Re: Why ADA?

[dove!swe.ncsl.nist.gov!bagwill@uunet.uu.net (Bob Bagwill)]

In article <BHANAFEE.92Mar25104850@deimos.ads.com> bhanafee@deimos.ads.com (Bri
an Hanafee) writes:
>Schools simply are not set up
>to demonstrate to students the benefits of long term maintainability--
>maintainability that must span *many* years of development.  The "good
>software engineering background" is only so many words if the software
>engineer has never seen evidence of the benefits of complete design,
>and he won't until he gets to his first big program.

Most universities have large pet software projects.  When they teach
software design and maintenance, working on one of those huge, slowly
evolving projects should be part of the course.  That gives students
practical experience in reading other peoples' code, and an object
lesson in why documentation and design are so important, as well as
slave labor to improve the project :-)
-- 
Bob Bagwill	NIST/Computer Systems Lab/Software Engineering Group