[nfbcs] 2. Best techniques for group computer science projects, (Suzanne Germano)

[Juliannah Harris]

Hello,
It sounds like your are working in a paired programming environment 
where one person sits at the "helm" so to speak while other group 
members tell the person at the computer what to program. It is a fairly 
new concept I believe introduced with the extreme programming model. The 
idea is that everyone has different strengths and by working in a paired 
programming environment the group is introduced to new concepts, 
different ways to structure a program, errors are spotted quickly with 
everyone working together on the same code, etc.
What I have done in the past is to verbalize to my group what I am doing 
as it is often impossible for them to follow along with the 
magnification running. And work with my group members to have them 
verbalize what they are doing as they work. This approach also helped me 
and my team members formalize programming terminology I hadn't needed to 
emphasis before.
If you are not working in a paired environment, but collaboratively 
working on a project I would recommend using a type of group version 
control like "git". It keeps a central repository, and the team members 
each get a local repository. When team members make changes they are 
pushed to the central repository. The really cool part is if something 
gets broken you can roll back the changes for your local repo or the 
central repo. Most university with CS programs have a dedicated CS 
server for programming and web development which would hopefully have 
"git", but it is not that hard to install. There is also a version of 
git can be run from your PC and send to a decided upon central location.
I hope this helps. Good luck. And happy hacking.
- Juliannah Harris