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Introducing Students To the World of Open Source
paulproteus writes "Most computer science students never see a bug tracker, and very few learn about version control. Classes often don't teach the skills needed for participation. So I organized a weekend workshop at the University of Pennsylvania. Total newbies enthusiastically spent the day on IRC, learned git, built a project from source, and read bugs in real projects. I learned that there's no shortage of students that want to get involved."
Wait until you get into college for your CS degree and see what level your classmates are at. It's sad, really.
It was the same way for me over 10 years ago.
It isn't really that surprising to me. Computer science and software engineering are not identical disciplines. Computer Science programs on a core level are about data structures, algorithms, and the theory behind why we program things the way we do. The actual specifics of a development cycle, while obviously important if you want to put any of that to practical use outside of research positions, are disjoint from those concepts.
You can make an argument that more people should be learning Software Engineering instead of Computer Science, but that's really a different discussion.
The first thing that struck me, both from the summary and the article itself, is that none of these are really open-source specific.
To reiterate, the four they listed in the article are:
OK, well, you could argue command-line Linux skills are open-source, but that's not guaranteed.
If anything, these are skills that all businesses who have programmers would want them to understand.
Heck, even my current project, an internal project that I swear I could submit things to The Daily WTF every weekday for the next year on, has version control and bug tracking software!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
That's okay, most professional programmers don't know how to write code, so they'll fit right in.
I'm confused as to how you got anything regarding "administration" out of my point that there was no need to lock a repository. Can you explain your point than just saying "you don't know anything" in the typically condescending attitude of a know-it-all?
I'd argue that trackers and version control should not be taught in a CS curriculum.
Trackers... OK, I don't see those as essential. Version control? Disagree vehemently. There might be a couple programs in the country where you can specialize in theory enough to avoid all heavy programming, but most programs require you to do at least some practical courses (OS, compilers, etc.), and even in programs where you could avoid such classes probably most students don't. And IMO, if you're teaching a programming-heavy class and you don't at least strongly recommend using version control and give a quick overview of what that means and why you want it, you're doing your students a big disservice.
I'm not saying "spend a week going over CVS, SVN, Git, and Mecrcural" or anything like that, but a 15-minute quick intro to one of them of your choice is definitely not out of place in many CS classes.
I teach for a BS degree in Web Design & Development. If you look at our courses, you'll see that we have a number that are very Open Source friendly. Sure, we partner with Adobe and Apple and have a huge focus on the Adobe CS apps (Flash, Photoshop/Illustrator, Flex, ColdFusion), but we also have entire courses on PHP, jQuery, mySQL, and Red5. And those are just the apps for which we spend an entire course. We also work in Git, CouchDB, Audacity, Eclipse, and many more common OSS apps and platforms. It's an open secret that we're working to launch a BS degree in Mobile Development that will have a very large Android curriculum.
Higher education doesn't have to be all boring theory and no practical application. Anyone who tells you that the university system can't keep up with rapidly-changing technology is sorely misinformed.
Twenty years from now, 90% of the technologies you mentioned will be just memories. A traditional BS from a traditional university is useful for pretty much an entire lifetime. Your BS program sounds a lot like a trade school program repackaged so that students can get financial aid. Don't get me wrong, I think these skills are useful -- I spent 10 years of my professional life teaching IT certification courses. However, I never considered what I did to be an alternative to a degree.
I would much rather see a university have trouble keeping up with technology than see one lose all sense of perspective chasing shiny things.