Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bunny!jwg1
From: jwg1@bunny.UUCP (James W. Gish)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: American Programmer
Message-ID: <5775@bunny.UUCP>
Date: 30 Mar 88 18:00:52 GMT
References: <555@psu-cs.UUCP> <1434@ur-tut.UUCP> <3415@bunker.UUCP> <3326@zeus.TEK.COM> <461@vsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: jwg1@bunny.UUCP (James W. Gish)
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA
Lines: 31

There have been a number of comments indicating that you can't get the
experience in school that you can get in industry doing large scale
system development.  I agree.  However, a large part of this has to do
with the traditional mode of thinking about how courses are
structured, i.e. one or two self contained semesters centered around
closely related topics.  If you break out of this traditional
structure and choose a large complex system that is continually
evolving as the focus of the design, programming, maintenance, project
management, enhancement, testing, prototyping... assignments over a
four year period you could better address some of the concerns about
getting a feel for realistic system development.  You could still have
one or two semester self contained courses, but the projects could
revolve around this large system.  Naturally, it would be hard to
manage, but isn't that the point?  It also would "never be done"
(another characteristic of many/most real software products).  Of
course, subsystems would get done.  I can see lots of opportunity here
for addressing the concerns raised in this discussion group.

Possible projects:
   OS, DBMS, programming environments (CASE, rapid prototyping,
visual,...), object management systems, ... 


   



-- 
Jim Gish
GTE Laboratories, Inc., Waltham, MA
CSNET: jwg1@gte-labs    UUCP:  ..!harvard!bunny!jwg1