Developer Christmas Countdown - December 15 - T minus 10 days

December 15 - Ten days to go!  Computer Science Education Week, SigCSE 2011, Grace Hopper Women in Computer Science

Computer Science Education Week took place December 5-11.  The week is focused on spreading the message that computer science is vital to a successful education no matter what  career or industry you take part in.  Computers are at the center of our modern economy.   Just teaching math and science is not enough.   From the CSEdWeek web site - "Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), December 5-11, is a call to action to share information and offer activities that will advocate for computing and elevate computer science education for students at all levels. Everyone can participate!"  You can pledge to support CS education at http://www.csedweek.org/forms/sign/pledge-step1.

Embarcadero Technologies products fit with ACM/IEEE Guidelines for Computer Science Curriculum 2008

As I am travelling around the world visiting with our customers and partners, I also have the priviledge to visit students and faculty at some wonderful colleges.  The students ask me how our Embarcadero Database and Application development tools can help them in their studies.  Faculty members often ask me how our products can help them, not only with their teaching but, especially with their workloads.

For students, our database and developer products fit in almost all of the areas defined in the guidelines for the Curriculum in Computer Science (updated in 2008).    This report was an update of the 2001 Computer Science Curriculum guidelines final report.  For faculty members, our products can help their workload as well as in their teaching.  Here are a few of the use cases I've defined where our products can help professors review student assignments:

• Assignment - student has to make modifications to a given database. The professor can use Change Manager (CM) to compare the assignment with a base database definition. CM will show the differences, making it easy to see if the students did the work correctly.


• Assignment - students to create a set of objects – then use UML visualization, audits, and metrics to verify that the student work was done correctly.


• Assignment – students to implement objects, methods and functions and are given Unit Tests set up by the Instructor. Unit tests must all run (un-modified) in order for the class work to be accepted.


• Assignment – student to design a database and create the best SQL statements to perform insert, update, delete operations. The professor can use Change Manager and DBOptimizer to verify that the implementation is complete and highly performant.

These are just a few of the many ways Embarcadero development and database tools can help professors review and accept student assignments and tests. If any Computer Science faculty members need additional information or advice about how Embarcadero products can help them, you can send me an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Computer Science Conferences 2011

One of my all time favorite conferences focused on Computer Science Education is the ACM SigCSE (Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education) annual Technical Symposium on
Computer Science Education. Next year, the conference takes place March 9-12, 2011 in Dallas Texas - http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2011/.

My other all time favorite conference is focused on Women in Computer Science.  The conference is the annual Grace Hopper "Celebration of Women in Computing" conference. This year I helped 6 Cal Poly Computer Science Department majors and members of WISH (Women Involved in Software and Hardware) attend the conference in Atlanta. Next year's conference is in Portland Oregon, November 8-12, 2011 - http://gracehopper.org/2011/.  We want to send 20 Computer Science Women to Portland in 2011.  Contributions can be made directly to the Cal Poly Computer Science Department at: Computer Science Department, Cal Poly State University, One Grand Avenue, San Luis Obispo, Ca 93407. Contributions can also be made through our secure online giving form. State that your donation goes to "sending the Cal Poly Computer Science Women to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference in Portland 2011".