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From: conrad@wucs.UUCP (Conrad Cunningham)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: What CS programs ought to be like vs. a good SE program
Message-ID: <1787@wucs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Oct-86 11:56:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: wucs.1787
Posted: Tue Oct  7 11:56:42 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Oct-86 04:49:05 EDT
References: <114@tijc02.UUCP>
Reply-To: conrad@wucs.UUCP (Conrad Cunningham)
Distribution: net
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis
Lines: 36

In article <114@tijc02.UUCP> djm408@tijc02.UUCP (David Marks         ) writes:
>     These are the courses I think would be necessary for both curricula:
> ...       Calculus I & II ...
	I think one or two courses in discrete mathematics is as important as
the traditional continuous mathematics.  Perhaps a two-year sequence that 
integrates aspects of both continuous math (Calculus) and discrete math would 
be better.
>          
>     These are the courses primarily in the SE curriculum
>      (some required, and some not):
> ...
>          Structured Analysis and Design
>          Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Ada
> ....
	Two comments here.  "Structured Analysis and Design" are specific 
techniques.  Specific techniques probably need to be taught, but I wouldn't
limit a curriculum to these specific techniques.  Also you list several 
languages--all imperative in structure.  The SE (and the CS) should be 
familiar with programming techniques in several styles--sequential imperative
(e.g., Fortran, Cobol, C, C++, Pascal, Icon), concurrent imperative (e.g., Ada,
Modula II), functional (e.g., Lisp, FP), logic (e.g., Prolog, Equational 
Logic), and actor(?) (e.g, Smalltalk).  SE's should not just be programming 
language jockeys.  Who knows what styles, techniques, and languages
are going to be important in the medium to long term?  (Except Cobol
and Fortran which will probably be with us as long as death and taxes. :-)
>
>     These are courses primarily in the CS curriculum
	The programming courses in the CS curriculum (and probably the SE too)
should emphasize program derivation/proof, not just hacking.  In both curricula
I would prefer to see courses build around the concepts rather than the
technology, e.g., "Concurrent Programming Concepts" instead of "Operating 
Systems", "Language Processing" instead of "Compilers", or "Functional
Programming" instead of "Lisp".

Conrad Cunningham
Washington University in St. Louis