[comp.software-eng] Looking for advice on gaining SE knowledge/education

tirone@acsu.buffalo.edu (stephen t tirone) (01/11/91)

Pardon me if this is the wrong place to ask this, but...

	Q: What graduate programs (what schools) have programs in
software engineering/CS/CIS that would leave one with a solid
grounding in engineering (<-- verb) software?  Boulder, Irvine, and
CMU come to my mind.  Any others (state schools?)?  My undergraduate
work was in optical engineering, but my interests have led me to
software engineering.  I am particularly interested in
languages/environments that increase productivity/decrease
bugs/increase maintainability, etc. And particularly, why do the
benefits occur? (And a bunch of other questions...)  
	Anyway, if anyone can give me pointers as to who is doing
valuable work in this area, or perhaps what a decent education/career
track would be to educate/train myself in my area of interest (its
somewhat of a career change), I would greatly appreciate it.

Steve Tirone
tirone@acsu.buffalo.edu

cml@tove.cs.umd.edu (Christopher Lott) (01/14/91)

In article <54079@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> tirone@acsu.buffalo.edu (stephen t tirone) writes:
>	Q: What graduate programs (what schools) have programs in
>software engineering/CS/CIS

I can recommend (not from personal experience, and in no particular order)
Purdue Univ, West Lafayette, IN		(SERC)
Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburg, PA	(SEI)
Univ. Texas at Austin, Austin, TX	(MCC)
George Mason Univ, VA (inside D.C. capitol beltway)  (SPC)

and from personal experience,
Univ. Maryland, College Park, MD.  (alliance with NASA)

In parens after the schools I've listed initials of the Consortium/Org.
with which the school is affiliated.  IMHO, to gain experience with S/E,
you must get your feet wet, so access to industry software efforts is key.

good luck; write me for more on Maryland.

chris...


--
Christopher Lott    Dept of Comp Sci, Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
  cml@cs.umd.edu    4122 AV Williams Bldg  301-405-2721 <standard disclaimers>

alan@tivoli.UUCP (Alan R. Weiss) (01/16/91)

[ Yes, I'm back on Usenet (and soon Internet).  Address at the end. ]


In article <54079@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> tirone@acsu.buffalo.edu (stephen t tirone) writes:
>
>Pardon me if this is the wrong place to ask this, but...

Right newsgroup.  Go ahead ...

>
>	Q: What graduate programs (what schools) have programs in
>software engineering/CS/CIS that would leave one with a solid
>grounding in engineering (<-- verb) software?  Boulder, Irvine, and
>CMU come to my mind.  Any others (state schools?)?  My undergraduate
>work was in optical engineering, but my interests have led me to
>software engineering.  I am particularly interested in
>languages/environments that increase productivity/decrease
>bugs/increase maintainability, etc. And particularly, why do the
>benefits occur? (And a bunch of other questions...)  

It is admirable that you want to go into Software Engineering,
but of course this is what all of us already do, right?  :-)
Seriously, CMU has a good program, to be sure.
UC-Irvine has access to Barry Boehm, and he's one of the best
(although I know of NO commercial development program that has
successfully used the Spiral Model).

However, the BEST education is serious self-study coupled with
Real World Experience (tm).  Go to work for a start-up, or
for a Big Corporation, and learn the various constraints we
operate under.  Find out that "software engineering" is largely
an academic discipline (unfortunately) punctuated by occasional
brilliant successes, but mostly dismal failures.  Learn from your
mistakes, and learn from other people's screw-ups (remember
Ashton-Tate?).  Get extensive programing experience, so you can
feel the heat of development (and so that your evangelism later
is tempered with empathy and hard-headed, practical solutions).
Learn how to "sell" software engineering and Quality through
empirical and quantitative proof, not just moral suasion.

In short, I recommend going to work, and getting your Masters
at night.  Its your life, of course; just my opinions.

>	Anyway, if anyone can give me pointers as to who is doing
>valuable work in this area, or perhaps what a decent education/career
>track would be to educate/train myself in my area of interest (its
>somewhat of a career change), I would greatly appreciate it.
>
>Steve Tirone
>tirone@acsu.buffalo.edu

Good luck.  I'll be happy to point to good sources if you want.
After all, its my profession.


+-------------------------------------------------------+
|			|				|
|  Alan R. Weiss	| These thoughts are yours for  |
|  alan@tivoli.com	| the taking, being generated   |
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|#include "std.disclaimer --- Your mileage may vary!    |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
 

lewin@rocket.uucp (Stu Lewin) (01/23/91)

>  In article <54079@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> tirone@acsu.buffalo.edu (stephen t tirone) writes:
>  >
>  >	Q: What graduate programs (what schools) have programs in
>  >software engineering/CS/CIS that would leave one with a solid
>  >grounding in engineering (<-- verb) software?  Boulder, Irvine, and
>  >CMU come to my mind.  Any others (state schools?)? 

The Software Engineering Institute at CMU publishes something called
the Software Engineering Education Directory. I have a copy from April
1990; updates are published each spring. You can probably order it from
them (the number is CMU/SEI-90-TR-4) or DTIC, which is where I got
mine (the number is AD-A223 740) or NTIS. It's 167 pages long and has
an Introduction, a listing of Graduate Degree Programs in Software
Engineering, a list of Schools and Courses, and then a world wide
listing by state and country. Listed for each school or program are
things like contact, courses, and other program specific information.
It's written to be objective, but would give you a listing of what's
available.
--
Stu Lewin                                  Lockheed Sanders, Inc.
Ada Projects Leader                        PO Box 2034, MER24-1583C
Signal Processing Center of Technology     Nashua, NH 03061-2034
(usenet)   ...!uunet!rocket!lewin          603/885-0179 (Voice)
(internet) lewin@rocket.sanders.com        603/885-0631 (FAX)