Teaching software design in the freshman year

Abstract

Designing high-quality software is difficult, and therefore instruction in design should hold prominence in educating future software engineers, just as in other engineering disciplines. Nearly all software engineers receive their education within programs in computer science, but these programs typically provide inadequate instruction in design. The missing ingredient is instruction in the making of intelligent choices among design alternatives. We must increase the emphasis on the teaching of design principles for guiding the choice-making, not just in senior or graduate courses in software engineering, but throughout the undergraduate curriculum. In particular, the teaching of design in the introductory programming sequence can be improved. We present some examples of how instruction in design can be incorporated into the first courses in programming.