INTEGRATING OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN THE COMPUTER-SCIENCE CURRICULUM

The recent ACM/IEEE Computing Curricula '91 report identifies important and recurring concepts that pervade computer science. These include complexity of large programs, the concept of binding, abstract data types, evolution of requirements, levels of abstraction, and the importance of software reuse. We present an improved curriculum for the software oriented courses that better addresses these concepts. The major objective of the proposed curriculum is the introduction of the concept of components as building blocks for creating solutions to software design problems. Component-based software engineering is currently best facilitated by the object-oriented approach through reuse of available class libraries and application frameworks. Based on our experience in the use of the object-oriented approach for the introductory programming courses as compared to past instruction using a predominantly procedural-oriented point of view, we feel that our approach can be successfully integrated into the computer science curriculum with proper planning and availability of resources.