[learc83]

My degree required a class like this. It was the most useless class I took.

The theory heavy classes (automata, algorithms etc...) covered material that changes very slowly.

But, as a previous poster said "we don't yet understand software engineering." Because of this software engineering best practices change with the wind. As a result, the software engineering class was a hopelessly outdated survey of how software was built in the early 90s when our professor last worked in industry.

[scarface74]

Software Engineering doesn't change that rapidly.

The idea of iterative software development - that we now call "agile" was first documented in 1957

The Mythical Man Month was published in 1975 and is just as relevant today as it was when it was written.

Code Complete came out in 1993 and is still relevant.

Even when you start talking about programming languages, both Java and C# have been popular in the enterprise since 2005.