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

[Jonathan Sergent]

/// James Pollard <pollard@cs.purdue.edu>:
 ] you are probably right.  if only we could all design software only for
 ] programmers and still all get jobs.  eventually some of us will have to
 ] write programs for the crummy platform that is windows, but that is a
 ] separate subject altogether.

That's just my point -- everyone has to pick up new platforms and tools
quite regularly.  If you're going to have to do it in the real world,
you might as well get good at doing it at Purdue, so the more experience,
the better.

Yeah, it makes the course more challenging if you haven't seen Unix
before, but if it was all easy, then there would be little point in
paying all that cash to do it.  Hopefully you go to school to learn things
(although it's a cliche, I'll throw out the phrase "learn how to learn"),
and to get experience, not just to get a piece of paper that says how
good your exam and project scores were.

Don't claim that the tools you use in CS 180 are the right choice
because they are the same ones you will be using once you graduate.
Do you honestly think that in today's world, in four years, they won't
have changed so much as to be barely recognizable as the same product?


--jss.