Documentation, How annoying!
After having a discussion with my IT teacher about the GCSE course, my views on the course have changed severely and I wondered if anyone out there had come across this at all?
The main thing is that the whole course is about the documentation. You could write a text document as the final product, but write about it and how you created it loads and get full marks. This really annoys me as the writing (documentation) part of it is rubbish. It is so boring, telling the world via word how you managed to launch Dreamweaver and create a table for the layout, how impressiveJ. The whole thing about Flash, 3D and everything I am interested about is that fact that I can just go at like a bull in a china shop and just experiment, see what happens, expect the unexpected (most of that randomness comes from accidental errors). No be stuck behind writing about how to use Away3D.
The course, in my view, only covers one aspect of IT. So, all it is really testing you on is how to write up the documentation on a project. They don’t care what the final product looks like, acts like or things like usability levels etc. Now the boring ones (and probably the thinkers out there) will be saying, “Well, you write about it so they know you understand what you are doing”. This seems pretty stupid seeing that they don’t actually care about what you are doing in the first place.
Maybe it’s just me, but the whole thing seems a little pointless (only in some aspects). I don’t really know if professional studios document their process a lot, or not much. I am assuming they do so that maintenance is a lot easier. Imaging a complicated flex app, like the new eco:Drive app (great article in .net) . Passing this over to someone with no knowledge of how the app works or what is uses, or requires. This is where I can see documenting the process comes in handy, but the focus is on the output of the main product. With the IT GCSE, they don’t care about the finally product.
Now that’s out of my system. I feel so much better, now to top it off, anyone fancy buying me a MacBook? J He he.
Harry.
4 comments
Hey,
I hear you! But sometimes the lesson is that it can be rewarding to do something you don’t want to do – you never know what you might learn in the process!
I didn’t learn that lesson until well after university, and as a result I nearly didn’t get a degree at all!
Ciao!
Adam
Well, I never thought of it that way! In the end, I need the GCSE and to get that, i’m going to have to do it their way!
It’s just annoying to hear my IT teacher say my project is too advanced.
Harry.
Very annoying. No doubt about that – if you want to get all hippy, you can always say that your IT Teacher is teaching you how to deal with annoying IT teachers!
Good luck!
Well, yet again, there is another way of thinking about it. I can just put it down to experience. I will just keep my creative soul alive by blogging and experimenting more on the weekends!
I get so excited when I have a comment… haha!
See ya!
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