Xref: utzoo comp.object:3164 comp.software-eng:5345 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!hsdndev!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Documenting OO Systems Message-ID: <3242:Apr1413:48:3691@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Date: 14 Apr 91 13:48:36 GMT References: <1899:Apr1206:12:4991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Organization: IR Lines: 28 In article jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: > >The existing tests for engineers include some amount of jargon, to be > >sure, but they also include *problems* that relate directly to problems > >in the *real world*---problems whose solutions are applied directly by > >engineers every day. Most of the answers aren't obvious, even to someone > >acquainted with the jargon. > I'm a bit confused. Is it your belief that software engineers do NOT > work on problems directly related to the real world? The key phrases are ``problems whose solutions are applied directly by engineers every day'' and ``most of the answers aren't obvious.'' > I think I'd ask them to solve some problems. Probably have them rig > up an interface to some device, write some queries for a database, > reverse engineer a design from some legacy code, etc etc etc. You > know--do some software engineering. That sure sounds like a programming test to me. You wouldn't find people doing ``software engineering'' to produce correct answers on that test. Are you saying that any working program is the result of software engineering? That's an extremely broad definition. How come you can only come up with test problems, not questions? Is there no significant body of nontrivial ``software engineering'' techniques that you can test someone's knowledge of? The electrical engineering tests don't ask you to build a computer. ---Dan