Sami Surakka
Abstract
A small survey of Finnish IT professionals, academics, and students has important implications for computer science degree programs.
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Index Terms
- What subjects and skills are important for software developers?
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Reviews
Larry Bernstein
In this insightful article, experts tell us the skills most useful to the software professional and the subjects that an undergraduate needs to learn. Sami Surakka, the author, concludes that those "in charge of software systems specialization should make sure that technical topics such as compliers and distributed systems are studied as well as software engineering topics. ... Omitting software engineering topics altogether may be a mistake." The table shown on page 75 contains the meat of the article. The finding, to deemphasize math and science, is consistent across different evaluators and in studies made a decade apart. Professional software developers stress the need for understanding data structures; programming; and software engineering design, implementation, and requirements. The article is written like a mystery: it contains a great deal of explanation about how the studies were conducted, and defends the data before the conclusions are given. I suggest that you read the article from bottom to top. Start on page 77, and then study the skill table on page 75. If you need more justification, go back to the beginning, and you will understand where the data and findings originate. The findings are useful and important, but it took me three readings to understand them. Online Computing Reviews Service
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