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Showing posts from September, 2009

Improving Traditional Software Development Education

I read Corey Haines post about his idea for software development school . I thought I'd jot down some of my experiences while I taught software development. I taught community college computer science and web development for 7 years. In the summers I worked as a contractor to gain 'real-world' experience. This allowed me to teach what I learned over the summers in the classroom. Towards the last couple of years of teaching I worked at nights while I was teaching because I enjoyed it so much. To me I saw a lot of teachers take the easy road: picking canned curriculum that laid out non-practical material, have a work study student grade for them, etc. while they go home early. This was frustrating to watch and be around!! I picked industry books (PragProg, Addison-Wesley, etc.) and used them for reference while I created custom curriculum every quarter because of technology changes. I did not picked canned textbooks. They drove me nuts being out of date and ou...