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You are never taught how to build quality software

florianbellmann.com

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Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#301

Post by habnds »

sasaf5 wrote: post #204
hardwaregeek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a massive gap between taught at CMU and taught at most universities. And even if it is taught, it's usually outdated or focused on very literal stuff like how to write web applications. I'd have killed for a class that actually focuses on implementation, on teamwork, on building complicated systems.

+1 for teamwork... I wished there was an established field of study for teamwork in software. If you are impressed with 10x devs, imagine 10x teams!

I don't believe this personally, but I bet that many people with MBA's would tell you that this was what their MBA was about.

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#302

Post by manicennui »

bakul wrote: post #152
titzer wrote: post #117

We do teach these things, they are just not core CS topics, but rather in other areas, relegated to electives like a software engineering course. At CMU we have entire Master's program for software engineering and an entire PhD program (in my department). We teach exactly the kinds of things the blog post is about, and more. Software Engineering is a whole field, a whole discipline. I get that this is a blog post and…

Do SE classes teach debugging skills? I hope they do. So many times I have seen people try random things rather than follow a systematic approach.

Trying random things seems to be how a large number of professional software engineers do their jobs. Stack Overflow and now CodeGPT seem to contribute to this.

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#303

Post by astura »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #289
hinkley wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with programmers around my junior year and some of them were in classes I was in. I thought they were all playing one-upsmanship when I heard how little time they were spending on homework. 90 minutes, sometimes an hour. I was a lot faster than my roommate, and after I turned in my homework I’d help him debug (not solve) his. Then I was helping other people. They really did not get debugging. Definitely felt…

This is why internships and real world experience is so important. A course is 3 in class hours a week over 12-14 weeks typically. After homework and assignments it is ultimately maybe 40-80 hours of content. Which means you learn more in one month of being on a normal, 40 hour workweek job than you have in an entire semester of one course.

>A course is 3 in class hours a week over 12-14 weeks typically. After homework and assignments it is ultimately maybe 40-80 hours of content.

Huh? I was spending 20+ hours a week on assignments alone in upper level software engineering classes.

Also, internships were required.

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#304

Post by manicennui »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #159
titzer wrote: post #117

We do teach these things, they are just not core CS topics, but rather in other areas, relegated to electives like a software engineering course. At CMU we have entire Master's program for software engineering and an entire PhD program (in my department). We teach exactly the kinds of things the blog post is about, and more. Software Engineering is a whole field, a whole discipline. I get that this is a blog post and…

Here's the thing, though: Of a CS graduating class, 90% of them will work as software engineers, not as computer scientists. (All numbers made up, but I think they're about right.) We don't need these things to be electives. We don't need them to be a master's program. We need an undergraduate software engineering program, and we need 90% of the people in CS to switch to that program instead.

A large number of CS programs are already glorified Java training courses.

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#305

Post by bcrosby95 »

ricw wrote: post #267
hardwaregeek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a massive gap between taught at CMU and taught at most universities. And even if it is taught, it's usually outdated or focused on very literal stuff like how to write web applications. I'd have killed for a class that actually focuses on implementation, on teamwork, on building complicated systems.

That was a dedicated software engineering course I took at university. Teams of 5. Had to put the soft eng theory into practice. And if’s not CMU.

I had something like this too - it was required for my CS degree. Our class split up into teams of 5. But the whole class of 30 was working on a single project. It was a semester-long project and each team also had to integrate with eachother to build the final solution.

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#307

Post by _a_a_a_ »

anacrolix wrote: post #284
fudged71 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose software engineering. 3 years into the program the head of the department made a speech at an event to the effect of "Software hasn't changed in the last 10 years". It instantly devalued the entire program for me.

I have news for you... He's not wrong. The porcelain is different, but the same methodologies and processes are in place. The biggest change recently is distributed (mostly ignored) version control, that's 20 years old, and continuous integration/development (probably also around 20 years old, but only catching on in the last 10-15 years). Computer science has changed more, there are lots of developments in the last…

> there are lots of developments in the last 5-10 years

So tell us what these are so I/we can learn from you

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#308

Post by benreesman »

You learn this at quality shops. 10-15 years ago roughly FAANG.

Today? TailScale and stuff like that.

You can just noT have a bunch of pointless micro services and docker in your runc and layer on layer of json de/re, and unit test to get coverage but ignore quickcheck and hypothesis and fuzzing.

You can use stacked diffs and run oncall loops out of the team authoring the code and all of it.

You can minimize dynamic linking and all the other forms of unforced dependency error.

You can understand and play towards the runtimes of all the managed languages in your stack. You can insist that a halfway decent verbal grammar for the languages is “readability”.

It gets shouted down over and over but it’s public knowledge how to ship quality software.

Re: You are never taught how to build quality software

#310

Post by ttymck »

benreesman wrote: post #308

You learn this at quality shops. 10-15 years ago roughly FAANG. Today? TailScale and stuff like that. You can just noT have a bunch of pointless micro services and docker in your runc and layer on layer of json de/re, and unit test to get coverage but ignore quickcheck and hypothesis and fuzzing. You can use stacked diffs and run oncall loops out of the team authoring the code and all of it. You can minimize dynamic…

I think the prevailing problem is that quality software often doesn't outperform shit software in terms of revenue, right?
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