Problems with today's lab/cluster

As requested, some problems with the freeway simulaiton. 1) We can't edit the source code, only view it. 2) The cars crash far too often. 3) There isn't any event when two cars crash. 4) Many cars don't make an effort to avoid a crash. 5) The presets don't seem to have the proper bounds... Sometimes the fastest cars were the cautious drivers, the slowest were the normal drivers, and the agressive drivers were not agressive at all. 6) The track is too long or there should be a way to clear the entire track. 7) The simulation should be able to handle more cars... 8) The program should have a counter for the number of crashes. 9) I don't see a clear link between the science of computing and the freeway simulator. One problem is that the code is too obscure and difficult to understand, especially since programming was not a requirement for this cluster. Additionally, the three professors seem to have different ideas on which programming language to use. C++, C#, Javascript... Running a freeway simulator may be interesting, but it doesn't leave much behind. Some clusters have clearly visible work from their experiences here. Clocks, kinetic sculptures, wooden buildings to break apart in a simulated earthquakes, performing labs... but we're not so much doing labs as much as running somebody else's program. And of course, there isn't enough time to program these simulations/topics ourselves... Finally, the project is still extremely open-ended right now. Although we got a list of possible topic ideas, they don't have much unity other than they all deal with computeres. It can be possible to have a very specific idea of what to do and still have a huge amount of freedom in choosing what to do- for example make a kinetic sculpture, or perform a lab, or even everyone program a game or a program that solves ________ problem. But this is still a bit general...