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From: render@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <39400019@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 2 May 89 17:50:00 GMT
References: <854@odyssey.ATT.COM>
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Nf-ID: #R:odyssey.ATT.COM:854:m.cs.uiuc.edu:39400019:000:1217
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!render    May  2 12:50:00 1989


The Colonel gives a good list of skill requirements for software engineers,
but I'll be damned if I know how you can judge someone's ability on this kind 
of stuff unless you've watched them do it.  Debugging is something they all 
should have done on programming assignments, but how do you rate debugging
skill?  Most undergrads won't have done any porting unless they had some
system programming job.  Maintenance covers porting and upgrades, but this
is also something you don't get anywhere except on a job.  Working from
specs they should be able to handle; a programming assignment is nothing if 
not a spec, albeit a poorly worded one.  Designing a good user interface 
is a science in itself, and should be taught as a separate class (or a big 
part of some other class).  Ditto for writing docs.  I think that a good
CS program will give them some variety of languages and systems (I'd tried
6 or 7 languages by the time I got out of ugrad), and it's easily checked.
As I said, a good list, but hard to check.

I know the ACM has been working on a core curriculum for undergraduate
CS education.   Does anyone know how much software engineering is included?

Hal Render
render@cs.uiuc.edu | uiucdcs!render