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From: sdm@brunix (Scott Meyers)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education
Message-ID: <20410@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 10 Nov 89 16:45:47 GMT
References: <11064@cbnews.ATT.COM> <6961@hubcap.clemson.edu> <16028@duke.cs.duke.edu> <23871@cup.portal.com>
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Reply-To: sdm@norton.UUCP (Scott Meyers)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
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In article <23871@cup.portal.com> Jerome_V_Vollborn@cup.portal.com writes:
>As an aside, a couple of weeks ago I interviewed a person about to 
>graduate from the University of California at Berkley with a PhD in 
>computer science.  He has been doing research in machine control.  
>When I asked him what design approach he had been using, he said that 
>since he was doing research no explicit (my word, not his; he didn't 
>know what a formal design method is) design method could be used.  
>Further questioning showed that he could not name or describe any 
>explicit design method!  As a California tax payer I am very unhappy.  
>Not only has my tax money to support this person's education been 
>misspent, but much of this person's time has been wasted.

Just out of curiosity, given that he was doing research and wasn't
necessarily sure what the final specification of his system was supposed to
be, what design methodology would you have recommended that he employ?  As
for misspending your tax dollars, did you arrive at that conclusion by
examining his research to see if it was worthwhile, or did you simply stop
thinking when you found that he couldn't satisfactorily pass your software
engineering litmus test?

Scott
sdm@cs.brown.edu