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?

Comments

Not at all.

[khasim]

Consider how packaging (Windows) triumphs over design (Linux) in many markets.

Those "many markets" are the ones where Microsoft has a monopoly (desktop). Which explains whey Microsoft can change their design from Win2K to WinXP to WinVista and yet people will still be using it.

However, regardless of how brilliant your spec/design is if it does not get "sold" to the client it is useless. If color schemes and logos make the sale more likely then please let management work on that.

If the sale hinges on the colour scheme and logos, then save everyone some stress and take the client out for drinks and hire a hooker for him.

Yes I know it does everything we want and it's within our price range ... but I'm not really comfortable with that shade of blue.

Another way to look at it, business is a pretty Darwinian process. If color schemes, logos, slogans, etc. were complete crap they would not be used so heavily.

In my experience, it is not "Darwinian" at all.

It's all about who you know, where you are and what the economy is like at that time.

Which is why when the economy turns down, so many companies fail. Anyone can captain the ship in calm weather.

The point that I am trying to make is that we engineers are not the all knowing genius' we like to think we are.

Who is this "we"?

We are often quite ill-informed with respect to business.

At times that is correct. But it is the exception, not the rule.

While PHB decisions absolutely do exist, we engineers falsely label some rational decisions as PHB due to our ignorance of issues outside of engineering.

Again, at times that is correct. But it is the exception, not the rule.

Which is the reason you'll see management books written about cheese while others are written about fish.

Learn from the mistake of the people of the "A" Ark. ;-)

I think you have your arks wrong.