There have been further developments in how the course is organized and run since that time. To use The Mythical Man-Month as a primary text in the course now requires hopping around through the chapters, making it difficult for the students, who are engaged in the heat of battle, to thread the beads into a single necklace. Software Engineering Laboratory at Chapel Hill. The third factor is that since I began teaching the Software Engineering Laboratory I felt that Fred Brooks' experience and wisdom should not be lost to our students because the instructor has changed. Fred makes that I can also describe and motivate from experience.
Good courses engage the student in an intellectual journey through time, space, and ideas.
The course encapsulated in this book accompanies students through a journey into their future. The students finishing this course are different from the ones who entered a few short weeks before. It has been exciting to see the increased confidence, improvements in expressive abilities, and advances in knowledge and skills occurring during this course. Students who return to campus as recruiters for major companies tell us that the Software Engineering Laboratory is the only course they use every day. The recruiters tell undergraduate students to take the course and be ready to talk about it during their interviews.