Preparing students for programming-in-the-large

Reviewer: Doris Keefe Lidtke

Werth's paper is well written, carefully conceived, thought-provoking, and thorough. In addition she provides a very practical discussion of the necessity for and the difficulties of incorporating software tools into the teaching of software engineering. This article should interest almost anyone who is teaching or who contemplates teaching a course in programming-in-the-large. Werth draws on her considerable experience in teaching software engineering at the University of Texas at Austin to differentiate between what is commonly available and what is needed to support such courses. She clearly delineates the advantages of using software tools, establishes that most institutions have a paucity of such tools, reports in considerable detail the successes of developing software tools as class projects, and details the problem areas in using software tools. Her article contains a fine section on what she views as future directions. This readable and important article concludes by stating that “University courses which include experience in developing, (re)using, enhancing and evaluating software tools improve learning and prepare students to meet the challenge of modern software technology. Students benefit from quantitative improvements in productivity, but they also profit from qualitative improvements such as improved learning and better attitudes. Tools can provide some of the same benefits for the instructor that they do for any other project manager: configuration management, quality assurance, record-keeping and documentation.”