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From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)
Subject: Teaching Team/Maintenance Programming (was: Looking for a good book)
Date: 1996/11/30
Message-ID: <1996Nov30.080747.1@eisner>#1/1
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Date: 1996-11-30T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <57noj5$j8e$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>, Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> writes:

> I suspect that almost all educators consider team work. However team work
> is _really_ hard to get right. Often you end up with passengers in a team,
> who pass having done nothing much (if they are hopeless, often other team
> members take up the slack to ensure that _they_ pass).
> 
> Also on giving them work from other students... what if the work is
> fundamentally flawed? How do you assess what they have done? Students 
> don't like being penalised because of the failings of other students.

Although these concerns are real, they also exist in industry.
To the extent that team programming and maintenance programming
are a _given_ in the real world, devising methods to "teach" them
(or at least "experience" them) in an educational setting is quite
important.

Regarding the maintenance programming problem, would it be possible
to give each team some equally garbage code created by some team from
a previous year?  This actually provides an even better emulation of
industry, since one cannot go down the hall to get help from a "departed
programmer".

Larry Kilgallen