Comment by 100k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 100k | Hacker News Reader

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Amen!

This has been one of my rallying points for years: in school, you are not taught how to collaborate on a team, or even basic software engineering practices like source control. This is ridiculous because every software developer needs to know this. Even if you become an academic, you should be using source control at the very least!

As it is, you're thrust into the thick of it with your first job.

My only experience during my CS degree with working on a team was interesting because of what it got right and wrong.

It was a project to develop control software for a simulated hardware device. We had a team of 4 collaborating with another team of 4 (working on a different part of the system).

So it was good because it was collaborative and you had to depend on another team. We also had to produce documentation.

But we weren't taught how to collaborate with CVS or anything like that. We sent around compiled binaries by email.

So I support any effort to teach collaboration and common tools as part of the curriculum.

I never liked any of the group work I did in school. Sure, the teachers would assign it, but it always ended up with a few people doing most of the work or a project with as many different parts as there were people. It was fine for me to talk about ideas with other students, but when I needed to learn it, I had to go off and work by myself.

it always ended up with a few people doing most of the work...

This is a common problem with group projects in school. One of the main problems is lack of leadership. The solution: assign a leader.

I had a class consisting of 4 projects, 4 people per group, and each project had a designated leader which rotated. These projects were so much easier to manage, because the leader had some authority given by the teacher. He therefore had the ability to delegate responsibility and people would actually do it. In normal groups, even if a leader emerges, they will often be ignored by less motivated students, because their authority is much more tenuous.

My point: it helps to have an assigned (and verified by the teacher) leader for a group project.

True, this is often the case. I think what Joel is asking for is that students be forced to do at least one project that is long-term and collaborative by it's very nature so you learn the skill of working on a team.

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