A small survey of Finnish IT professionals, academics, and students has important implications for computer science degree programs.

A source code plagiarism detection engine Plaggie is presented. It is a stand-alone Java application that can be used to check Java programming exercises. Plaggie's functionality is similar with previously published JPlag web service but unlike JPlag, Plaggie must be installed locally and its source code is open. Apparently, Plaggie is the only open-source plagiarism detection engine for Java exercises.

The present paper has two parts. The first part is a trend analysis from the period 1990-2004 and the second part is a cross-sectional analysis from the year 2004. In both parts, the purpose was to find the most common technical skills sought in American job advertisements for software developer positions. Unlike in previous researches, also distributed technology skills were analyzed thoroughly because as a consequence of World Wide Web technology, these skills are required now more often than ten years ago. According to the trend analysis, the mean of the number of required technical skills increased from 3.6 to 7.7, and the technical requirements have changed as more versatile. The proportion of distributed technology skills increased very strongly: from 0% in 1990 to 65.1% in 2004. According to the cross-sectional analysis, the top five skills sought in 2004 were Windows, Java, C++, SQL, and Unix. In addition, implications to computer science education are considered.

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In this paper, we describe a typical Finnish work experience program in computer science and engineering. The program is compulsory for all students. It is cheap, moderately controlled, and unstructured. The feedback from the program is compared to the feedback from a highly structured and competition-based co-operative education program in the USA, which can be seen as a kind of opposite to the Finnish program. One might expect the feedback from a cheap and unstructured program not to be very good. However, the feedback from both programs was positive.