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

[Josh Guffin]

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, James Pollard wrote:

> Quoting Jonathan Sergent (sergent@ETLA.NET):
> > /// 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.
> > 
> learning a new platform, no prob.  learning a new language, no prob.  doing
> both while at the same time trying to learn the fundamentals of programming
> is a different story.  anyway, it has been a long time since i've

As was stated before, CS 158 students do it, and they aren't even CS
majors. We're CS students, we take pride in geekery.  If you want a
watered down CS degree, go to IU.  A little work would just weed out
the people who don't really want to do CS, who are just in it because
they heard you can make a load of cash with a CS degree.

> > 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.
> > 
> i can't comment on the difficulty of the course, as i did not take it here.
> i fully understand the need for a challenging course, but i'm sure you also
> understand that even good students and smart people have a limit on what
> they can learn in X amount of time.  perhaps i am wrong about this threshhold,
> since i haven't taken the course, i'll hold my commentary.

I did take the course, and i thought it was downright stupid.  Both
CS180 and 181.  I think i would have gotten more from 180 if i'd
learned COBOL. I personally learned to program this summer, writing
real code every day.

Oh well.  Lets just give everyone a $5 copy of a monolithic OS and a
$5 copy of their IDE so everyone can learn the Microsoft(tm) way.

If Purdue wants to turn out nothing but application programmers whose
programming knowledge doesn't extend beyond Windows API calls, by all
means, lets just give MS a big bj.

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= Josh Guffin                                     guffin@purdue.edu =
= Purdue U. HEP - TASK E               expert.cc.purdue.edu/~guffin =
= finger jguffin@physics.purdue.edu        #include<std/disclaimer> =
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