Teaching Programming to Non-Developers

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?"

Comments

Have them write a program...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the day before the assignment is due, totally change the requirements and expectations from them.

Then knock their grade down for not completing the assignment on time.

Maybe that will give them some insight to what they do to programmers when they make decisions like "Oh, this one little functionality change won't make a difference to the IT team. I'll go ahead and promise the customer it will be changed by tomorrow."

A PHP course for B students is malpractice

[OldAndSlow]

Educational malpractice! Does your school offer a one term course in chip design for business majors?

I have had _way_ too many bosses, at all levels of the chain of command who thought they knew how to build software. One was the president of the government systems division, who thought he was a software guy because he had hung tapes for a mainframe when he was in the air force 30 years before. Lots of EEs think they know software because they wrote one-off programs to solve homework assignments. I once ran into a PhD (5 degrees actually) who was leaving the academy to run a 400 person project. Biggest thing he had ever done, 5 people for 2 semesters.

If one of these b-students ever gets to be a boss of mine, and acts like they know anything about the industrial software process, I'm going to find you.

And hurt you.