Research wizard Peet Morris gives his personal take on the hot
issue of the day.Yippee! I've got my Software Engineering Master of
Science badge, as my five-year-old son calls it. It's been a long
time since I went to university and, as I didn't have an MSc., I
thought it was about time I plugged the gap.
It was an interesting day - especially when, after one-and-a-half
hour's worth of Latin, the chancellor hit me on the head with a
bible. Not to knock some sense into me - that's Oxford University's
way of awarding you your degree.
While mixing with all the young graduates after the ceremony, I was
reminded of my first time at university. In those days I studied
computer science, not software engineering.
Back then, software engineering wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's
eye. Of course, as systems starting falling over around our ears,
we all started taking note and so software engineering was
born.
Some definitions might help here - these are mine, by the
way.
Computer Science is usually offered as an undergraduate course. It
is the basic theory, or foundation of computation, and it is mainly
academic in nature.
Software engineering, on the other hand, tends to be taught (or
researched) at postgraduate level. It concerns the real world and
how to build and design real systems.
As each year passes universities worldwide are inserting more
software engineering into their computer science courses. Why teach
someone the theory of compiler or operating systems when, in the
real world
, they're unlikely ever to write either of those
things? Isn't it better to teach them something more
relevant?
Universities are now teaching more practical computing courses,
such as "The World Wide Web and its applications", "Networking
technologies", "Graphics, multimedia and HTML", and "Software
safety".
I think that it is a good thing. A brickie, after all, doesn't
benefit from knowing how to make bricks.
So, if you're an employer, what sort of graduate should you be
looking for? Ones who can hit the ground running, or those who
might take a bit more training, but know how it all works under the
covers?
What's your view?
So, who would you employ?
Let us know with an e-mail >>CW360.com
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Peet Morris has been a software developer since the 1970s. He
is a D.Phil (PhD) student at Oxford University, where he's
researching Software Engineering, Computational Linguistics and
Computer Science.