Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!Shasta!neff
From: neff@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Randy Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Cynic's Guide to Software Engineering, part 4
Message-ID: <2677@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 14 Apr 88 22:35:44 GMT
Reply-To: neff@Shasta.stanford.edu (Randall Neff)
Distribution: na
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 89
Keywords: Software Engineering Education


------		The Cynic's Guide to Software Engineering		------
------ an invitation to dialogue, starting with the personal view of	------
------		    Randall Neff @ sierra.stanford.edu			------
------	        	April 13, 1988   	part 4			------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		Software Engineering Education

The basic problem is that collectively, we do not know how to solve the
"Software Engineering Crisis". Quoting Fred Brooks, "There is no Silver Bullet"
So we really don't know what to teach (or how).   This is my overall
impression of the book _Software_Engineering_Education:_The_Educational_Needs_
of_the_Software_Community edited by Norman Gibbs and Richard Fairley, which
was the report of a conference at the Software Engineering Institute in 
Feb, 1986.  

I feel that a Software Engineering program needs both a masters degree and
Ph.D degrees along with a very large component of research into the problems
and possible solutions, since we currently don't have a Silver Bullet. One 
major problem is finding qualified faculty;  SE is not a dignified topic at
some CS departments and faculty should have had several industry
programming jobs.  (Can you believe that at some schools, individuals are 
teaching how to program that have never been outside of academia or written
a program used by other folks!)  Ask your Software Engineering Education
expert: "How many lines of delivered code did you personally write last year?"

The key focus of a Masters program of software engineering should be an 
apprenticeship working on a real, large software project, in all phases of
the lifecycle myth.  I suggest that a complete software engineering programming
environment be the continuous project for all of the students over the years.   
It would be designed to be portable, run on several different hardware /os 
platforms and would be given away to anyone asking.  It would go with every
graduating student.  It would be treated just like a real software product from
a real company, including support, new releases, bug fixes, manuals, training.
The system would start out small, say just the database/configuration/version
management; then be expanded with syntax directed editors, graphic editors,
regression testing, reuse libraries, application generators, whatever the 
current fad happens to be.

Students would enter the school at the support end, working on maintenance;
then move into minor enhancements, then major ones;  finally, as a team 
propose, specify, design, construct, integrate and test a new or replacement
subsystem.   Students (and lots of outsiders) would really be using the
system, it is not thrown away; it gets better every year and teaches 
everything.   The whole point is that the system will greatly enhance the 
programming productivity of the students along with being a teaching and 
research vehicle.

Classes:  basically there are two things that you need to teach.  Enhanced
vocational skills and the foundation for future advances.  The foundation
is typically mathematical and formal, with perhaps some crystal balls visions.

History:   (The Mythical Man Month and more)
   of computers and programming languages
   famous horror stories
   early attempts at SE

State_of_the_Practice  (what allegedly goes on now)
   contemporary mythology of software development, lifecycle, costing models
   version control/configuration management
   integration/testing
   top down design
   twenty five different design methodologies
   reuse, application generators
   batch compilers and tools

Languages
   Fortran, Cobol, Simula, Apl, Snobol
   Algol 60, Pascal, Modula-2, C, C++
   Ada, Concurrent C
   Common Lisp, Prolog,  latest functional programming fad
   Smalltalk, object oriented

State_of_the_Art   (what is happening in universities)
   Highly interactive user interfaces
   Incremental compilation, loading, debugging, interpretors
   Formal languages and methods, specification analysis, incremental program
       proving, tasking specification and monitoring
   Syntax directed editors

State_of_the_Future   (problems and possible solutions)
   Standardization, why, how to, validation of, leverage, portability
   Distributed environments
   Parallel programming 
   Super programmer tools  (ie a correct Pascal compiler in eight hours)
   Professionalism, responsibility, licensing
   Future architectures for checking correct program execution
   New paradigms of software development
   The next generation of programming languages/environments
   Programming without languages