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Teaching Programming to Non-Developers

Posted by Cliff on from the illumination-of-the-non-enlightened dept.

Eric asks: "I'm teaching a web application development class at a local public university. The students are seniors in the business program; the course is intended to expose them to development practice (we're using PHP and MySQL) but is not intended to turn them into developers. So what would the Slashdot community recommend within the curriculum? How would you teach web development to the managers of the future, and why?"

1 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Don't teach them programming. by bensyverson · · Score: 5, Informative

    You don't have time. Plus, if they wind up being managers, they don't need to know about PHP and MySQL's specifics. You're only going to have about enough time to teach them how to make a completely watered-down application, which will be totally useless to them, and won't help them understand what real developers are doing.

    Instead, show them what the LAMP model is all about. Bring up issues like:

    • LAMP vs. Oracle
    • Open vs. Proprietary
    • MySQL vs. PostgreSQL
    • read-heavy applications vs. transaction-heavy applications
    • Dealing with high demand (/. effect). You might want to mention:
      • Smart caching with Squid/mod_proxy
      • Database optimization
      • Making non-dynamic pages static
      • Using a smaller http server to serve static content (such as thttpd or a barebones Apache)
      • Moving from PHP to mod_perl for high-traffic applications
    • One big server vs. two or three (or more) very cheap servers
    • Time vs. Money:
      • In-house vs. Outside development
      • Creating a new system vs. Adapting existing system (which may cost)
      • etc
    Try to get some opinions and discussions happening -- these high-level topics are more useful to them than how to set up an over-simplified database-driven website that won't scale.

    -ben