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From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education
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Date: 5 Dec 89 19:16:24 GMT
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From crm@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Charlie Martin):
> My point is that a sequence which leads to IS programming in Ada under
> UNIX is likely to be just as useless in 20 years as the one I took that
> taught RPG II and COBOL under 360 DOS and OS.  At least I hope so.  A
> sequence that teaches file system organization, concurrency and multiple
> access, architectures and the tradeoffs among architectural choices, and
> some kind of formal understanding of program and programming language
> semantics is much more likely to be giving you tools that you'll use in
> 20 years.

    The idea is to combine practical software engineering technology
    (Ada, CASE environments, and so on) with an understanding of how
    to apply it (software engineering, algorithm design and analysis,
    IS domain knowledge), an analytical understanding of computation
    (particularly NP-completeness and its implications, and the use of
    approximation algorithms as a pragmatic response), business skills
    (how to give presentations, how to interview, etc.) and a means of 
    professional development and continuing education (membership in ACM).

    It is obviously unacceptable to produce workers whose skills will
    inevitably become outdated without connecting them into a mechanism
    such as ACM whereby they will obtain continuing education; sadly,
    this is precisely what has been ignored by CS programs for years.
 
> One point that you seem to have in mind, that a student can be an
> effective team member immediately upon graduation, seems idealistic at
> best.  No other engineering discipline does so; back at GTE I was told
> that it took about one year to become effective as an engineer, no
> matter where you were from or what your background was.  There is that
> much domain knowledge and "corporate culture" to be learned.

    Having been a GTE-er myself, I am familiar with this perspective.

    However, I think it is largely due to the fact that coop programs 
    are still running in low gear as far as universities are concerned.  
    

    Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu