Author: Dirk Riehle
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Why Informatics is Everyone’s Business in Academia
Informatics (worse: Computing science; even worse: Computer science) is the discipline of automated data processing (where automation is both human independent and dependent, and data in context becomes information). The non-IT industry has learned the hard way over the last few decades that informatics is part of their core business, not just some support function.…
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What is Meant by “Teaching Fundamentals”?
In my previous post I noted how students and professors are often talking past each other, where some the former want to learn immediately applicable knowledge and the latter want to teach long-lasting fundamentals. I also noted that there is no contradiction here, which begs the question what professors mean when the say they want…
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The Place of Professional Certificates and the Significance of an Academic Degree
My Twitter feed is alight with comments on Google’s six-month “career” certificate, which, according to this SVP, Google will treat as equivalent to a four-year Bachelor’s degree. Predictably, a large number of comments are from students who conclude from their own disappointed experience that all college programs are crap. They cheer on Google. Also predictably,…
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The Art of Inviting Industry Speakers to Class
Over the last 10 years, I have consistently invited industry speakers to class, to talk about their experiences, to change the pace, and to lighten up the teaching. We recently passed the 100 external speaker mark! (Also includes some academic speakers.) Time to reflect on what makes a good industry talk that enriches student learning.
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On the Ordering of Nouns in Writing
Effective writing is important, or you won’t be understood and achieve your goal. An example is to get the ordering of nouns (or adjectives) in enumerations right. Let’s pick an example: In software engineering, a software feature’s implementation should be correct, complete, and testable. So a project goal could be “to ensure correctness, completeness, and…
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How to Have an Impact as a Software Engineering Researcher
Over on Facebook of all places, I took part in a short discussion on how, as a researcher, to have an impact on practice. It is not a convenient answer, but in my opinion, if you want to have an impact, you should go into practice yourself. You can also send your students, but this…