Programming in the real world

Recommended Week

Year 1 : All Weeks

Originator

Dan Page

Task

The premise is that there is a lot more to software engineering than just programming and you are going to find that out when you either a) do the group project or b) get a job. It pays, as the Scouts may or may not still say, to be prepared so we'll look at issues like:

Interviewing and recruiting the right people from the right jobs.
Managing software development through source control, build systems etc.
Time management and scheduling in the large scale.
Working on projects with large groups of people.

Please read the articles on the web-site Joel On Software which is written by Joel Spolsky, software engineering and user interface guru. You can pick any topic based on any article on the site you want. Here are some good ones:

you can choose one of these or any one of the other articles from the archive.

Please prepare a 10[ish] min informal presentation about the topic you have chosen. No need for slides or anything but you might want to note down the topics you want to talk about, kind of like prompt cards or something, so you don't miss anything out.

You also need to collaborate with each other to make sure only one person does a given topic. Treat this negotiation as your first case of team working ;-) You can email me the topics you want to talk about and I'll fill the rest of the time talking about other ones.