Agile in your schools

After the fishbowl session from the Edmonton Code Camp, one of the big aspects that came out of the discussion was around the lack of Agile and good software development practices (aka ALT.NET) in our schools and universities.

Chris Chapman posted a comment on my entry about a series of blogs he did last month on this exact topic. Let me tell you this has got to be one of the most definitive and well-researched pieces on the subject I've ever seen. Chris not only highlights a series of key practices (Agile/lean development, TDD, refactoring, etc.) that each university offers (or doesn't as is the case) but has a scorecard and breakdown of the best-of courses to check out.

If you're about to enter University and feel like you're going to be left out because you're a forward thinker and want to really challenge yourself, check out Chris' findings which may help you see what's out there!

1 Comment

  • Thanks for the hat-tip, Bil!

    The series all started out of curiosity - I'd suspected that CS departments weren't keeping up to date after working with many interns from some prestigious schools and discovering that despite being "Software Engineers", they had no inkling about agile, tdd, refactoring - anything beyond 1979. And it wasn't their fault.

    As it turns out, finding schools that do teach best practices is rare, and rarer still is obtaining a degree that leverages these skills into required courses.

    It would be cool to see if the ALT.NET community could provide a venue for encouraging schools to upgrade their curriculums to better prepare grads.

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