Computer Science

[matthew patton]

On Friday, October 18, 2024 at 02:09:31 PM EDT, Jim Garrison via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:

> Most university courses in "software engineering" don't begin to cover
> the actual knowledge base and, more importantly, internal mental 
> processes, discipline and curiosity required to do quality software 

My 200-level CS class at Carnegie Mellon (91-95) if your code submission handled ALL inputs properly (the test dataset deliberately omitted some edge cases) you got a 'C'. If you missed some edge cases the best you could hope for was a 'D'. If it didn't even compile you got an 'F' obviously. If you actually wrote comments in the code that explained non-trivial logic you got a 'B'. Only if you had robust error checking (with optional recovery as the case may allow) did you get a higher score. The instructor(s) were ruthless and forced out 2/3 of those who thought they had the chops to do CompSci. It was also all done in KR 'C' so the opportunity for failure was that much greater.