Documentation.
by Jason on Jul.09, 2012, under Life, Programming, Technology
Universities love documentation in their Computer Science courses. I once got 100% on a piece of coursework in no short part because I provided 60 pages of documentation. (autogenerated from comments).
Here’s a little tid-bit: Documentation is a dying art. Universities are way behind. Using TDD, with massive function names and tests to document your code and how it should be used, is the way the industry is going, has been going for the last 10 years and continues to be going. Even large parts of game development, often dismissed as “not possible to test drive”, are being test driven (because the dismissers are wrong, and large parts of game programming can be test driven).
But most universities pay a small lip-service to tests and unit testing, it gets mentioned, you write one for your coursework, it vanishes into the great nether. This is wrong.
Computer Science Students are completely unprepared for industry, and the lack of current practices such as Agile Development and Test Driven Design being taught in Universities is definitely one of the reasons for this.
The option placement year is not optional for anyone at University who wants to work as a Software Developer. It’s the only exposure to modern Software Development they’ll get during their time at University. Because the University sure as heck isn’t going to teach them.
Quote of the Day
“By education most have been misled.”
John Dryden, The Hind and Panther, Part III, line 389.
