Re: Software Engineering Education

[agate!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!hasan@ucbvax.Berkeley. EDU (David A. Hasan)]

In article <SRCTRAN.91Nov16120253@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
 Aharonian) writes:
>
>     The various suggestions for how to grade software products, while nice,
>don't reflect that in the real world of deadlines and tight budgets, one
>rarely has the luxury (or the ability to plead for cost over-runs) to do
>software nicely in the software engineering sense.

In the context of software engineering EDUCATION, this
argument seems to be equivalent to the following statement:

  "In the real world, nobody has the time to craft
   elegant papers or documents.  Memos and quick notes
   must be thrown together in order to meet real
   deadlines.  Therefore, it is not useful for students
   to spend time in school learning how to write well 
   if the emphasis is on "well" and not on "fast"."

Of course, the reason that it is useful for students to learn
how to write elegantly and program literately is so that when
it comes to meeting deadlines in the real world, they have
some underlying writing skills which will result in a
moderately well-crafted product EVEN IF it is thrown together
quickly.

I would argue (admittedly as an anti-C bigot) that the use
of C in academia works counter to the objective of turning out
students who appreciate the need to coherent, literate
software design.  (Unless, of course, one of the
aforementioned grading schemes is used in conjunction with the
language!)         

(Don asbestos suit...)

-- 
 |   David A. Hasan
 |   hasan@emx.utexas.edu