[Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links

[Steven Bird]

[Adrian -- thanks for picking a more appropriate subject line now that
discussion has moved away from data flow diagrams.]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 7:28 PM, andrew barry <jagguy999 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I prefer to just teach an IT subject which is just programming and some
> programming design eg psuedo code.

I agree.  Students should learn how to walk before learning how to
run, i.e. they should be competent with "programming in-the-small"
before they spend much time on "programming in-the-large" (incl SDLC).

> Including so much theory doesn't get any student excited about learning IT
> at Uni. After all we are trying to promote IT beyond yr12 are we not? Are we
> not trying to get more people to do it?

I agree with Adrian that rigour is important, and this cuts across
analysis, design, implementation, documentation, etc.  The SDLC is one
source of theory but I question its suitability at this level.  It's
intended for software engineering projects where you have to manage
whole teams of developers, client relationships, project deliverables,
etc.  When students aren't already experienced at small-scale
programming the emphasis often falls on a rather heavy document
process, which has to be one of the least exciting aspects of software
development.

Another issue I have with the emphasis on SDLC as a major source of
theoretical content is that it focusses too much on the software
development process.  Of course that's entirely appropriate given the
title of the subject, but there's some other areas of computing theory
that would be useful and accessible at this level, including
algorithmic problem solving and the limits of computing.  Here's a
couple of introductory books that cover these topics in a
non-mathematical yet rigorous and intellectually stimulating way:

Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing (3rd Ed, David Harel, Addison
Wesley, 2004)

Computers Ltd: What They Really Can't Do (David Harel, Oxford
University Press, 2000)

-Steven Bird
http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~sb/