To: cmd@ukc.ac.uk
Subject: Re: STUPID RULING FOR CS????
Newsgroups: ukc.followup
In-Reply-To: <5030@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
References: <970@falcon.ukc.ac.uk> <971@falcon.ukc.ac.uk>
Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

In article <5030@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> you write:
>
> We are not trying to train programmers - any fool can program -
> we are trying to train Engineers.

Ah. That's why the Computer Systems Engineers can do individual projects.

> You have to communicate with other people. If you
> think you can be - and stay - a good programmer without talking
> to other programmers, looking at their work, and having them look
> at (and criticise) your work, I have some beach front property in
> North Dakota that I think you might be interested in ...

Mmm, but that seems to work best by *informal* communications channels,
as distinct from the strictured methods required for a joint effort
on one project.

When was the last time you or I found the sorts of management tools
promoted for use in group projects to be desirable?

For working in that cramped place called industry, the group skills you need
are those necessitated by the management game.
Specifications are partly used to deflect the blame when the project fails,
and written with this in mind.  The schedules are used to beat the workers
with when they don't make the deadlines.

It is not necessary to be able to play this foul game to do useful and
lucrative work as a programmer.  It just helps if you are going to be
thrust into the situation.

Different things suit different people.  Forcing all people to follow
the same path unnecessarily ensures that it will suit less of them well.

I don't subscribe to sss's view that the students are old and sage enough now
to decide and take the lifetime consequences for their decisions.
That would be a terrible thing to inflict on someone.

However, I do know that your and my dgrees would have run a very different
course if so large a part of the result depended upon a single group project.

	Martin