letters to the editor
DOI: 10.1145/1400181.1400184
Prep students for irreversible software trends

STEPHEN J. ANDRIOLE and Eric Roberts debated how to educate the next generation of technology professionals in the Viewpoint Point/Counterpoint “Technology Curriculum for the Early 21st Century” (July 2008). Here, they offer their final words on each other’s thoughts, beginning with Andriole.

 

The assumption that the number of “programming” jobs will increase over time or that the location or nature of programming work will not change challenges every assumption about the trajectory of change in the industry. Could Eric Roberts actually believe, as he said in his “Counterpoint” (July 2008) that the video gaming industry will create enough new programming jobs to offset the loss of opportunities in U.S. and global corporations that long ago yielded to the commoditization of software and the relentless march toward software delivery through installed and hosted packaged applications? It’s clearly difficult for a $10 billion industry to replace a $200 billion industry.

Moreover, Roberts did not discuss my call (in my side of the debate) for greater emphasis on integration, interoperability, applications architecture, communications architecture, and data architecture. I was calling for innovation and design, not implementation. It appears that as programming continues to commoditize, even as it standardizes on quasi-open standards, the demand for architectural services will be huge. There is also demand for optimization and metrics identification and management that represents even more opportunities for computing professionals. I am talking about the relative need for software applications, design, development, and support, all of which are changing as a result of technological and market forces.

I have never advocated abandoning software engineering or declared programming “irrelevant.” (I feel like

a political candidate misquoted for the purposes of the opposing candidate’s argument.) “Programming” must tilt toward architecture and design and stop assuming jobs will be available for professionals writing nonstandard, proprietary-extreme applications and that these jobs will yield to commoditization, standardization, and alternative software-delivery models.

Will there be a shortage of computing professionals? Yes, but why? Perhaps it will be the result of the mismatch between what we teach and what employers need. The data we’ve collected reflects the shortage of professionals who understand design, architecture, integration, interoperability, open standards, ERP/CRM/NSM implementation and support, and the ability to optimize standards and architectures for business value.

In July, I said that the world is changing and we owe it to our students that we change with it in the right directions. Here’s a simple test: Gartner Group recently identified 14 alternative technology-delivery models, including business-process utilities, capacity-on-demand, commu-nications-as-a-service, community source, grid computing, infrastructure utility, remote-management services, software-as-a-service, software streaming, software-based appliances, stor-age-as-a-service, user-owned devices, utility computing, and Web platforms. Are we educating our students in these areas? Do academic programs support these delivery models? We must be more relevant to the changing world off-campus.

My work as a consultant and venture capitalist has exposed me to software design and development in many industries, including niche markets like video gaming. But corporate computing across all vertical industries—and its providers—represents professional opportunities for our students who later go to work for, say, Accenture, Cisco Systems, CSC, Deloitte, EMC, IBM, Intel, Hitachi, HP/EDS, Microsoft, Oracle, PWC, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. As

the number of developers and providers shrinks through consolidation and commoditization (EDS is today part of HP; all major business-intelligence vendors have been acquired; and the number of hardware vendors continues to decline), opportunities for our students are changing dramatically. We need to prepare them, not stubbornly cling to the way things were.

stephen J. andriole, villanova, PA

Roberts responds:

Stephen J. Andriole’s “Viewpoint” (July 2008) began by saying “the assumption that the number of ‘programming’ jobs will increase over time…challenges every assumption about the trajectory of change in the industry.” While this view may indeed challenge his assumptions, it does not contradict the available evidence. As I said in my “Counterpoint,” the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting a dramatic increase in pro-gramming-intensive jobs from 2006 to 2016, to the point that two of the top five fastest-growing job categories over that time are “network systems and data communications analyst” and “computer software engineers, applications,” both of which require significant programming expertise.

Andriole also said I misrepresented his arguments, in particular that he “never advocated abandoning software engineering.” But he did precisely that, explicitly proposing the reduction of the five academic disciplines identified by the Joint ACM/IEEE-CS Task Force on Computing Curricula—computer engineering, computer science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering—to “three flavors: computer engineering, computer science, and information systems.” Software engineering is conspicuously absent. He also said he never deemed programming “irrelevant.” Despite the fact that the word he quoted—irrelevant— never appeared in my “Counterpoint,” it is important to look at what he did say. Reading the paragraph that asks