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Essential knowledge for the practising software engineer and the responsibilities of university and industry for her education

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Book cover Software Engineering Education (CSEE 1995)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 895))

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Abstract

It is becoming quite apparent that knowledge of computer science and software engineering alone is inadequate for the practising software engineer to be truly successful in an industrial setting. Often in practice, “programmers” lack knowledge of the foundation concepts of computer science and software engineering. The result is that it is difficult to guarantee the production of high quality systems to fixed deadlines. Through discussions with members of an industry-university coalition and more than twenty years of observation, the author has observed that in order for a software engineer to be successful in all aspects, she requires a good amount of knowledge beyond that of computer science and software engineering.

In this paper the author proposes a five item set of essential knowledge for the practising software engineer. These five areas of knowledge and capability are necessary for the software engineer to achieve broad competency. They are:

  1. 1.

    Systems and software engineering and computer science

  2. 2.

    Hardware platform-specific knowledge,

  3. 3.

    Application domain,

  4. 4.

    Personal and interpersonal skills, ethics, and

  5. 5.

    Business culture.

The features of this knowledge base are elaborated. Additionally a partitioning of educational responsibility is proposed between university and industry. The author discusses some preliminary concepts for a university-industry education collaboration which would benefit both classes of institutions as well as noticeably increase the first time success of new software engineering graduates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collaborative Information Technology Institute Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 3053, Carlton, VIC, Australia

    Lin Zucconi Ph.D. (Visiting Senior Research Fellow)

  2. Software Technology Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    Lin Zucconi Ph.D. (Visiting Senior Research Fellow)

Authors
  1. Lin Zucconi Ph.D.
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Editor information

Rosalind L. Ibrahim

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Zucconi, L. (1995). Essential knowledge for the practising software engineer and the responsibilities of university and industry for her education. In: Ibrahim, R.L. (eds) Software Engineering Education. CSEE 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 895. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58951-1_88

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58951-1_88

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58951-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49167-5

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