I present you some very important Don’ts that you (as a student) must take great lengths in avoiding.
Don’t:
Follow your seniors example and advice blindly.
This is especially true and important when the said senior is not a special friend of the Grade A. Do not let a blind lead you while you close your eyes and ignore your own senses.
Plagiarize.
Plagiarism is a big NO and will result to failure or even expulsion. Plagiarism comes in two flavours: stupid and kinda intelligent , but neither are advisable.
- stupid: you take the texts EXACTLY and claim it is yours. This is easy to detect with the help of Turnitin.
- kinda intelligent: you take the texts, but change a couple of words here and there. Still can be detected by Turnitin and your lecturers with a “6th-sense”.
- FYI – direct translation from English to Bahasa Malaysia is still considered plagiarism. Ease off Google translate.
Spend too much time trying to ‘find code’.
Re-engineering and code reusability has its time and place. If you only want to use without ever creating, you are going to be in a heap of trouble. Furthermore, if you copy but don’t understand – may God help you.
Have “tunnel vision”.
This is especially important in SD projects. You have to view the system from different points of views (the admin, users, staff, guests, clients) of the elements connected to the system you are developing. If you develop with tunnel vision, then there is a great probability that your end-product is only good in YOUR (that is 1 person) opinion.
Put things off to the last minute.
Be it writing or coding, don’t procrastinate. While a semester seems like a long time, it is not. Don’t forget that you still have subjects to attend to besides FYP.
**If you arrive here first, the DO’s of FYP can be found here.
