4 ms·

How about "Building an End-to-End Software Solution - 101". Going through the entire development workflow (idea, design, prototype, beta release, delivery, and

How about "Building an End-to-End Software Solution - 101". Going through the entire development workflow (idea, design, prototype, beta release, delivery, and iteration). One of my good friends is currently going through school, but in the back of my head there is this nagging thought, that he will not learn what's needed for today's market.

ggchappell 11y ago
We have that in our CS program. We call it "Senior Capstone". I'm sure others have it, too.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  Same here. We had to design and write a significant real-world application. You could suggest your own idea or take on a project that the profs had found through their connections with the business world. Either way, you had to convince the professors on the committee that it was worthy of receiving a full course's worth of credit (though most people wound up spending far more than that amount of time on it).
- alashley 11y ago
  We had that at my community college too, we worked along with an government organization to produce software for them. Unfortunately most of our coursework involved writing documentation and doing presentations, so the software side of things wasn't as useful as it should have been.
nightpool 11y ago
We definitely have this in our CS curriculum to—working in teams of 10-15 to design, prototype, refine, and ship a product.
girvo 11y ago
The software engineering degrees here in Australia (not CS) have you do that a number of times. I wish I had studied it, but B.Sci in Maths/Chemistry and half a law degree was still quite enjoyable.
UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
> Going through the entire development workflow (idea, design, prototype, beta release, delivery, and iteration). That sounds like what I was taught in school. Never used it. I'm just glad the waterfall model is dying. It is kind of funny, me and all of my peers were required to do the whole requirements, design, implement, verification, etc thing. But nobody did, nobody. Everyone did the same thing: Requirements for one small part, implement, verify, and then write the design document at the end to match the implementation. Repeat. I'm really glad things like agile are here, not because they're magical solutions to all of life's problems, but because they're inherently compatible with how people ALREADY WORKED. Waterfall felt like a boat anchor, causing teams to get indefinitely stuck in the design phase (or to lie a bunch to effectively skip it entirely). Agile allows you to go away, get it 90% down, and then iterate, iterate, iterate until everyone is happy. To be honest waterfall always felt like a programming methodology created by people who never programmed. It was like they took the method for building a bridge or a skyscraper, and applied it to software blindly. Agile methods feel like something designed by people who have actually programmed and know how they like to do it.
- mbesto 11y ago
  > I'm just glad the waterfall model is dying To be fair, it's not. > To be honest waterfall always felt like a programming methodology created by people who never programmed. And agile was created by people who don't understand that most organizations need specific software developed on a specific budget. A majority of companies that I see that say they are doing agile are still doing waterfall. PS - I'm a huge proponent of agile and the agile manifesto, but it's not a one size fits all methodology.
  - jpatokal 11y ago
    > And agile was created by people who don't understand that most organizations need specific software developed on a specific budget. That's an odd criticism of agile. The whole point of agile is to prioritize so that the important stuff gets done first and does what it's supposed to, so when the money runs out you've got the most important bits working the way they should. If you've got a fixed budget, you're waterfalling and the money runs out, odds are very high that the software is going to do what the requirements said it should do, but it will be near-useless in real life.
azernik 11y ago
"Software Engineering" at Berkeley. The workload is really high, though.
- zachberger 11y ago
  "Software Engineering" is actually offered as a degree at many institutions.. Focused more on the construction of quality software focusing on software design and development processes over how to code and analyze algorithms. I'd almost call it applied cs.
  - azernik 11y ago
    Yeah, at Berkeley the class's intended subject matter is exactly that kind of design and development process best practices, taught by running a semester-long project from design through completion. There's just not a separate degree for it.
tripzilch 11y ago
Oh god. We had that too. Course was called "Software Engineering". It was pretty much the most horrible thing I experienced in CS and for me sealed the deal: I was never ever going to be a software engineer. So glad when it was over and the next block was about actual science again. In hindsight, I have to admit I did learn a useful thing or two. (unfortunately those things are still only useful in software engineering)

ggchappell 11y ago

We have that in our CS program. We call it "Senior Capstone". I'm sure others have it, too.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Turing_Machine 11y ago
Same here. We had to design and write a significant real-world application. You could suggest your own idea or take on a project that the profs had found through their connections with the business world. Either way, you had to convince the professors on the committee that it was worthy of receiving a full course's worth of credit (though most people wound up spending far more than that amount of time on it).
alashley 11y ago
We had that at my community college too, we worked along with an government organization to produce software for them. Unfortunately most of our coursework involved writing documentation and doing presentations, so the software side of things wasn't as useful as it should have been.

nightpool 11y ago

We definitely have this in our CS curriculum to—working in teams of 10-15 to design, prototype, refine, and ship a product.

girvo 11y ago

The software engineering degrees here in Australia (not CS) have you do that a number of times. I wish I had studied it, but B.Sci in Maths/Chemistry and half a law degree was still quite enjoyable.

UnoriginalGuy 11y ago

> Going through the entire development workflow (idea, design, prototype, beta release, delivery, and iteration). That sounds like what I was taught in school. Never used it. I'm just glad the waterfall model is dying. It is kind of funny, me and all of my peers were required to do the whole requirements, design, implement, verification, etc thing. But nobody did, nobody. Everyone did the same thing: Requirements for one small part, implement, verify, and then write the design document at the end to match the implementation. Repeat. I'm really glad things like agile are here, not because they're magical solutions to all of life's problems, but because they're inherently compatible with how people ALREADY WORKED. Waterfall felt like a boat anchor, causing teams to get indefinitely stuck in the design phase (or to lie a bunch to effectively skip it entirely). Agile allows you to go away, get it 90% down, and then iterate, iterate, iterate until everyone is happy. To be honest waterfall always felt like a programming methodology created by people who never programmed. It was like they took the method for building a bridge or a skyscraper, and applied it to software blindly. Agile methods feel like something designed by people who have actually programmed and know how they like to do it.

mbesto 11y ago
> I'm just glad the waterfall model is dying To be fair, it's not. > To be honest waterfall always felt like a programming methodology created by people who never programmed. And agile was created by people who don't understand that most organizations need specific software developed on a specific budget. A majority of companies that I see that say they are doing agile are still doing waterfall. PS - I'm a huge proponent of agile and the agile manifesto, but it's not a one size fits all methodology.
- jpatokal 11y ago
  > And agile was created by people who don't understand that most organizations need specific software developed on a specific budget. That's an odd criticism of agile. The whole point of agile is to prioritize so that the important stuff gets done first and does what it's supposed to, so when the money runs out you've got the most important bits working the way they should. If you've got a fixed budget, you're waterfalling and the money runs out, odds are very high that the software is going to do what the requirements said it should do, but it will be near-useless in real life.

azernik 11y ago

"Software Engineering" at Berkeley. The workload is really high, though.

zachberger 11y ago
"Software Engineering" is actually offered as a degree at many institutions.. Focused more on the construction of quality software focusing on software design and development processes over how to code and analyze algorithms. I'd almost call it applied cs.
- azernik 11y ago
  Yeah, at Berkeley the class's intended subject matter is exactly that kind of design and development process best practices, taught by running a semester-long project from design through completion. There's just not a separate degree for it.

tripzilch 11y ago

Oh god. We had that too. Course was called "Software Engineering". It was pretty much the most horrible thing I experienced in CS and for me sealed the deal: I was never ever going to be a software engineer. So glad when it was over and the next block was about actual science again. In hindsight, I have to admit I did learn a useful thing or two. (unfortunately those things are still only useful in software engineering)