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From: madd@world.std.com (jim frost)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education
Message-ID: <1989Nov16.182556.15029@world.std.com>
Date: 16 Nov 89 18:25:56 GMT
References: <7024@hubcap.clemson.edu> <7036@hubcap.clemson.edu> <4943@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Organization: Software Tool & Die
Lines: 25

rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) writes:
>In article <7036@hubcap.clemson.edu> A. Jeff Offutt writes:
>>Here's one of my ideas for a perfect software engineering project:
>>   An operating system. ...Another one: A compiler
>Please explain how these require any engineering methods and relate to
>anything that goes on in the industries that produce software-dependent
>systems.

Operating systems have real-life examples of how to use many of the
algorithms that you see in class.  Additionally, they show how to
build reliability into a program, something which almost never shows
up in classwork and which is absolutely necessary in the real world.
Lastly, their size and complexity will force a student to deal with
many of the "real world" problems that come with debugging or
extending a large system.

Unfortunately operating systems often have a lot of goo which is
handling hardware weirdnesses, so you can loose a lot of good system
design inside of a mess of trivialities.  I don't think this is
particularly bad (the "real world" is like that!) but it can be
distracting.

jim frost
software tool & die
madd@std.com