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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."
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.
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.