Share Paper: Integrating History of Computing into a Software Engineering Course Using a Retro Game Development Laboratory

  1. Paul A Walcott, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados
Monday, June 20 3:20-3:40 PM Liberty 5

Abstract: Understanding how to apply lessons learned from computing history is important for the development of young software engineers, however computing history, in computer science curricula, often goes no further than learning a few historical facts. In this paper, a retro game laboratory in a software engineering course is described. In this two-week laboratory, students learned how to program a constrained computing system and engaged in a retro game analysis and enhancement exercise. The results show that students gained an above average understanding of the limitations of constrained computing systems and poor programming practices. The creativity, critical thinking and problem solving ...