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From: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education
Message-ID: <4908@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 89 18:17:18 GMT
References: <8911092042.AA21382@ctc.contel.com>
Reply-To: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 26


In an earlier article, author not relevant, the following comments were made
about CS education:

>I learned a helluva lot more about software engineering in one quarter of
>operating systems than I did in four quarters of calculus, four quarters of
>physics and 3 quarters of business administration combined, all of which were
>required.  I am in no way an expert on the topic, but they tell me these
>courses are necessary to teach one how to analyze and solve problems at an
>abstract level.  Yet, I still feel better suited to solving software problems
>thanks to my operating systems class than any other of the aforementioned...

The above seems to summarize a widely-held, but nonetheless mistaken
viewpoint of what engineering is, so I will use it as the basis of my
comment.

I suspect that no engineering is taught in any of the stated courses, for
engineering is not about solving problems -- it is about setting them.


Rich
-- 
We use kill ratios to measure how the war is going.
We use SLOC ratios to measure how our software is coming.
(Idea from Gary Seath)                                        rsd@sei.cmu.edu
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