11.webspider

This was probably the longest assignment I've done in a while. It was very complicated and I still can't believe that I actually finished it. I'll admit that I had to look to a lot of other people for inspiration but I finally got it done. It's also not the prettiest piece of code that I've written but that's my fault. I procrastinated till the end and suffered for it. I eventually got all three tasks done.

What I've learned from this homework assignment is that simultaneously learning a new language, xml, while trying to brush up on an old language, java, leads to some very frustrating problems. The problem that comes to mind was that one line in the build file that we needed to change so that the java library files were included externally. It took me a long time to read through the code and understand what it all meant. Even then, I still had no idea what I needed to do. It was through the help of a friend that finally solved the problem.

I'm not proud of it but I also depended heavily on the work of those that finished before me to get me through this homework. Although I did finish task 1 mostly on my own, I still needed to look into Randy Cox's code to figure out how to translate the weblinks into string format. Afterward, I had to rely on Jared Sunouchi's idea of using a map to find the most popular page. I had a similar idea but to implement it would mean rewriting my code from scratch at 3 in the morning. Thanks to Jared's map idea, I could easily convert what I was using in my code to a map and traverse it to see which links came up the most.

All in all, I wished that I started earlier but I know that without any help, I don't think I would have finished this assignment. I feel dirty using other people's code to get me through my assignment, but I have to give them due credit because their ideas were brilliant.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~eykim/webspider-eykim-1.0.924.zip