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From: gds@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education
Message-ID: <29145@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 14 Nov 89 23:10:30 GMT
References: <16028@duke.cs.duke.edu> <7024@hubcap.clemson.edu> <9808@june.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: gds@cs.ucla.edu (Greg Skinner)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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I just thought I'd throw in a description of what MIT's software
engineering class covered when I took it (6 years ago).

* Approaches to software development -- top-down vs. bottom-up,
  modular design, etc.
* Formal semantics of data structures -- invariants for the data
  structures, abstraction functions for the data structures, etc.
* Methods of testing software
* Documentation
* How to go from software specifications to software development

The emphasis on the programming assignments we had (text formatter,
"mini" macsyma, and a text editor) was to design, test, and document
the software.  Implementation was only worth about 20% of the grade.
The text editor was a team project (3-4 people).

The software engineering class is a prerequisite for the compiler
class, where teams build a full compiler.

--gregbo