Not Just a Matter of Style: Does Aesthetics Have a Place in Software Engineering Curriculum?
Aesthetic designations of code matter in how software engineers work together. Our empirical fieldwork finds that aesthetic designations are frequently used to informally assess code in the industry (i.e., code being called “beautiful,” “elegant,” “ugly,” “messy,” etc.). In this position paper, we build on our empirical fieldwork in the industry to describe the preliminary findings of a survey on students’ aesthetic attitudes toward code. To understand how aesthetics is covered in software engineering courses, we surveyed 52 B.S. and 25 M.S. software engineering students about their attitudes on how “beauty” in code manifests. Our early findings suggest that 75% of undergraduate and 86% of graduate students believe that one should always strive to write “beautiful” code. Further, 85% of undergraduate and 98% of graduate students are aware that aesthetics is an aspect of software quality. While it may be inefficient to formalize aesthetic considerations in pedagogy, we argue that aesthetic aspects of code should be made explicit in teaching code-writing skills.
Tue 16 MayDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
09:00 - 10:30 | |||
09:00 45mDay opening | Introductions SEENG Jonathan Bell Northeastern University, Stephan Krusche Technische Universität München, Bastian Tenbergen State University of New York at Oswego | ||
09:45 15mTalk | Improving the Quality of Commit Messages in Students’ Projects SEENG Pre-print | ||
10:00 15mTalk | Not Just a Matter of Style: Does Aesthetics Have a Place in Software Engineering Curriculum? SEENG | ||
10:15 15mTalk | "We Need To Talk About ChatGPT": The Future of AI and Higher Education SEENG Michael Neumann University of Applied Sciences & Arts Hannover, Maria Rauschenberger University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Eva-Maria Schön University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer DOI Pre-print File Attached |