Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!ucsd!nosc!macomw!dtraver
From: dtraver@macomw.ARPA (George Andrew Traver)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: American Programmer
Message-ID: <241@macomw.ARPA>
Date: 24 Mar 88 17:55:25 GMT
References: <555@psu-cs.UUCP> <1434@ur-tut.UUCP> <3415@bunker.UUCP> <5359@utah-cs.UUCP> <36845UH2@PSUVM> <5367@utah-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dtraver@macomw.UCSD.EDU (George Andrew Traver)
Organization: M/A-COM Telecom., San Diego
Lines: 42

>In article <36845UH2@PSUVM> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>
>[...]  Imagine this freshman programming
>course---start with data flow diagrams, strucutre charts, and walk-throughs---
>add egoless programming---teach symbolic debuggers and syntax directed editors
>from day one.
>


I graduated from UCSD with a CS degree.  The problem I found with my
education was that problem solving techniques were never covered in
depth.  My first two years of work I impressed everyone I worked for
except  myself.  My code was not clean and did not always flow logicaly.
But it always met or exceeded functional requirments.
Just lately I've been working with some PHD people with tons of
experience and I fell I'm just now starting to learn how to code.

The reason this problem exist in school is because it would take 
a lot of time to realy understand each program turned in and grade
them on there logical flow.  This is why prof's wont do it.  The
TA's who grad the programs are just as porly trained as the students.
The whole grade is placed on comments and correct output.  Well
thats no problem for me, I've done it in the past for employers.
I've handed them well commented programs that run correctly but
I would hate to be someone else who had to modify it.



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Success has many fathers :-), while failure is an orphan. :-(

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The views expressed in this article are shared by no other living being
or organization I know of. ( especialy my girlfreind )

	   		dtraver@macomw.arpa
	  
			FLAMES > /dev/null

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