Re: Software Engineering Education

[taurus!grus!shimeall@lll-winken.llnl.gov (timothy shimeall)]

Has anyone considered the difficulty in even defining what "real world
computing" is, let alone teaching it? How would you provide a willing
university with the information it needs to design a "real world
computing" curriculum?

+ "Real world computing is what my company does" - This works great,
  until your graduates start working for more than one company...

+ "Real world computing is what programmers in general do" - I welcome
  suggestions as to how:
   a) A survey can be conducted to determine what programmers in
      general do (and how the results can be checked to determine
      that the programmers filled them out, not management or 
      clerks);
   b) A source of funding can be identified to pay for the survey
      mentioned in a)
   Note that the net, big as it is, is a biased sample.  People with
   time to spend on netnews aren't likely to be typical programmers.

   Note also that a casual survey of newspaper want ads shows that
   the most-requested types of programmers work in COBOL and RPG
   (Using ads from the San Jose Mercury News, serving most of Silicon
    Valley).  This may suggest that "programmers in general" isn't
   even the correct target, definitional problems aside.

+ "Real world computing is what the top-of-the-line companies do"
   -- this breaks down into two methodological problems: 
   a) How do we identify "Top-of-the-line" companies
   b) How do we get said companies to allow us to identify what
      their programmers do

As one final note, consider a MUCH simpler problem - profiling
CS professors (this is simpler, as the professors wouldn't have to get
an OK from corporate lawyers to describe their working habits).  While 
I've seen figures for average time/week for professors at various levels,
I've never seen figure breaking down what professors do during that time...
-- 
Tim Shimeall ((408) 646-2509)
The proper response to detecting a bug isn't to fix the bug - it's to make 
sure you'll never have to worry about that bug again.  --- Richard Hamming