[LINK] Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:48 PM 8/01/2008, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>... As technology based systems become more complex, CS students 
>seem to becoming less widely educated, are focussed on the internet 
>and less able to understand the complexity of modern systems. ...

Keep in mind that software engineering and computer science are not 
the same: like the difference between theoretical physics and 
engineering. A knowledge of how particles interact will only help so 
much when building things in the real world for real people.

The software engineers at ANU are frighteningly well educated in both 
the basics of computer science, project management and testing 
<http://softeng.anu.edu.au/>. There is a constant debate amongst the 
staff (and students) about using commercially popular computer 
languages versus theoretically sound teaching ones and on the 
technicalities versus soft skills (like how to write a report and 
give a presentation). The students end up being able to do a bit of 
each. The best of them are quite able to, and have built, very 
complex systems quickly and reliably, such as electronic voting 
systems (some worked on the ACT system), analysis of the radar on 
warships and data mining for the intelligence services.

However, the soft skills about human to human commutation still 
flummox undergraduate students, who have great difficulty with team 
work and report writing. Some staff argue there is no substitute for 
experience and that only mature age students with work experience 
should do software engineering. But the undergraduates can manage to 
use quite complex software engineering standards and use software 
tools to help structure their interactions.

What I find startling is the way the Internet and web software can 
increase the productivity of a good software engineer. The students 
can produce systems in days which would previously have taken teams 
experienced qualified professionals months or years to do. But this 
is only after a clear specification as to what the system is to do 
has been worked out. Shane Flint at ANU has come up with a technique 
called "Aspect-Oriented Thinking" which he claims can solve some of 
the specification problems 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/07/aspect-oriented-thinking.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU