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Date: 30 Jul 93 12:36:07 GMT
From: haven.umd.edu!cs.umd.edu!dtix.dt.navy.mil!relay-wo!relay!apssgi.nswc.navy
.mil!bwallet@uunet.uu.net  (Brad Wallet)
Subject: Re:  Are 'best' universities being targeted
Message-ID: <1993Jul30.123607.5083@relay.nswc.navy.mil>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <1993Jul29.163417.17018@schbbs.mot.com>, tannen@tigger.geg.mot.com (
David Tannen) writes:
|> IMHO (honest, I haven't been humble for a long time):
|> 
|> My best professors in college were the ones who had a decade or two
|> working on big systems.  The best professor spent the entire semester
|> telling us about the systems that had failed and how they had failed.
|> Quite a few of the students (and profs) were very uncomfortable w/
|> this approach.  Many wondered if she had ever worked on a successful
|> project.  I came to realize that she was teaching us a truism about
|> software - All systems fail.  Good systems can recover from failure.
|> 
|> Some of the worst professors I had never worked outside of the 
|> university environment.  If I followed their ideas out here where I
|> have worked the last 9yrs, I might have been fired.
|> 
|> I would like to see the a CS program require the following areas:
|> 	Calc I & II (maybe III) 
|> 	A minor in Science or Business
|> 	Data Structures
|> 	OS Theory
|> 	2 Intro EE classes taught by & out of the EE dept. where
|> 		you build some circuits in the labs. (I found them 
|> 		very useful)
|> 	3 Digital Design classes where you have to build some 
|> 		fairly complex digital circuits.
|> 	Systems programming (Lots of Assembler/C)
|> 	Language comparison class
|> 	Systems Analysis & Design 
|> 		(SA/SD and OOA/OOD, plus all projects should be team
|> 		 projects)
|> 	Algorithms
|> 	Real-Time
|> 
|> What would I eliminate from undergrad studies:
|> 	AI
|> 	Language classes for credit (maybe 1 credit)
|> 		The dept. would need to pick a standard language
|> 		for all core classes.  Ada teaches discipline,
|> 		and core software engineering ideas.
|> 
|> Just my $0.02.  Any others that should be +/- from my lists?


Disclaimer:  i am not a software engineer or a computer scientist,
but i do deal extensively with them...

seems to me, that to prepare kids for the real world, u should give
them classes like:

Software Specification
Software Project Management
Software Creation
Software Maintenance
Software Testing, Verification, and Validation
Software Reliability
Software Reuse

Why not split the Systems Analysis and Design into a System Analysis
course and a Software Design course?

Once again, too many computer scientist, not enough software engineers.
That's why Ada is catching on as fast as it should.

Brad