Community Input for CS202X: Software Engineering

As Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013) approaches its 10th anniversary plans are underway to update this important document. The CS202X task force started these efforts in Spring 2021. The aim of this session is to seek feedback from the community on a draft of the Software Engineering (SE) knowledge area. As Dave Parnas once said, "Software Engineering is the multi-person construction of multi-version programs," it is distinct from programming by virtue of being acutely impacted by issues of time (compatibility, versioning, version skew, schema evolution) and coordination or teamwork (communication, coordination, planning, etc). These are challenging issues to convey effectively given classroom practicalities, but it is essential for our graduates that go on to industry roles to have some awareness of these matters. We hope that by hosting a BoF at SIGCSE we can gather input from current instructors, especially to hear what is and is not working well from the CS2013 guidelines. We also hope such a BoF session can serve as a networking session for educators and education-aligned industry representatives so that we have a better feedback loop as Software Engineering practices evolve.