From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 29 Jul 93 16:34:17 GMT From: mdisea!mothost!schbbs!news@uunet.uu.net (David Tannen) Subject: Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted Message-ID: <1993Jul29.163417.17018@schbbs.mot.com> List-Id: IMHO (honest, I haven't been humble for a long time): My best professors in college were the ones who had a decade or two working on big systems. The best professor spent the entire semester telling us about the systems that had failed and how they had failed. Quite a few of the students (and profs) were very uncomfortable w/ this approach. Many wondered if she had ever worked on a successful project. I came to realize that she was teaching us a truism about software - All systems fail. Good systems can recover from failure. Some of the worst professors I had never worked outside of the university environment. If I followed their ideas out here where I have worked the last 9yrs, I might have been fired. I would like to see the a CS program require the following areas: Calc I & II (maybe III) A minor in Science or Business Data Structures OS Theory 2 Intro EE classes taught by & out of the EE dept. where you build some circuits in the labs. (I found them very useful) 3 Digital Design classes where you have to build some fairly complex digital circuits. Systems programming (Lots of Assembler/C) Language comparison class Systems Analysis & Design (SA/SD and OOA/OOD, plus all projects should be team projects) Algorithms Real-Time What would I eliminate from undergrad studies: AI Language classes for credit (maybe 1 credit) The dept. would need to pick a standard language for all core classes. Ada teaches discipline, and core software engineering ideas. Just my $0.02. Any others that should be +/- from my lists? --- David Tannen tannend@source.asset.com tannen@tigger.geg.mot.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- "Dependance on wizardry to mitigate the fundamental limitations -- of software is called 'hacking'." Grady Booch. -- -- Developing MS-Windows applications often requires 'wizardry'. ----------------------------------------------------------------------