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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?
From My work experience,. here is how it would go, assuming a fifteen week semester:
Week 1: Agree in principle to what that user wants
Weeks 2-12: Go through iterations of determining specifics. Submit statements of work. Get ignored. Call. Get put off. Managers argue about whether background should have corporate logo, or whether it should be a neutral color. Finally get signed documents at end of 12th week.
Week 13-14: Work like mad to code the thing.
Week 15: Users bitch because you aren't done yet.
Week 17 (two weeks past deadline): Get work submitted that meets specs.
Week 17 1/2: Managers complain that five items not on statement of work were not addressed. When you mention it was not on the specs, they reply "well, it is kinda obvious, you should have realized"
Week 18-25: Repeat weeks 15-17 1/2 about five times.
Week 26: Switch major to engineering.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I'm thinking about dropping my CS major. Why? Although they do teach you languages that are used today in the marketplace and tend toward an education that trains you as an effective software engineer, they don't care about teaching things that make people think about how everything is laid on top of each other and other ivory tower-esque stuff. I was talking to another peer in the CS department (who is similarly disenchanted with the CS program as well) about the various classes he took. "Programming Languages" used to be about, you know, the structure of programming languages. Now it's simply a glorified scripting language survey course. "Operating Systems" used to be about the operating system as a concept. Now it's a glorified Linux Programming course. etc. etc. I'd say that I'd be ready to tackle a project if I graduate with a CS degree from my current university. However, I think I'd simply be another cog in the machine, so to speak. That to me is a less desirable preparation than learning all about theory and finding out how to implement them in the real world by myself.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
Not only using a CVS, but also installing such. If you end up working in a company where there is no CVS in use and no-one knows how to install it, how usefull would your skills be there? Well I actually have been in this situation and it took less than a day for me to learn and install subversion there for us to work with.
What I missed at school was courses about GUI designing. I think the GUI designing should be one large part of the programming education, because quite often you have to design the GUI for our own programs, unless you work in large companies, where there are separated people to do this task.
On the other hand, we did have several courses where we designed, implemented and tested a whole program. Either by solo or in a group of 2-5 people. I'm surpriced to hear that they actually have schools where this isn't done.