At QconLondon 2007 Jim Coplien spoke with "Pragmatic" Dave Thomas for InfoQ. This energetic 30-minute interview runs the gamut of Dave's wide-ranging interests: 'agile' publishing; how to turn what you love doing into a book; programming (and methodology) monocultures; staying limber with code "katas"; and advice for academics: help your students live with the passion of a 5-year old!
During the 2004-2005 academic year, Pam Rostal and Dave West ran a unique work-study degree program at New Mexico Highlands University: 20 students using Agile practices to execute real world projects. This story shows what can happen when education goes beyond the ordinary: when people are encouraged to strive for mastery and taught the thinking tools to do so.
Mitch Harper, co-founder of BigCommerce.com, claimed in a recent issue of the Sydney Morning Herald that university education might be the wrong way to become a software engineer. According to Harper, a self-educated software engineer without an university degree: universities leave their students rather unprepared for the realities of being a software engineer.
Although many products and solutions increasingly leverage software as an essential fundament, software engineers are becoming a rare species in Western countries. The problem with scarce availability of well-educated software engineers is that many companies require more engineers then they can get and if that gap widens, this could damage the leading edge of some companies.
A unique university program of education in software and systems design has been restarted at New Mexico Highlands University. The program is based on experiential learning, features apprenticeships, and uses a radically restructured and accelerated curriculum. The program goal: "to produce a community of professionals capable of solving complex, "wicked," problems with computing technology.
In-house training or tutorials at conferences are quite expensive, but what if you could attend some of the best tutorials by leading experts live and from your own office at a low cost? InfoQ is testing this idea with the launch of our virtual training: one-hour and half-day training initially covering agile, effective software development, web-based services, DSLs, and more.
In the first program of its kind, students in Bowling Green State University's Agile Software Factory program learn about agile development by building real software for local community service organizations. Over the course of a 16 week semester, students go from initial client meeting to delivery of a working system. The program is supported through a partnership with the Agile Alliance.
Greg Wilson challenged the aa-ftt community to support efforts to improve college graduates ability to deliver "product-quality code". Wilson's request primarily involves providing simplified versions of the tools used by professionals, such that they're digestible by undergraduate students.
Sun Microsystems has released the Sun SPOT platform under the GPL license. Sun SPOTs are programmable battery-powered devices controllable with Java technology.
