[This is an unapproved draft of the minutes, dated 1 July 1996 and revised 8 July 1996.]
The meeting is called to order by the Chair, Anthony Gargaro, at approximately 8:30 a.m. on Friday, June 28. In behalf of the committee, the chair expresses his appreciation to The MITRE Corporation for hosting the meeting.
The following members of the committee are present:
The chair notes that the following members had notified him that they were unable to attend:
The chair notes that Rada submitted a written report [attached as an annex].
The preliminary agenda circulated by email is approved. [In these minutes, the record of discussion is sometimes reordered to fit under the agenda topics.]
The chair continues with a review of action items carried over from the previous meeting and their disposition.
"ACTION: (Secretary) Send a note to members of the TSC asking them to update our list of standards-related publications by members."
The secretary reports that members responded via email messages. [The response is collected and attached as an annex.] Closed.
"ACTION (Carson): Explore the possibility of TSC liaison with JTC1 or with JTC1 TAG."
Carson reported that this was not done. Later in the meeting, the item was closed. Closed.
"ACTION (Carson): Draft in behalf of the TSC a column on PAS in CACM. It is suggested that the column might deal with some of the following questions:
Carson reports that this has not been done. The action item is carried forward to the next meeting. Open.
"ACTION (Gargaro): Suggest to Joe DeBlasi that ACM should publish guidelines for what SIGs can and cannot do with respect to participation in standards-making. The guidelines could deal with issues such as the following:
Initial contact was made but no action resulted. Later in the meeting the item was closed in favor of other actions. Closed.
"ACTION: (Gargaro) Solicit candidates for membership in TSC and forward them to the SIG Board for action."
The chair reports that candidates were solicited from the SIG Board. A discussion later in the meeting acts upon the recommendations. Closed.
"ACTION (Moore): Draft article for SV on the SESC program. Circulate it for improvement and suggestions for additional promotion."
Moore reports that this article has not yet been written but is still planned. In its place, a column was written by Rada and Moore for August CACM on the subject of "organizational badges". Open.
"ACTION (Secretary): The secretary is instructed to draft an appropriate resolution on the use of C++ in the AP exam and circulate it via email for the approval of the TSC."
This was done. The results will be discussed later in the meeting. Closed.
The secretary reports that the provisional minutes of the last meeting were circulated by email and revised twice in response to comments. The final draft was posted on the Home Page by Haynes. The TSC approves this final draft without changes.
The chair notes that John Klensin has been nominated as Vice-Chair of the ISSB and will probably be elected to that position. He also reports that the SIG Board has directed that the TSC's charter be modified to included the immediate past chair as a member of the committee.
ACTION (Gargaro): Send revised charter wording to Haynes for posting on the TSC Home Page.
The chair reminds the TSC that members serve two-year terms with the expirations overlapping for purposes of continuity. All terms expire on the last day of June in their respective year. All of the current members have served since the chartering of the TSC four years ago. The terms expiring on June 30, 1996 are those of Gargaro, Moore, Emery, Spafford, and Haynes. All but Spafford have volunteered to continue as members of the TSC. The chair has recommended that each of the willing members be reappointed and the SIG Board is expected to agree.
However, the SIG Board has decided that there should be a new chair, because it is unusual for any SIG Chair to serve three terms. The current chair has recommended that Moore be appointed to the position of chair. Moore is willing and the SIG Board is expected to approve and then forward the nomination to the president of the ACM for action.
Assuming that all goes as expected, this leaves the TSC with two vacancies to be filled. After soliciting the SIGs, the SIG Board provided four suggestions. Two of these candidates were contacted by the TSC chair but declined an invitation to serve on the committee. During discussion, TSC also generated a list of additional candidates.
The qualifications desired of candidates include:
ACTION (Chair): Investigate the willingness of the candidates to serve. Discuss their qualifications with Doris Lidtke. Make appropriate recommendations to the SIG Board for appointment.
After a break, we consider the response of the College Board to our letter regarding the selection of a programming language for the Computer Science Advanced Placement exam. [The letter sent by the TSC -- after SIG Board approval -- the response of the College Board and a new letter drafted by TSC appear in an annex to these minutes.]
After discussion of the response from the president of the College Board, we decide on a plan:
ACTION (Haynes): Write an opinion column for CACM regarding the issues involved in language selection for the CS AP exam.
ACTION (Haynes): Approach SIGCSE to determine if it might be willing to survey its membership regarding their plans for introductory computer science languages and report the results to the College Board.
ACTION (Haynes): Propose a panel discussion at the 1997 SIGCSE conference discussing the choice of introductory language for the teaching of computer science.
As requested by ACM EC, the TSC chair places a telephone call to the chair of the Education Board offering to cooperate in dealing with the College Board.
ACTION (Haynes): Coordinate all further activity on this issue with the Education Board.
We draft a letter to College Board stating our concerns with their response.
ACTION (Gargaro): Staff draft letter to SIG Board so that it might be sent to College Board.
We resume our meeting following lunch. In the absence of the secretary, the chair leads a workshop session to gather material for the committee's annual report on its activity. [This will be separately circulated.]
Following a break, we revise the draft of the letter intended for the College Board.
As the first item of our second day of meeting, we develop plans for the TSC's activities during the coming fiscal year. We develop a list of our successes versus things that we have not done so well during our four-year history.
Things we have done well:
Things that have not gone as well:
We consider some metaphors that might describe our desired role:
Based on the mission stated in our charter and the discussion of appropriate objectives, we formulate a hierarchy of mission, goals and objectives for the coming year:
ACTION: To pursue objectives 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 listed above, we agree to create an initial body of information. The initial articles are intended to be of 1000 words or so in length and of pre-publication quality. They should contain insight and guidance, i.e. opinion. By July 31, each of the following individuals should submit an article to Haynes on the indicated subject:
Gargaro reported that there are plans for a series of television programs hosted by Casper Weinberger on the subject of information technology. The ACM President, Stu Zweben, is looking for ways in which ACM should participate. Anthony suggested that we should talk about standards and that the TSC could help. It is suggested that the role of international standards in international trade and competitiveness might be appropriate.
ACTION (Gargaro): Arrange a role for TSC in the planned television series regarding information technology.
After a short break, we review developments related to the JTC1 trial use procedure for the adoption of "publicly available specifications" (PAS). Carson reports that although the two-year trial is scheduled to end this winter, there have been few submissions.
ACTION (Carson and Emery): Draft a letter to the ISSB making the following points:
After lunch, we have a period of open discussion that primarily results in tying up loose ends regarding previously considered business.
ACTION: [Moore and Gargaro] Cooperate on FY 98 budget covering two meetings. We will deal with the second 1997 meeting by moving it into July which falls in fiscal 1998.
The TSC unanimously commends Anthony Gargaro for his four years of leadership in creating and leading the TSC.
The meeting is adjourned at approximately 5:00 p.m.
Jim Moore is first author on a fine column on Software Engineering standards that is to appear in CACM in August. Jim and I have begun discussions and some work on another column about software reuse standards that I am hoping will follow the August software engineering standards column. (Past 12-month CACM publications are listed in appendix to this message).
I have not heard from Steve or others about drafts of columns on PASC or other topics that we have discussed but remain most open to these possibilities and welcome collaboration.
I have neither received nor initiated communication about ACM StandardView in a while.
My main current activity has to do with education and the information superhighway. I noted in the ISO 9000 column the possibility of producing an ISO 9000 variant for education and received a message from Australia of someone wanting to know how to move that forward. Others have also expressed an interest in this.
ACM has initiated an effort for professional certification via ACM-sponsored education on CD-ROM led by Peter Denning. I have discussed with several key ACM people the possibility of working in a similar vein to have ACM involved in education that gets into the workplace on the information superhighway. We would help connect the great knowledge of our membership with the needs for continuing education. Of course, all this needs to be somehow standardized and certified. While this may not be in the main stream for TSC, it could be one activity of TSC, and I would be willing to take responsibility for it and to liaise with other relevant components of ACM, like the Education and Publication Boards.
I remain in touch with some medical informatics standards activities and some hypermedia standards activities.
Moore, J. W., "Ada 9X Standard Approved," chapter of M. Ratcliffe, editor, Ada Yearbook 1995, IOS Press, Amsterdam 1995
Moore, J, "Report of ACM's Technical Standards Committee," ACM StandardView, 3:2, June 1995
Moore, J. W., "'Process' as a Organizing Force in IEEE Software Engineering Standards," panel presentation, 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Software Engineering Standards, Montreal, August 1995
Rada, Roy, "Sharing Standards: Consensus versus Speed," Communications of the ACM, 38:10, October 1995.
Rada, Roy, "Sharing Standards: Who Will Test Conformance?" Communications of the ACM, 39:1, January 1996.
Rada, Roy, "ISO 9000 Reflects the Best in Standards," Communications of the ACM, 39:3, March 1996.
Moore, J. and Rada, R., "Organizational Badge Collecting," (forthcoming) Communications of the ACM, August 1996.
April 15, 1996
Donald W. Stewart, President
The College Board
45 Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023-6992
Dear Dr. Stewart:
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is an organization of over 90,000 professionals dedicated to serving all disciplines of computer science and information technology. Consequently, the ACM Technical Standards Committee is concerned about changes in the Advanced Placement Examination for Computer Science and wishes to offer a suggestion for change.
I am sure that you are aware that the choice of C++ as the programming language for the examination is controversial. Critics have made the following claims (and others):
Although there is merit to some of these claims, the pressure of time precludes against deliberate study of them. High school sophomores must begin receiving instruction in C++ this fall to prepare them for the examination to be given in the spring of their senior year. It is not the purpose of this letter to comment on the technical considerations of the selection; instead we wish to comment on the process used to arrive at the decision.
There is ample evidence that widespread consensus has not been achieved in this decision. Furthermore, there are claims that widespread consensus was never sought--that the AP committee simply made the decision based upon their own experience and judgment. Nevertheless, this decision broadly effects the future of the entire Computer Science and Software Engineering communities, not to mention the educational future of our youth.
It is the position of the ACM Technical Standards Committee that the AP committee has, in effect, created a "standard" --a standard for computer science education at the high school level. Technical standards, including this one, must be created in an open process where all interested and qualified parties are able to contribute to the final decision; thus, improving the quality and appropriateness of the result and broadening its acceptance.
We urge you to take the following steps:
The members of our committee stand ready to apply their broad experience in standards-making to assist you in choosing or formulating an open process that will involve interested participants and produce a timely result.
Sincerely,
Anthony Gargaro
Chairperson, ACM SIG Technical Standards Committee
May 16, 1996
Mr. Anthony Gargaro
Chairperson, ACM SIG Technical Standards Committee
Association for Computing Machinery
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
Dear Mr. Gargaro:
Thank you for your letter of April 15th regarding the use of C++ in Advanced Placement Computer Science. Your concerns have been brought to the attention of the AP Computer Science (APCS) development committee.
The College Board has begun to seek out opportunities for wider discussion of the APCS course and examination. For example, an ad hoc committee was established in the summer of 1995 for the purpose of advising the APCS development committee on issues related to changing the language to C++, in particular what subset of C++ would be appropriate. The committee also presented recommendations on teacher training and vehicles for continued dialogue. The consultation process has been valuable and lengthy, already delaying implementation a year beyond our original plans. The development committee and other program representatives will continue to make presentations to computer science faculty at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium. As a result of recent discussions between the ad hoc and development committees, plans are underway for holding a meeting on mutual concerns at SIGCSE [sic] 1997.
Some of the advice received from the computer science faculty, while sound at the level of the individual course or instruction, does not take into account practical concerns that AP must consider. AP is a program designed to allow high school students to obtain credit for college-level work. As such, it is not intended for every high school student interested in some level of programming. The high school computer science curriculum in general, should be broad based and not just a preparation for AP. In fact, some students enroll in the AP Computer Science with no previous programming experience, or experience in another language.
We must offer the course in a language that many universities use, preferably the language that is most commonly used in the course in which AP students will be placed. The trend of universities towards C++ and away from Pascal in Computer Science I and II is compelling. Since universities expect AP students to have experience in programming, part of our examination must test that skill in the language. We cannot offer a "language-independent" examination, or examination in a language that few universities use, or a separate examination in each of several languages. We will, however, continue to offer a course that stresses computer science concepts no matter which language is used as the platform.
I hope this addresses some of your concerns. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions.
Sincerely,
Donald M. Stewart
President
Donald W. Stewart, President
The College Board
45 Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023-6992
Dear Dr. Stewart:
Thank you for your response, dated May 16, to my letter of April 15 regarding the use of C++ in Advanced Placement Computer Science. We sympathize with the difficult position of an organization that must anticipate, years in advance, trends in a field characterized by rapidly changing technology. Unfortunately, though, your response does not completely satisfy the concerns of the ACM Technical Standards Committee.
The response notes that the AP course must be "in a language that many universities use, preferably the language that is most commonly used." This constraint makes it clear that the College Board has premised its language selection upon the claim that the "trend of universities toward C++ and away from Pascal ... is compelling." This trend may have seemed compelling two or three years ago when the College Board made its language selection, but we believe that it is not compelling today.
The trend toward C++ in education has been predicated on its importance in industry (indeed, its strong supporters generally concede its pedagogic weakness), yet it appears to many that the tide of C++ usage has crested and is, or shortly will be, receding. Recent developments within both the computing industry and textbook publishing cast serious doubt on the presumption that C++ will ever dominate introductory computer science courses.
The phenomenal growth of networking and related language technologies necessitates re-evaluation of computing directions within industry and academe. In particular, the unprecedented growth of interest in Java, reflected in recent text publications and publication plans, indicates that, in the short term, there will be further fragmentation in the choice of introductory languages. In the longer term it seems quite possible that Java, rather than C++, will replace Pascal as the dominant introductory language (though perhaps no language will ever command the dominant position that Pascal has enjoyed). To make a factual evaluation of recent developments, we have requested that ACM's Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) conduct a survey to ascertain the intentions of colleges and universities on the issue of language selection.
In addition, your letter says that the College Board has "begun to seek out opportunities for wider discussion of the APCS course and examination," but then goes on to exclude the language selection issue from that wider consideration. We believe that the language issue should remain open to a broader community. To that end, the TSC will propose a panel session at the 1997 SIGCSE conference where representatives of a broad community of interest, including the College Board, may discuss the issue of language selection.
We recommend a year of delay in implementing the decision of the College Board. After a one-year delay, we believe that it will be apparent that the expected trend to C++ will not materialize.
Sincerely,
Anthony Gargaro
ACM SIG Technical Standards Committee
"ACTION (Carson): Draft in behalf of the TSC a column on PAS in CACM. It is suggested that the column might deal with some of the following questions:
ACTION (Moore): Draft article for StandardView on the SESC program. Circulate it for improvement and suggestions for additional promotion.
ACTION (Gargaro): Send revised charter wording to Haynes for posting on the TSC Home Page.
ACTION (Chair): Investigate the willingness to serve of the candidates proposed for TSC membership. Discuss their qualifications with Doris Lidtke. Make appropriate recommendations to the SIG Board for appointment.
ACTION (Haynes): Write an opinion column for CACM regarding the issues involved in language selection for the CS AP exam.
ACTION (Haynes): Approach SIGCSE to determine if it might be willing to survey its membership regarding their plans for introductory computer science languages and report the results to the College Board.
ACTION (Haynes): Propose a panel discussion at the 1997 SIGCSE conference discussing the choice of introductory language for the teaching of computer science.
ACTION (Haynes): Coordinate all activity on this issue with the Education Board.
ACTION (Gargaro): Staff draft letter to SIG Board so that it might be sent to College Board.
ACTION (Chair) Ask Joe DeBlasi to arrange a meeting with the new President of the ACM regarding his views on the ACM role in standardization.
ACTION (Emery) Write a model set of policy & procedures for the SIGs regarding standards
ACTION (Carson) Arrange a role for the TSC in the joint ACM/IEEE Task Force on professionalization. TSC should be involved in defining and or reviewing any lists of standards designated as vital to professional competence.
ACTION (Chair) Make a presentation to SIG chairs and others regarding the mission and progress of the TSC.
ACTION (Chair) Conduct an email discussion to select a target set of SIGs and SDOs where liaison is felt to have high value.
ACTION (Chair) Designate representatives from TSC to effect active liaison with the selected organizations.
ACTION (Haynes): Enhance the TSC Web page to list additional pointers to useful standards-related sites. ACTION (All): Suggest such pointers to Haynes.
ACTION (Secretary): Publish TSC meeting reports on the Home Page.
ACTION: (See below): To pursue objectives 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 listed above, we agree to create an initial body of information. The initial articles are intended to be of 1000 words or so in length and of pre-publication quality. They should contain insight and guidance, i.e. opinion. By July 31, each of the following individuals should submit an article to Haynes on the indicated subject:
ACTION (Gargaro): Arrange a role for TSC in the planned television series regarding information technology.
ACTION (Carson and Emery): Draft a letter to the ISSB making the following points:
ACTION: (Moore and Gargaro): Cooperate on FY 98 budget covering two meetings. We will deal with the second 1997 meeting by moving it into July which falls in fiscal 1998.