[PLUG] Article in Linux Today about M$ kill UNIX at Universities..

[Jeff DeFouw]

On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Dave Jacoby wrote:

> Beyond Krannert, CS 180 and 181 are now being taught on Windows.
> Win2000 Beta, last I heard. 
> 
> I wonder if this tactic will work. It is largely the same tactic
> that Apple used for years: "If we get 'em young, they'll stay with
> us for life." That certainly didn't work for Apple, but Microsoft
> might just pull it off.

They got a chance to move to a graphical programming environment with lots
of neat features, and there simply aren't any good complete GUI java
compilers out for unix that I've seen.  If there are, almost nobody knows
about them so that's just another problem.  Many of the students have a
tough time just doing their labs and projects without worrying about
command lines... makes me wonder what they did before.  I'm not sure why
W2K Beta though.  Already had a student panic because windows or something
on it ate some of their files.  Obviously I don't know exactly what
happened to their stuff but I wouldn't be surprised if something in that
sometimes misconfigured beta or VJ++ was involved.  Yeah that's a good
idea, show them something that breaks and maybe they'll stick with it for
life.  'Course, they probably already have gotten used to that from
Windows 9x.  I write my projects in pico and compile them with jdk 1.1.7v2
for Linux.  Fortunately, the book doesn't teach MS-specific crap and it
mentions using the Sun compiler.

--
Jeff DeFouw <defouwj@purdue.edu>