Week Three

Monday we spent testing and fixing the bug testing software in preparation for the competitions.  Then, over Tuesday and Wednesday we held 4 competitions.  Sadly, there were several bugs that had not been worked out, and also our server had trouble handling the volume of traffic.  We spent the rest of the week reworking the system to make it more stable.  I helped write the API and worked on fixing small bugs.

Week Two

For week 2, we have continued making and testing the bug testing competition website.  We also changed the name of the site from Bug Stomper to Bug Catcher, so I redid the bug caught animation to show a butterfly being caught with a net to match the theme.  I also worked on the results box.  It previously appended admin hints the top, meaning the student would not see a new hint arrive unless they scrolled up.  We decided that we wanted the hints to come in order, so I created time stamps for the hints, test cases, and chats so they could be ordered.  Then, I added filters to the results box so that students can show/hide hints, chats, and all problem solutions (by default it only shows the test cases for the problem they are currently testing).  Other than this, I spent most of my time testing, finding bugs, and fixing them.

Week One

We spent this week getting to know each other and figuring out how to work best with each other.  We have been working on software for hosting code testing competitions.  I worked on a wide array of tasks.  I began the week working  by creating pause and start buttons for the administrator so they can start, pause, and resume the competition.  Once I completed those and had them working, I created some flash movie clips.  The first clip showed a foot stomping a bug to tell the user when they find a bug.  The other was a countdown timer to give the student warning when the competition is about to start.  I also created a graphic to label how many bugs had been found.  Then, I spent some time looking at the problems for the students and created predefined hints for the administrator to send.  In the process, I found some problems with the student exercises and did some editing and recompiling of them.
Every time I added one of these new features to the site, I tested to make sure it worked properly.  In this testing process, I uncovered many bugs and usability problems, which I either fixed or passed on to someone working on that part of the website.  I also wrote a student user guide/help section to help students use the software.  Besides what I have already mentioned, I spent a lot of time testing the software, fixing the bugs I found, and doing small jobs to help my coworkers.