Are students prepared for working in the industry?

This should have actually been a two-part blog, first talk about the fact that there are now course on iPhone and Android programming offered at my university, and second transition to the topic mentioned in the title of the blog, namely the existing gap between what we are thought in school, and what is actually needed outside in the industry. Just by the fact that such courses are being offered, I believe that the gap is getting a little smaller. Read on to get a feel of what I think about all this.

I had my first lecture as part of the iPhone Programming class offered at FAU (similar to the course offered at Stanford and available online for free) I am excited because mobile development has been a passion of mine for some time now. I have been working with J2ME since my fourth year of college (2004), and with Android since before its official 1.0 release. Both platforms come with their advantages and shortcomings. Now, the opportunity to take part of the iPhone class could not be left unanswered, hence I enrolled for the Spring semester as part of my last class moving toward the end of my PhD.

I wanted to look into iPhone programming for some time now, but there were some impediments like not owning a Mac, and not having time for it. Well, my first problem was solved because, graciously enough, our CEECS department at FAU has created an advanced Apple Lab that comes with 10 Macs and 5 iPod Touch. My second problem got solved due to the fact that I had to take one more class, so why not make it one that is all about mobile programming. At the end of the class, I could better compare and contrast the different mobile platforms that I am familiar with.

I had some (minor) complaints about the curricula here at FAU. I felt that the courses being thought are somewhat out of touch with the need of the industry. And because most of the students end up working in the industry, better choices for courses could be offered. I have a whole list of classes that I wish would be offered here, and I am going to share this with list with you (letting me know what other classes you think would be useful):

• Web Services (SOA more generally)
• Software Testing (Black/White Box, Integration/Regression/Acceptance/Unit Testing, TDD)
• Java and C# (and here maybe more on the Enterprise side with Java EE and .NET)
• Compilers
• Project Management (Lean, Agile (XP, Scrum), RUP, V-MODEL)
• Functional and Logical Programming
• Distributed Systems
• Math for Computer Science
• Web Developemnt (in terms of Rails, PhP, Flash, Perl, Python, GWT)
• Software Security (Encryption, SSL/TSL, HTTPS, Cyphers, Hashes, etc)

Mobile Development class that would include Java ME, Android, and iPhone Programming, was also on the list but fortunately enough, Android and iPhone Programming are currently being taught here at FAU (I am much involved in the Android class, not as a student, but as a teaching assistant). Refactoring was also on the list, but having a whole class on this topic seems a little too much (instead it could be incorporated in any programming class available).

I recently read an article written by Bjarne Stroustrup entitled "What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why", that expressed some of the feelings I have on this topic. Although there is still room for improvement, I do believe that we (FAU, but I am sure some universities were already on this path for some time) are going in the right direction offering courses that are useful when graduating from school.