Two leading software developers are calling for an improvement in the way that programming is taught. James Coplien, a software design expert who currently works as an object architect at US-based software company DAFCA, said in an interview at the ACCU conference in Oxford, that it is irresponsible to allow poorly trained programmers to write critical applications.
"A plumber has around eight years training in the US," said Coplien. "That's to fix my goddamn toilet. Yet, how much training do you have to do to be allowed to build software for a plane carrying hundreds of people?" According to Coplien, companies should start offering apprenticeships to allow people to learn practical programming techniques from more experienced employees. "We need apprenticeships of more than 30 hours per week for a year," he added.
Bjarne Stroustrup, who currently works as a professor at Texas A&M University and is creator of the C++ programming language , said in a separate interview at ACCU, that training needs to improve to enable programmers to deal with the challenges involved in writing complex systems. "Education is a major issue," said Stroustrup. "This is part of the reason why I got into academia. Programmers have not become better in many areas, but systems have become more complex. Better tools and libraries won't solve the problems — we need well-trained programmers."
Computer science courses need to be more challenging to equip students for the workplace, according to Stroustrup. "I'm working on the undergraduate curriculum [at Texas A&M] and making it harder," said Stroustrup. "The average computer science education is too feeble — a lot of people can write a single function, but you can graduate from school without having written a system used by other people."
One piece of advice that Stroustrup offers to aspiring programmers is to read other people's code. "People don't read enough code," said Stroustrup. "If you wanted to be the author of English novels, you wouldn't do it without reading other novels first. If you read code you can learn techniques and what styles you like and don't like."
Earlier this month, a US university tied for 17th place in an international programming contest, the lowest ranking for a top-performing US school in the 29 year history of the competition, which has led to questions being asked of the education system for programmers in the US.
