CS406/407 Experience.

CS406/407 were two courses that I think prepared me very well for professional life. In addition to exposing me to some state of the art technologies i.e. UML, LDAP, CORBA, I also learnt to work in a team based environment. CS406/407 are the only courses where I got to learn more about Program Version Control/Configuration Management and how it applied to team based projects.

The instruction received from Prof. Mathur and the sponsors of the projects was invaluable. They stood by our side in helping us solve the technical difficulties that we so often faced. We had their full support in terms of getting consultation, getting software licenses, and yes even our own dedicated server!

One mistake a lot of students have made in this course is to take CS406 without CS407. I would definitely not encourage for anyone to do this because it really is in CS407 when the fun begins. CS406 basically prepared us for the team based, and large scaled project. It was only in CS407 that we actually got down to the guts of the problem statement and came out with a viable solution.

Last but not least, I would like to add how important these two classes were when I was applying for my jobs. Most of the companies that I interviewed with were totally impressed with my knowledge of real world challenges that they face. I was familiar with those challenges because we were facing them in CS406/407. And of course, the technologies that these two courses exposed me to were invaluable.

I think that CS406/407 should be made compulsory courses. You can be the best programmer, but without software engineering principles, you are at a severe disadvantage.

(From a 1998-99 406/407 Alum)