Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[jmartin@cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin)]

eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:

>In article <336DF13F.41C6@cca.rockwell.com> Roy Grimm <ragrimm@cca.rockwell.com> writes:

>  > I couldn't agree with you more.  However, I think we will all have a
>  > battle to get the engineering colleges to admit that software
>  > engineering should be another course of study in their schools.  There
>  > are some who will agree and some who will not.  I believe that we will
>  > see software engineering programs implemented in time.  There are
>  > already some institutions which offer a software engineering "track" in
>  > addition to a normal program in CompSci.  (I've seen it in the
>  > literature for the University of Iowa's graduate program in Computer
>  > Science.)

>   There are some colleges and universities which have tried this.
>But such programs seem to fail for a very interesting reason.  The
>craft of software engineering is learned in two ways.  One by making
>the classic mistakes and seeing the consequences, the other by
>mentoring by master software engineers.  While some of those mentors
>can be found in universities, the current reality is that there aren't
>enough in any one university location to create a school in the
>original meaning of the word.

>   Those software engineering programs which have worked have been
>co-operative arrangements between academia and industry and tend to
>rely on one individual on each side of the fence to keep the program
>going.  When someone dies, retires, or transfers, for whatever reason,
>the program eventually falls apart.

I think the problem is that Computer Science is ignoring Software
Engineering and thus there are not enough (or zero) slots at CS
departments to hire such faculity.  The programs fall apart because
the academics don't give a f*ck about software .  Thus, until CS
moderates the theoretical masturbation and ARPA Prostitution, I see no
hope for a software education especially at the more established CS
departments.

>   I have felt for years that if we want to create a profession of
>software engineering that the current engineering school model won't
>work. 

Hmm, seems like a cop out.

>My guess is that we need a guild structure with masters,
>journeymen and apprentices.  Even if apprentices are normally expected
>to get a batchelor's degree in some field, (today everything is a
>related field) with some CS courses, the real professional recognition
>has got to be based on journey pieces and masterworks.

Interesting, but come to think about it where are the recognized
"masterworks" of software?  

Jay