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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Any research putting c above ada?
Date: 1997/05/06
Message-ID: <EACHUS.97May6104424@spectre.mitre.org>#1/1
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References: <5ih6i9$oct$1@waldorf.csc.calpoly.edu>
 <Pine.GSO.3.95.970427131344.138C-100000@nunic.nu.edu>
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Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-06T00:00:00+00:00
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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 have felt for years that if we want to create a profession of
software engineering that the current engineering school model won't
work.  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.

   You may not like some of the features of my programming style, just
as I don't like some of Mahler's musical idioms.  But there is a huge
and recognizable gulf between the products of good software engineers
and the dreck you normally see in CS1.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
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