group discussion room and common room respectively.

Thus, a given students has three or more rooms worth of workstations to choose from, and a veritable delicatessen of areas to choose from to eat, discuss and generally live the life of a SE student.

About a third of the way through the year, an email was inadvertently CC'ed to the entire subject containing one team's private discussion, sparking a torrent of witty, incisive commentary first on that email and then on everything else that is so characteristic of our generation.

So our little community was born, metaphorically pregnant with potential to be one of the most well-knit communities in university, like a well-run student society or one of the courses whose students do every single subject together for five years, like Mechatronics.

And like a Roman Empire, or Napoleonic France, it worked - but only for a while.

A member of our community began posting emails, ranting with only the merest hint of cohesion about the usage of our rooms, the right of McGee, team E's project manager, to walk around without shoes. That's not so bad, even though the poor sop didn't have the bravery to post under his own name, and instead used the pseudonym "Murray Walker". These occasional insanity from within became a part of 440 culture, and the community mostly enjoyed his rants and took it lightly.

But of course, like the crushing slavery of Rome and the rise of opposed barbarian states was to the Roman Empire; or the Russian winter was to Napoleon's fighting forces, an untreated, barely significant, untreated symptom will grow if not carefully removed.

Our anonymous friend Murray dissed fellow students who have donated their time and efforts to putting together Panorama. These students don't get marked or any credit for putting together this event, the staff use it as an exercise to entice potential future clients to sign on with the university, making their jobs easier and providing the next 440's with clients.

This was his post, in response to a simple request for volunteers to help out at Panorama:

I will volunteer. This is the perfect opportunity to say 'thanks' to the department for everything they've given us. Let's be honest, the fees that students and clients pay are hardly enough for the university to actually pay anyone for work. I'll gladly lug computers from the ICT to the law building so they can show off just how 'great' their course is.

And cleaning up afterwards? Considering the 'skills' we've learnt in 440, I'm flattered that you feel you can entrust such an important engineering task to us; I can only hope that my job next year will be this exciting.

I'm a bit worried though. Will we get marked for our trash-collecting skills? I ask because I didn't see the "janitorial" section on our skill-selections, can I change into it at this late stage? I'll be sure to submit some half-chewed gum as an artifact.

Remember, panorama is for the students. And I don't mean that in the "free-ethernet-cables" kind of way either. Of course there are those that will say it's just for the university to lure more unsuspecting clients into the scam that is 440, but they're just being cynical.

And to all those teams thinking they can get away with not having volunteers, you know that the uni told you this was a hurdle requirement for passing 440 at the start of the year don't you? It's in the handbook and everything.

Mazza

P.S. Can we get some CAT6 cables this time? I've just upgraded to gigabit ethernet and the cables from last year just don't cut it anymore.

Fun, fun sarcasm. John Gabriel is completely right: a normal person + anonymity + an audience = Total Fuckwad