Mapping CS Courses to Internet Software Engineering

These aren’t specific courses, the intention is to provide a rough parallel. They aren’t in a particular order, and multi-semester study is implied for some areas.

• Operating Systems - Particulary Linux. Appreciation of the hardware that makes the system work, especially the server. Understanding of the commands, organization, processing. Use of log files.
• Computer Architecture - Key concepts - physical elements that make up the machine. Capabilities and limitations. CPUs, memory, disks, interrupts, timing, queues, caching. Performance considerations. Requirements awareness.
• OOP / Data Structures - Ability to abstract a system into components that can be efficiently operated on. Queues, linked lists, trees, arrays, multi-dimensional arrays, matrices, classes and objects. Methods, properties and events. Vital for server and client side.
• Algorithms - Appreciation for the impact of how code is written on performance. This is especially important because many web applications are written in interpretive languages. Awareness of high overhead operations (which can be avoided or performed by existing library functions).
• Logic - The ability to break a problem in to manageable pieces and write efficient code.
• Systems Analysis - Developing a high level perspective to understand how system components interface and interact. Distribution of requirements.
• Technical Writing - Written communication is vital to describe the work that will be performed.
• Assembly Language - A view inside the processor. Although not necessary, it is valuable to understand what the processor is, what it does, how it does it, and how to control it. Complements the OS and Computer Architecture courses.
• Data Communications / Introduction to Networking - Writing code for the Internet is heavily influenced by its distribution. It is important to know how the data gets from the server to the client and back again. This affects how pages are constructed. Key elements, difference between form and content, compression, bandwidth.
• Security - Use of encryption, OpenSSL, protecting data, web application firewalls, passwords, ports, server firewalls, watchdogs, etc.
• Server Software - IIS or Apache. How requests are received, protection of data, efficient use of disk space and bandwidth. Caching. How to create and manage accounts. Use of web stats to monitor sites. Use of log files.
• Current Industry Trends - Frameworks, template systems, AJAX, toolkits, CDNs.