Producing Software Using Tools in a Workstation Environment

Abstract

We discuss how we taught students to build and usetranslation, interpretive, editing and monitoring toolsin an undergraduate software engineering course.Students used the tools on low-cost workstations(Macintoshes) to build large, group projects. Thestudents' projects used all available features ofworkstation environments, including graphics, windows,fonts, mice, networks, and sound generators. We foundthat (1) the use of tools increased studentproductivity, (2) a shift in a data structure andalgorithm topics is needed to cover material relevantfor workstation environments, (3) new topics in systemdesign are required for a workstation environment, (4)traditional material can be easily illustrated with aworkstation environment and (5) students enjoyed beingable to manipulate the advanced features ofworkstations in their work, which in turn increasedtheir motivation for and concentration on the coursematerial.