NYCPHP Meetup

[Justin Dearing]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Christopher R. Merlo <cmerlo at ncc.edu>wrote:

> Justin is, as usual, correct about all of this.  But as someone who's been
> involved in CS curriculum design at the associates level for going on 12
> years now, the problem -- at least for us at the community college level --
> is that we can only make our students take 66 credits, of physics and music
> and English and all the other stuff, along with CS and math.  I would love
> to offer our CS students a course on these software engineering topics,
> like source control and unit tests and how to do a code review, but not at
> the expense of assembly or linear algebra, and SUNY won't let us do it at
> the expense of sociology or art.  (That's not a complaint; I think the
> curriculum *should* be well-rounded.  We just don't have space.)
> -c
>

Chris,

This borders on academic heresy, but maybe a community colleges should
offer AOS (Associate in Occupational Studies) degrees in *addition* to
Associates in arts and Sciences. Briarcliffe, and probably may other for
profit universities did that, but if it was offered at a school that also
has Associates in Arts and Sciences as opposed to AOSes and "diplomas,"
there would be some more vigor and quality in the program, and the one or
two electives taken would be better taught. Obviously, the AOS should only
be marketed to non-traditional (25+) students and those absolutely sure
they don't want a bachelors.

I  was going to make an argument that assembly might not be needed at the
associates level, but writing this has made me question that myself.
However, I think its more important to be able to read assembly than write
assembly, so maybe it should be taught that way. One or two lessons where
you write some stuff to appreciate the syntax, and the rest would be
"compile this code, step through the assembly" Seeing different calling
conventions in action will probably teach students a lot, and honestly I'd
probably audit a course taught that way.

Justin
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