I couldn’t agree more with Skorkin’s point of view. I graduated with a B.I.T. degree majoring in Management. Thus I have been given exposure on some business courses like Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Business Communication, and so forth. Until today, however, I haven’t had the opportunity to apply these knowledge in workplace, yet (I’m a graduate student doing CS). The current degree which I’m pursuing emphasizes more on analytical thinking and technical skills. My Supervisor, of course, does hope that his students are equipped with soft skills. That’s why he also expects us to have daily discussion in the lab, mentoring juniors and joining weekly discussion between him and his project students.

Back to the other 2 points. An Agile Process is totally new to me. What I could remember from a Software Engineering course taken during my undergraduate is the Waterfall and V model. Neither did my University taught me Open Source. My undergraduate final-year supervisor was (and is still) pro-Microsoft. For some reasons, he has strong disapproval of Linux as well as open source. My second and current supervisor who comes from a Unix background does not involved in open source development either. Keeping abreast with the latest industrial technologies, he tends to cling on well-established IT companies to exploit any advantages and pull their resources (e.g. people, hardware, training, etc) to our University. Even the entire culture in my Faculty isn’t toward open source. AFAIK, only one academic staff is pro-Linux, but he has been away on three-year sabbatical. Very few students I met implemented their projects on Linux. Thus, to encourage the students here to use Linux is difficult, not to mention open source development.

Indeed, Skorkin’s post has triggered me to think about my future academic path and has raised awareness that open source projects are invaluable teaching materials too. Driving the students to open source projects is time-consuming, though. When I was once a part-time lecturer, I spent one third of the semester to allow my students to pick up basic Linux commands. Skorkin mentioned that using Linux isn’t enough. It seems that I’d need to involve myself in open source projects before being able to enlarge the sphere of influence.

What is funny is the people in academics where I did my Master’s and Undergrad were brilliant and very hardworking, as well as open to learning new things. However, they were a bit out of touch with industry and innovation, especially when it came to Java, Agile and Open Source. I encountered this one professor during my short attempt at a doctorate that railed us and laughed when we proposed research based on effectiveness of TDD! He thought we were ludicrous to suggest testing before implementation is complete. Little did he know it was a widely accepted practice.

Kudos on this article!

1) Typing and document editing
2) Personal lifestyle develoment
3) Business management
4) Bicycle riding

Now, they may not immediately seem to be a part of “science” any more than “open source” is somehow a part of computer science, but they’re things that scientists might benefit from therefore they “must” be taught.

Three things I wish they taught to the people applying for the computer science course:

1) The difference between “computer science” and “software engineering:
2 The difference between “computer science” and “software engineering:
3 The difference between “computer science” and “software engineering:

Now, I realise that techincally that’s just one thing, but I thought it was so important that it was worth mentioning three times.

Also, I can define the relevant different, for those not keeping up:

A computer science degree is something that will allow you to teach courses and publish academic papers. Because noone told you this, you’ll be shocked when the real world isn’t like what you learned about and will end up developing your software engineering skills on the job, leaving the industry, or ending up on the DailyWTF and not understanding why your academic quality code is being laughed at.

A software engineering degree will allow you to get a job in a company and apply all the things you were taught by the person who took the computer science route. But you’ll be lost if someone demands a formal proof that your software meets some abstract requirement.