Each fall, I teach a course on enterprise computing at Brigham Young University.  The class differs from the content of this weblog in that it is oriented to hard core computer science and systems engineering issues whereas this site tends to deal with softer, but larger issues like processes, people, and IT in large organizations. 

The course is lab oriented: students start off with a raw box, load Linux on it and get going.  For the rest of the semester, they are responsible for loading everything we Apache to Postgresql to Tomcat to JBOSS and building a functioning n-tier client-server application that provides some specific functionality using those various components.   Certainly, knowing how to program is essential to success in the class, but the class is more about systems engineering.  I try to introduce some of the issues I deal with in this blog during lecture.   

The course web site is a blog (based on Slashcode) where I try to create a community feeling for the class, encouraging students to post items of interest to them.  I hope it becomes quite busy.   This semester, they're using the Slashcode journal system to create personal blogs that serve as their lab notebooks.  There are 42 students signed up for the class and another 10-15 on the waiting list.  No worries though, I usually scare a lot of folks off when they realize how much work the class is.