Building the IT Workforce of the Future: The Demand for More Complex, Abstract, and Strategic Knowledge

Abstract

The software development process has undergone a considerable amount of change from the early days of spaghetti code to the present state of the art of development using strategic patterns. This has caused not only changes in the toolkits that developers use, but also a change in their mindset—the way that they approach and think about software development. This study uses revealed causal mapping techniques to examine the change in mindset that occurs across the procedural to OO development transition, and lays the foundation for future studies of the OO/ pattern cognitive transition. The results indicate that there is not only increasing complexity in the cognitive maps of the OO developers, but also that there is a need for the developer to shift from routine, assembly line coding to more abstract thought processes.