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From: peterd@cs.washington.edu (Peter C. Damron)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education
Message-ID: <9760@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 89 21:04:51 GMT
References: <11064@cbnews.ATT.COM> <6961@hubcap.clemson.edu> <9734@june.cs.washington.edu> <4863@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: peterd@june.cs.washington.edu.cs.washington.edu (Peter C. Damron)
Organization: University of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 43

In article <4863@ae.sei.cmu.edu> rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) writes:
>In article <9734@june.cs.washington.edu> Peter C. Damron writes:
>
>>I would submit that there is not much more than a quarter or semester
>>worth of material about software engineering that is not taught in some
>>other CS class.
>
>I find this statement fascinating, especially this discussion to now has
>been about computer science, and not software engineering.  Please explain
>exactly what you mean, particularly, what "software engineering" material
>is to you.

I wrote that paragraph mainly to stir up discussion.  I "hear" a lot of
"talk" about the need for more software engineering, but little about
what people mean by software engineering.

Tentative definition: Software engineering is the facilitation
of applications that require software solutions.

So, to me that includes everything already taught in computer science,
plus maybe some more.  But keep in mind that the above statement was
made in the context of undergraduate education, so not even everything
about computer science or software engineering can be taught.

Some things like software lifecycles, specification, documentation,
testing, and environments are not generally taught in any computer
science class, and could be included in a software engineering class.
That covers a lot of material, but is it worth taking up more
than one undergraduate class?  I am not convinced that it is.

No doubt I left off someone's software engineering topic of interest,
and I'm sure you'll let me know if I did.

Peter.

---------------
Peter C. Damron
Dept. of Computer Science, FR-35
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195

peterd@cs.washington.edu
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