Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!qucis!dalamb
From: dalamb@qucis.queensu.CA (David Lamb)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Maintenance (was: Schedule and Budget...)
Message-ID: <295@qusuntrc.queensu.CA>
Date: 8 Nov 89 17:53:53 GMT
References: <1271@accuvax.nwu.edu> <440004@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM>
Reply-To: dalamb@qucis.queensu.CA (David Lamb)
Organization: Queen's University, Kingston Ontario
Lines: 24

Requiring students to do some form of maintenance as assignments has some
very good educational benefits.
	- It motivates a lot of the "readability" guidlines we give them
	  in a way that makes a lot more sense to students than just because
	  readability is part of the grading scheme
	- It motivates the need for design documentation to help students
	  understand large systems.
	- In anything in which it is possible to be literate, there exists
	  a "literature" with which one ought to be familiar.  Literacy in
	  programming should require students to be familiar with well-known
	  concepts; reading real (well-chosen) programs is a good way to do so.
Unfortunately it's difficult for faculty members to get credit for developing
such examples, or for spending the effort to find or tailor "real" ones that
match well with the desired educational objectives.

David Alex Lamb
Department of Computing and Information Science
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
(613) 545-6067

ARPA Internet:	David.Lamb@cs.cmu.edu
		dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca
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