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From: burgess@izar.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: software engineering
Message-ID: <623@charon.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Mar-87 14:06:10 EST
Article-I.D.: charon.623
Posted: Sun Mar 22 14:06:10 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Mar-87 01:31:39 EST
References: <340@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@charon.UUCP
Reply-To: burgess@izar.UUCP (Rebecca Burgess)
Organization: University of New Mexico Computing Center
Lines: 41
Summary: early and often

In article <340@ndsuvax.UUCP> ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) writes:
>
>     At what level should students be taught software engineering principles and
>concerns?

As early as possible.  If they take the shot gun approach (well, maybe THIS
line has the bug in it) it takes forever to break them of it.  Also, if you
give them a good step-by-step method to write programs, they might use it.

>           How much should be covered in the introductory courses, how much
>should be presented to non-majors?  Should the material be a part of courses 
>whose emphasis is another topic (e.g., data structures, operating systems),
>or should there be specific courses which concentrate on design, on testing, etc.
>?

Again, hammer it into their little heads from the very beginning and do the 
same with non-majors.  I speak from experience here, I've taught the intro
FORTRAN course to engineers and I teach the second computer course to the 
ones who survive the first.  I found that the people I taught (who had the
principle hammered into them) handle the second course much better, besides
being able to write pretty decent code.  The people from other classes
frequently can't write a simple DO loop and are hopelessly lost when they have
to write a 150 line program.

I think it is important to realize that a lot of the code used by the scientific
community is written by engineers, and they often don't understand software
design.  If they were taught the same principles, there would be a lot of time, 
$$$$ and effort saved in the industry.

>     When and how often should students do project assignments?

I think that programming classes should be worth more credits so that the
students can be required to do larger and longer projects.  I think they should
have written a 300 line program by the end of the first class.  (this may
already be true in the CS classes, but engineers only write ~100 line programs
by the end of class).

I'm afraid that I froth at the mouth when I discuss how little students know
about programming, sorry this is so long.

rebecca