Seen piss-poor Comp/Sci teaching firsthand... (Score 0)

Before I retired from the military, I taught an Air Force ROTC course for four years (BS/MS Comp Sci), where I routinely tutored engineering/comp sci students (cadets) in programming. I was amazed that engineering students were being taught Java (in their junior year) instead of C/C++ (who writes drivers in Java??). Also, they (the grad assistants) weren't even teaching about debugging: inspecting/evaluating, breakpoints, etc., leaving the poor students absolutely helpless. After I explained these, I told them to "gently" prod their profs/TAs for this information as its fundamental to delivering even functional software on a reasonable schedule (of course more to it, but these were new students) and all deserved to understand it. I had even heard anecdotal stories about students changing out of engineering BECAUSE of the java course-- why?!? Dumbing down the curriculum isn't going to help, but teaching (truly teaching it and helping ensure they understand it)-- you have to know how a linked list works (and even better, Big-O, etc.) before you just start slapping together your java using the standard libraries these days. You have to know about profilers, and should know fundamentally (not that its practiced that much) formal specs. If anything, make them more rigorous on the comp-sci side. The senior level shouldn't be when they learn about software engineering methodologies beyond waterfall-- these should at latest be a fall junior topic, if even a sophomore level. Most of all, teach them THERE ARE NO SILVER BULLETS (Rapid Development, McConnell: MS Press). My two cents.. JC-CM