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Software Dev Cycle As Part of CS Curriculum?
tcolvinMI wonders: "I graduated from a small private college a few years ago with a degree in Computer Science. The main focus of the program, at this particular college, was to give you the tools necessary to be able to learn any programming language based on conceptual information, while having been introduced to several popular languages such as VB, C, C++, and Java. However, there was no 'final project' course that introduced a student programmer to the process of software development as a whole. Today, I was talking with a professor and pitched the idea of introducing such a course that would allow students to essentially go through the entire process from design to deployment. Is there any need for such a course? If so, what lessons would you place an emphasis on? So far, my idea is to allow a student to design an application that can be completed within the alloted time frame, develop in an approved language (one they've had and one the professor also knows), go through the QA process and then finally deploy the app to be evaluated by the other students in the class, who have not participated in the project." If you went CS, how well did your lessons prepare you for real project work? If you had a chance to prepare other college students for a career in development, what things would you teach them, and why?
To answer your questions about languages my opinion is as follows.
A student needs at least 4 semesters with C++. C++ is the mother language and if you learn it you can program in about any other language for the rest of your life.
A student needs at least two semesters in software architecture and requirements gathering.
A student needs at least 2 semesters of data structures.
A student needs at least 2 semesters of networking.
A student needs at least 2 semesters of operating systems.
A student needs at least 2 semesters in secure software coding (and integral with every other class)
A student needs at least 1 semester in structured scripting like bash, ksh, csh.
A student needs at least 1 semester of compiler theory.
A student needs at least 1 semester of language structure, grammars, syntax, etc...
A student needs at least math theory through discrete mathematics, and better yet through calculus.
These of course are just simple undergraduate courses and there is so much more that can be done beyond this.
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The software development cycle is important, but pretty easy to pick up. You've been learning to meet deadlines for how many years now? And deadlines in school are much more restrictive than deadlines at work (depending on your professor/employer of course!)...
What I think most CS students would benefit from most, from my time spent in the industry, is a few business classes. It's important to know what the business people are thinking, if you want to work for them. You can't just ignore your manager, hope s/he will go away as soon as they start talking, etc. You have to learn how to interact and exploit your manager!
Going into the real workforce after leaving school was quite a shock. It's the politics I was unprepared for. I'd focus on that if I was you. But I'm not, good luck!
I graduated from Georgia Tech last year after finishing the 4 year CS degree.
We had multiple classes that had a whole "software development process," and I'd honestly look pretty skeptically at any CS program that doesn't. We had a Senior Design course that was required to graduate, and a required Software Engineering class that encompassed the whole "process." We had to go through the same type of process in a couple other CS electives. To be a bit more clear, the "process" was stuff like documentation and writing papers.
Having said that...I always took on the "master coder" role in our groups and stuck other people with the other stuff. I don't regret it, I've certainly never had to do anything besides code and test my own code now that I'm a developer. Granted, I never WANT to do general project planning/document writing/etc, while some people may find that desirable. Managers probably make more money. Don't know, don't care. I speak and type English very well, if too succinctly, and that's about the extent of my non-coding required skills. I hope to never have to write a 50 page requirements document.
Anyway, to the submitter, you're missing one huge aspect: teamwork. If you're going to try to teach The Real World, then students need to work with others.