A Post That Should Not Have Been

I had no intention of posting this. I had thought about writing about it but chose not to as it would involve me taking names of one individual and I did not want him to suffer more than what he already is, and at no point did I wish to get personal with any of such things. I did not want to post it but then again this guy seems to be spreading all the (mis)information about me telling that I was culprit in the whole thing. And I think it is time to clean up my closet a bit.

I was working on a project for one of my course here. We were a group of three people who had got together to do the project. Each one had a module assigned to one individually, among ourselves. One of my friends had decided to take some of the core implementation to himself to which I somehow agreed. However, we had agreed about the interfaces, as he was supposed to call my set of routines I had already told him well in advance about them to him, and he had said it was “Okies” with him. About ten days before the demo when I decided to get it integrated, I realized that there was nothing according to the interfaces that I had specified. To top of it all this guy started cussing me and the other partner for the poor quality and buggy code that we had written even though we had tested it extensively, not to mention he had even gone to the extent of asking the other guy to just take the code from somewhere. And he was generous enough to actually provide the other code. And somehow he knew it would work without issues.
One night before the presentation as I was busy fixing up all the issues that were left over in the integration I had to log into his machine to synchronize the code and I saw folder which was named as one of our senior’s code. One night before the demo, I was just curious how the seniors had done the code, not to mention the fact that even tough my friend kept on saying that he had “referred” this guy’s code, I wanted to know just about how much the codes were “referred”. And here what I found once I got the codes.

Snippet 1 by senior:

int int_no_of_col=0, int_index=0, int_position=0,int_col_size=0,int_flag=0,int_k=0,int_len =0,int_temp_len = 0;

char* chrp_col_name = NULL;


char* chrp_default = NULL;

char chr_col_type ;

char** chrpp_record = NULL;

char* chrp_temp_complete_rec = NULL;

int* intp_element_len = NULL;

int int_def_len;

string str_table_file;

string str_index_file;

string str_table_meta_file;

HeapFile hf_meta_file;

HeapFile hf_data_file;

MetaInfo mi_meta_info;

HeapFile hf_index_meta_file;

char* chrp_final_rec = NULL;

short* chrp_offset = NULL;

int int_sum = 0;

int int_ret_size = 0;

int attr_list[30];

char* chrp_index_name = NULL;

char* save_rec = NULL;

int returnVal;

IndexInfo* temp_index_info = NULL;

int int_page_no;

int int_slot_no;

TreeIndex* _treeIndex = NULL;

rid_list_t* start=NULL,*rid_list=NULL;

//The following decalration is done by Hari. 27 Dec 2005//To remove compile time error: "crosses initialization"string str_absolute_index_pk;

string str_index_pk;


Snippet two by my friend:


int _intNumOfColumns=0, _intIndex=0, _intPosition=0,_intColumnSize=0,int_flag=0,int_k=0,int_len =0,int_temp_len = 0;

char* _chrptrColumnName = NULL;

char* chrp_default = NULL;

char _chrColumnType ;

char** _chrptrptrMetaRecords = NULL;

char* chrp_temp_complete_rec = NULL;

int* _intptrMetaRecordsLength = NULL;

int int_def_len;

string _strTableFileName;

string _strIndexFileName;

string _strMetaFileName;

HeapFile _metaHeapFile;

HeapFile _tableHeapFile;

MetaInfo _metaInfo;

HeapFile _heapIndexFile;

char* _chrptrFinalRecord = NULL;

short* chrp_offset = NULL;

int _intTotalLength = 0;

int _intReturnLiteralSize = 0;

int attr_list[30];

char* chrp_index_name = NULL;

char* save_rec = NULL;

IndexInfo* temp_index_info = NULL;

int _intPageNo;

int _intSlotNo;

//rid_list_t* start=NULL,*rid_list=NULL;

string str_absolute_index_pk;




Can you actually find the difference? For once I feel like sending it to one of those entertainment columns which say “Find 10 differences between the given pictures” .

This kind of similarity extended to the whole 4500 lines of code that he had always been boasting off writing single handedly. And we figured out that the reason he was asking my friend to use somebody’s code was plain and simple, he won’t have to bother about integration. What should have been me and my friends response after this? What could we have done? I for one decided to get out of the lab where we were all sitting and integrating and told him that it was against my conscious to work on the code. Next day, both me and my friend decided to tell the truth to the professor and true even we both got screwed because for quite some time we both were integrating our code with this guys and we decided not to show the integration to the Professor, and we ended up just showing what we had already shown a week before the actual demo. But then again, somehow we both knew what was the right thing to do that day, that moment. I just hope my friend knows the same.