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From: beth@hubcap.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Computer Science: where it belongs
Message-ID: <647@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Nov-87 12:04:38 EST
Article-I.D.: hubcap.647
Posted: Thu Nov 12 12:04:38 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 13:44:52 EST
References: <21402@cca.CCA.COM>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 22

Richard Harter says:
> The other point is that SE people should spend some time studying large
> programs.  What is the principal decomposition?  It's all very well to be
> able to write small programs that implement neat algorithms, but a lot of
> people are going to have to work with large systems.  Shouldn't an SE graduate
> have some experience in finding her way around a large system?

As someone else mentioned, finding good large programs is difficult
because companies generally do not want to share.  And you'd really
want them to share not only the source code but the requirements,
designs (and any designs that were discarded along with the reasons
why they were discarded), test suites, and bugs found after delivery.
What we need are case studies of large projects.  These could be
used in many ways in a software engineering course.

The Software Engineering Institute was looking at finding and using
such case studies.  Maybe someone there could comment.  I know that
my students learned quite a bit changing other people's programs.

					Beth Katz
 ...!gatech!hubcap!beth			beth@hubcap.clemson.edu
 ...!uunet!brillig!beth			beth@brillig.umd.edu