Bill has asked via the TC Minutes:

     One group felt that COMP2021 could and should be revised in a way
     that made it fairly equally accessible to both CE students and to
     CS students without Physics or ELEC1011. [ Summarises the opposite
     viewpoint ] The protagonists have promised to summarise their cases
     and on receipt they will be linked here.

Oliver has already expressed his (LiC of 2021) view that we should try a
unified version, as he thinks that it is possible to do DSS without
requiring a background in electronics.

I'd like to emphasise that this is my view as well (having taught DSS
for about 4 years), and I believe Steve's (who's also taught it several
times in the past), and probably Jingling's (who's taught it last year)
but I don't want to put words into Jingling's mouth.

I'd like to summarise (my view of) the reasons:

DSS (COMP2021/COMP9022) was in the past an unpopular course (with
academics as well as students) for a number of reasons:

 - it was a hodge-podge of stuff with weak connections
 - most students found much of the contents irrelevant (that applies
   particularly to CS students, less so to CE) and boring
 - CE students found much of the first few weeks of material a repeat of
   stuff covered in ELEC1011
 - there was an over-emphasis on circuits design and assembler
   programming. (This is not to say that assembler programming should
   go -- it is an essential component. But the way it was presented
   overemphasises issues which would be better left in a compiler
   course.)
 - there was a lack of proper systems material, like how all the
   material fitted into the software environment of a real computer,
   issues like OS and libraries...

Note that I'm not criticising others, I am to a significant degree
responsible for the present (i.e, last 9 years') form of DSS.

I believe that DSS must be seen as a "systems" course, rather than a
"hardware" course. It should teach students about what computer systems
are, and what they consist of. It should, ideally, follow on from a
"systems" component in first year, and form the basis on which later
courses, such as OS, compilers, architecture, micros, can work. It
should be seen as a core offering for all computing students, on the
same level of relevance as basic algorithms and programming.

In that sense, there is no inherent reason why a different version would
be needed for students from different programmes, because:

 - all of the material in the course is relevant to all our students, AND
 - if things are done properly there is minimal (if any) overlap with
   material taught in other courses, incl the ELEC courses which are
   core to the CE degree.

Steve adds:

| Gernot's summary of COMP2021 (history + preferred future structure)
| accords very closely with my view, and has already been expressed via
| `Review Group' discussions.
| 
| Cheers, Steve