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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

A really great addition to any CS curriculum would be a long-running projects course that runs the full four years so that you get experience in managing architecture, growth, and maintenance, instead of just building. Lots of students do that by attaching themselves to open source projects or working internships, which is great, but it's not (as far as I know) an official major part of any curriculum I've heard about.

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For Prof. Larry Peterson's networking class, we had to build up a web server over the course of a semester. You built IP, and used that library to build TCP, and then served files over your TCP connection.

It was the first time I realized that bugs in earlier assignments don't magically disappear, and changed my thinking dramatically.

I had the same experience in my compilers class at USF. Each assignment added layers on top of old assignments (lexer -> parser -> type checker -> codegen). I think it's an excellent strategy for helping students understand the importance of maintainability. Also, forcing you to revisit past assignments will help implant the concepts.

A single four year project would be a little harsh... once you realize what you've done wrong, you'd be to too deep in it to amend your ways anymore. Give them a chance to start from scratch a few times...

A rewrite could always be an option, if it's finished on time.

Setting a reasonable pace with the project could be tricky, but I think it would be very beneficial.

Most of the time, you should be building an initial version and throwing it away anyway.

Internet time does not justify poor program design.

Realizing what you've done wrong and feeling the pain of figuring out how to amend it is the whole point of the exercise. Maybe the right way to amend it is to rewrite the whole thing, but that may or may not be the best choice, depending on what else you want to get done. Just like the real world!

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