Since we had a large group, we split up the work by dividing up into smaller teams and then assigned each team with specific tasks. For example, we had one team that focused on writing the code for an auto-correct/spell-checker that fixed common errors from the OCR. We had a couple of research teams that focused on figuring out alternative solutions and machine learning algorithms that we could use for the project. And we also had a team that focused on the abstract level and wrote the base-line code. Each team knew their purpose and they knew exactly what to do.
Even though we had smaller groups of teams working on the same project, I noticed there were people that didn't know or how to use the code written in other teams. There were also a couple of occasions where a useful feature was written in a different branch of the repository but it was merged into the master branch late into development, if at all. This caused certain features to be written multiple times causing some confusion. Some code would work with only a particular version.
I noticed that some people were really good documenting their code and using good programming techniques while others were greatly lacking in this area. The poorly written code was difficult to read and understand, even if it "worked". This surprised me because I thought Seniors would have a higher standard at this point. I could distinctly tell the difference between the programmers that had actual programming experience versus the programmers without programming experience. The programmers with experience were the ones that followed good programming techniques and wrote well-written documentation. The programmers without experience quickly threw the code together as if they treated it like an assignment they put off until the last minute.
Regular Expressions and Machine Learning continue to interest me. I have used Regular Expressions in the past and I am fascinated how there is a way to describe and find patterns in text. I have also noticed that Machine Learning is becoming a very-demanding subject in programming and it is a skill that many companies are looking for in their future employees.