Software: university courses versus workplace practice

Abstract

There is a shortage of software developers with the right skills and knowledge, not only in South Africa but worldwide. Despite reports of a gap between industry needs and software education, the gap has mostly been explored in developed countries and in quantitative studies. This paper reports on a mixed methods study of the perceptions of professional software developers regarding what topics they learned from their formal education and the importance of these topics to their actual work. The analysis suggests that there is a gap between software development education and workplace practice and recommendations for software development education are made