Addressing Software Development Skills in a Curriculum Focusing on the Science of Computing

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The introductory curriculum in computer Science is placing an increasing emphasis on the science of the discipline itself. The student is presented with a broad (yet detailed) overview to the breadth of the discipline in a manner similar to that of the other sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.). This is a substantial change from the introductory curricula of old, in which the primary focus was the development of competent programmers, or software engineers. It provides a proper perspective for the incoming student regarding the true nature of the discipline of computing. Furthermore, it increases student interest and motivation, as actual research topics and applications can be addressed almost immediately in the student's studies. Nevertheless, care must be taken to ensure that the students emerging from this sequence are skilled in the basic issues regarding software development. A necessary by-product of this introductory sequence must also be the generation of competent software practitioners. This proposal focuses on techniques that can be integrated into an existing computer science curriculum (that places its emphasis on the science of computing) to ensure the production of competent software developers. In particular, emphasis is placed on the development of software engineers that can function in an environment of large-scale applications, where emphasis is placed on maintainability, re-use and reliability.