A Guide to Thriving/Conquoring/Succeeding With/About/Throughout Your Capstone
TOC
- Requirements Flexed Over Time (whhyyyyyyyy)
- Requirements can vary/are ambitious
- Instructor support is limited (to be generous)
- git clone jeremy
- Expect to not have significant guidance
- re-think your MVP to "turns on."
- For hardware: baseline (getting things together and turned on) will take longer than you'd expect.
- Outline your "dones" (have deliverables along the way) / implement in waves
- Some things are out our control (interviews, etc)
- maybe swap exploration/interview weeks so interviews are not during actual capstone time
- Know/explore the goal/outcomes of your project
- Checkins should be treated like "bumper lanes"
- Go into checkins with a plan on what to discuss
- Think about your capstone in the weeks leading up to it. Write down a few ideas.
- Some place to itemize TA skills/specialties.
- Look for contacts/potential teachers outside Ada circles to fill knowledge gaps.
- Research your assumptions!
- Give yourself time to learn something new, if that's the goal; manage scope based on that.
- Troubleshooting new stacks/languages will be slower.
- Do a structured tutorial to help internalize new things.
- It's ok to not learn a whole new stack. Deep dives are also valuable.
- Can requirements be ordered from most-to-least important?
- Know where you want to focus your time (front-end? back-end?)
- Some would have enjoyed working in pairs/groups.
- Do we need more solo projects before capstones?
- Do a personal-check-in after solo projects
- Estimating is really, really hard!
- _How to take care of yourself when overwhelmed?
- Make very few concrete plans during capstone; expect to be tired when you're not working.
- Rely on your classmates. Work/eat/dance together.
- Guest lectures were a struggle to pay attention/absorb; added to stress (something else to learn).
- context switches should be minimized
- How to estimate research and learning time?
- What would there be help with (or done as a class) versus what would we have to do alone?