XA Report, Summary

Summary

This project was a very useful experience for me in many ways. It was the first time that I had to develop and write an application as large as this. By rather frustrating experiences I learnt how important it is to plan ahead and to use the techniques which are taught in software engineering. I might have wasted some time by my unstructured debugging approach, but now I have learnt that a precise specification phase is a necessity for successful software development.

On the other hand I enjoyed very much to learn Motif programming which was completely unknown for me at that time. The design of the graphical user interface was one of the most interesting works I have ever done in computer science. An important side-effect was that I had the possibility to use my theoretical background in psychology which I have gained in Munich. Therefore I tried to concentrate my design on a straight-forward error-save user interface and spent most of the time in writing the online documentation.

I think that this project was an important step in my goal to become computer science. I lived through all the steps of software development. From excitement, when my first Motif window was running, to frustration, when after three weeks the core dumps still occured.

For the future I know how to approach such a task, I know what can happen and I learnt how I can solve problems. Despite the drawbacks an experience to build on.

Reinhard Schaffner


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Reinhard Schaffner, © 1995-05-16