Two Solitudes (Greg Wilson on Software Engineering)

http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/two-solitudes

by ot • 14 years ago

11 1 14 years ago

bertzzie• 14 years ago

I find this particular slide interesting:

  The academic system does not respect practitioners' knowledge (or timescales).
  I know whereof I speak.
  Practitioners don't understand that computer scientists don't care about building software.
  They are about the science of computing.

Sad but true. Most of CS class taught the theory and algorithm part (compiler, OS, data structure, algorithm, etc) but only a little give materials about programming and writing good code (I think it's called "Software Construction" in Code Complete?). I never understand this, because isn't the point of computer science (or software engineering - the course is not that different, at least in my place) is building software? Seems like many CS people love doing anything but programming.

I kind of hope that one day I'll learn an actual architecture design class for example, because most of my class (both on undergraduate and graduate school) teaches nothing about it. You are expected to write a compiler, but not graded by your code quality. As long as your code works, you pass. It's sad.

Maybe we should start teaching about programming and Software Construction early, so we can actually talks about architecture and good code on OS or compiler class.

Two Solitudes (Greg Wilson on Software Engineering)

Related Stories