Seth Milliken — Words, Thoughts, Tech

Interviewing for FileMaker positions recently, I wanted to be able to provide a demonstration of my skills without breaching my confidentiality agreements with previous clients. So I built this Scrabblet over a weekend using FileMaker 6.0v3 on Mac OS X 10.2. Although a bit on the slow side, it does a decent job of tracking and scoring plays in a game of Scrabble.

Here are some known issues with this first version:

- The UI is not phenomenal, and there are likely a number of usability issues as a result of my being the sole tester.

- Minor redraw glitches.

- Can't play a single tile as the first play.

- Allows a play of more than seven new tiles in a turn.

- Scoring is not implemented for the remaining tiles on the final racks.

- While in game replay mode, records for successfully challenged words will erroneously be deleted.

- While in game replay mode, definitions of blank tiles are not remembered.

- Mode for freeform board setup is not complete.

- During a play, blank tiles collide with tiles whose letter is the same as the letter to which the blank has been defined; those tiles must be entered as blanks (e.g. "?") for a valid play.

- Responsibility of some lower-level functionality is not well-defined.

- Calling conventions, preconditions, and postconditions are not always clear.

- I made a couple of ugly script hacks in the name of expediency over redesign.

- A number of fields and scripts could be pruned to improve cleanliness and prevent confusion.

- Lacks thorough commentary in many areas.

- Didn't fully exploit the stack-based computer emulator. Not well documented.

- Requires the not-inexpensive full version of FileMaker Pro 6.x.

- And yes, it can be a bit slow at times, especially when a play creates many new words. :-)

Here is the first round of scrabble photos. Primarily final boards. Sometime in the distant future, I may add links to notations for the games, including such trivial information as participating players and dates the games were played.