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Will CS Students Switch From Microsoft?
spotter writes: "There's an article in Newsweek International that talks about how Microsoft's tactics are turning off an entire generation of CS students from their products and increasing the fortunes of Linux." The article isn't deep or flawless, but hits on a major point: what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do.
Some of them will. Some of them won't
I don't know how it is at most other places, but at the University I attend the labs run NetBSD and KDE2.
I know a few people have copies of MS Visual Studio at home, but why bother, when gcc + emacs is in the labs and you can get it free at home?
Cheers Koz
An entire generation of CS students,
.NET out there,
.NET are different animals..
(and lots of non-CS students) are learning Java.
MS is going to need to do some serious marketing
towards universites to get
and personally, I doubt it'll ever reach the level of adoption that Java as achived.
(Yeah, before you start flaming me, I KNOW Java and
but they ARE competing technologies in some senses.)
The article isn't deep or flawless, but hits on a major point: what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do.
I'm not at all convinced this is true. A good counter-example is Apple, who for years owned the educational market both in high schools and universities in the US. It didn't lead (as Apple had hoped it would) to widespread use of Macs in the commercial world.
A good Computer Science school teaches the principles of computing. These are abstract ideas that can be applied to any hardware or software platform. The OS you use at university should not impact the OSes you are able or interested to use later. I learnt on Unix and VMS systems, neither of which I use in my professional or hobbyist life now.
Sailing over the event horizon
What I've never understood about Microsoft is why they don't have licenses that give people the opportunity to learn their product. In doing this they are shutting out a huge number of developers (not just students).
Whether you're in school or not, learning about developing in a Microsoft environment requires parting with some cash. Personally I'd love to have copies of Microsoft development tools just so I can learn about the technology, but I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars on a product just to try it out.
I'll pay media cost, but nothing more. Until they offer that I continue to use other tools and environments for "recreational development". I'd like to learn more about their technology, but they apparently don't want that to happen.
University CompSci programs have been turning out Unix people since Unix existed.
Just like has been happening for the last 20 years, some people will 'get' Unix, and find they can't work effectively without it. Some people won't.
*yawn*.
What ends up making the big difference will be if CS students who love their Linux (bless em) get into senior management positions in fortune 500 companies....
Oh, and this "If I made a great product, and Microsoft offered me a lot of money, I would spit in their faces," says Brett Slatkin, a student at Columbia University in New York. His colleagues roll their eyes and accuse him of being stuck at the "hippy stage."
Can anyone honestly say that if M$ offered them financial security for your work, you would really turn them down? Just think of all the good you could do with that money. That good is worth more than your silly M$ hate...
When I was a CS student back at college, I found that within the major, there was a small subset for which computers and programming were more than just a way to make money, and that these individuals were more knowledgeable of what was actually going on in the forefront of technology, not to mention the politics, news and "in" things of the computer field.
Whether or not they agreed with Microsoft, they at least were pretty up on the state of the industry.
The majority of students there, however, were only there because they'd heard that programming was a quick way to get a good paying job, and really were only "9 to 5" students in the field. They didn't care who or what license anything was written in, couldn't care less about what loss of rights were being discussed on Slashdot, nor even with anything other than getting drunk, and that fat paycheck they figured on when they got out.
Add to this the fact that, while expensive software on the outside world, Microsoft will give you their operating system, programming tools and office products for close to a song if you're a college student, and I'd say that the vast majority of the "average" CS student isn't any more clued in than the average home computer user.
A good computer science program will teach the student how to program, how to do things, but not just with a specific language or operating system. A good computer science program will teach the student how to learn, how to learn from books, how to use algorythms, not just how to use a specific programming language.
Where I went to college, it was primarilly taught in C++, but I went on to work with powerbuilder, and I was quite happy that what I was taught was not just one specific thing.
I think computer science students will end up using the language that is used by their employer with very few exceptions. Sure if they learn C++ or Java in college they may try for that kind of job but if the school is good then they should be able to quickly pick up any language out there.
My $.02 at least.
Ya, well that's why Microsoft gives schools, like Columbia, like 300 free copies of Visual Studio to give out to students.
Get them using it now!
I think the coding platform that real CS students use is largely irrelevant to what they go on to use in their jobs. If you are actually in a university (not a community college) learning computer science, chances are that you're learning mostly about algorithms, data structures and information theory, rather than memorizing how to use a specific language or environment.
True computer scientists have no trouble learning most new languages because the underlying fundamentals are the same. An algorithm is an algorithm is an algorithm, be it in C#, VB, Java or Perl.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
Comment removed based on user account deletion
WPA is there to make it impossible to keep using an OEM-version on a new computer and really forcing to upgrade.
And if somebody sais: "Yes, but the switching costs!" I reply: "... are the best reason to switch now, not later when switching costs are even higher"
Apple's a perfect example of this. Just because they got University's to buy a lot of boxes didn't make it ripe for students to learn on them.
I was starting college in 1985 and these hot new Macintoshs had just hit the computer lab. They were a dream compared to hacking away on the mainframe with it's handout's of push the PF75 key, blah blah blah. So as a budding young programmer I thought the Mac was the future. I wanted to learn to program it. They had an interpreted C on them that I used, but you really couldn't do much fancy with it. I wanted to go deeper. Turned out you had to buy about $1500 bucks worth of books, compilers and official Mac developer license to really get into the nuts and bolts.
I found a PC in the EE lab. It was wide open. Didn't really have windows, but a C compiler was cheap and the specifications for it were lying around all over the place. I could easily solder something together and have it communicate on the main bus. It didn't have all the expense and proprietary restrictions of the Mac. Had a built in assembly level debugger even. It was a hackers dream-- wide open and pokeable. It was not a great box, but it was cheap and available and easy to get internal information about.
Guess what I learned and pursued on into my career. Guess what type of hardware I'm typing from now. An Intel box that gained popularity along with Microsoft.
The tighter Bill squeezes his claws the more systems that will slip through his fingers. (to paraphrase the wisdom of Star Wars). He will fall the way of Apple.
You're right about a good CS department. A really good one doesn't even teach languages, it should stick to concepts. Languages are just a means to an end.
Shawn
P.S. I quickly got sick of MS boxes and went to work in UNIX. At least UNIX/Linux doesn't crash all the time.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
It may be somewhat true that CS students are being turned off by MS, but so what? For years, most CS programs have been teaching LISP and look how far that has made it in the commercial world. What really matters is what the MIS students are learning. Most of the MIS students I know at my school think Visual Basic rocks and barely know what Linux is. They think free software is the cracked software they can download off the dorm network for free. These are the people that are going to be put into positions to buy software for large companies in the future, and I don't see most of them adopting Linux anytime soon.
OUr CS department is kind of weird. We have not yet given up teaching COBOL and mainframe assembler, but yet we have almost no UNIX. It's MENTIONED in the OS classes, but no where have I seen a faculty member either use or talk about Linux. They are all Vis Studio stuff when they talk about PC stuff. They have nothing on PERL, Tcl/Tk or anything else. My hope is that will soon change as we are part way thru a conversion to AIX and ORACLE for the RDBMS(yeah not Linux, but at least it isn't Microsoft and SQL server.) Our first live module will go online in July and April 29th is when I start my training on AIX System Administration. Being we still have the mainframe, I am going to try to talk them into doing something with Linux on it. My imagination is we could make it possible to host student web servers (with full root access possible...if yer server get's rooted, then we pull the account or control it with VM! :) ). I dunno. Seems to me we can do something with that box since we do own it (so long as IBM service agreement does not go up alot). Anyway, what scares me is that I don't really want to reccomend our program as of yet because I am not sure in what direction it is going.
Gorkman
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it
.NET
Like all the UNIX clones?
and is now returning to a glass house model of central computing with terminals (dot net, anyone?).
you obviously don't understand
Had its moments of glory?! What about .NET? Even anti-MS linux friends are hailing MS giving them the ability to code across platforms with MS's latest intiatives. I am definitely not a big window's fan, but you cant deny that they dont stop developing in every area they can. They may be copying ideas and using tactics that I personally hate, but they have been the only reason that countless technology sectors have advanced or existed as long as they have. And with its PR it is the best company to bring any technology to Joe Q. Public, and make it viable.
Also, lets not forget that MS often employs the "If you can't beat 'em, make them a part of us". Ex.- SSP Solutions is coming out with the EDGE security suite, which has strong potential in the future, and MS is now working with them. With major technology advancements, you can expect MS to become a part of it, if not at least propeciate it. It even propeciates Linux by having a POS OS, but I guess thats unintentional.
Last time i checked all the MBA's and "execs" running the show are in lub with microsoft or sun.
Heck, linux doesn't offer free coffee cups, shirts or calling cards, so bosses don't want to bother.
Always that darn "Partner" thing.. Maybe if RedHat's bottom line grows a bit people want to say "In partnership with RedHat we have implemented Redhat linux 7.2 on two zillion pc's across the world".
It will take more then 2-3 companies to do this as well, but hopefully stuff like that will happen.
Maybe Suse and AMD's Hammer processor will do what "wintel" did 10 years ago.. that would be shweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet
I am surprised - the mere fact that this article appears on MSNBC.com (*) at all seems to lend weight to the idea that MSNBC isn't a Microsoft propaganda machine. Maybe now, years after their debut, I will begin to take their news seriously - which I can't quite say for either parent company.
Kudos.
(*) Yes, I realize that this article is from Newsweek, but MSNBC could have chosen not to reprint it.
News organizations, magazines, etc. shamelessly suck up to their readers, even more than they do their advertisers or owners. If MS-bashing is selling, that's what they produce. The bottom line is the bottom line. The big boss doesn't care what the little guy says about him, as long as he brings home the bacon.
A good analogy would be musicians and bands who have made careers out of being anti-corporate and anti-industry, while being backed by that same industry. Whatever sells...
- Portable bytecode
- A clean, pure OOP model (no hybrids)
- Formal standards down to data types
- Dynamic binding and static typing
- Standardized libraries
- Syntax-level multithreading
- Syntax-level exception handling
- Automatic doc generation
- Open source distribution
As An esteemed language professor once put it, "Java is the first mainstream language that language researchers aren't terribly embarassed about".All this from a language that's not even ten years old yet. And you're complaining?
you are missing the point as well. When they were in their prime WordPerfect and Novell both DID DOMINATE their respective markets. 10 years ago if you wanted a network it was Novell, that was it. Same for Word Processing, you wanted a graphical office suite here's WordPerfect. Microsoft pulled the same tactics that they did in the IE/Netscape battle with both of these products. Namely, build cheap fast 1st version that everyone hates, listen to complaints build better version, listen to more complaints build the 3rd version that might be usable, listen to more complaints, build 4th version that is comparable to competitor's, bundle with OS, take over the market (they didn't bundle Office, but networking yes). The reason they could do this is because you can't fight an attrition war with MS, they have too many resources. However, if developers leave them in the learch, and start working on Linux projects, then Linux/Unix will have the resources.
The reason Wordperfect and Novell died was because MS had the DEVELOPERS and now the DEVELOPERS are swinging away from MS because, well, for me (being a CS student, and feeling exactly as this article states "fed up with MS"), I can't afford to pay $1000 every 2 years to have the latest IDE, so I develop for Linux.
I attend one of the largest universities in the U.S. (and indeed the world) and over the past three years or so, Microsoft has been very busy blitzing our entire school and IEEE and ACM organizations with advertisements, promotions, donations, ... the whole hundred yards. So much of our computing tools (both software and *hardware*) are provided by them. ISOs for XP, Visual Studio, etc. are provided to all of our CS faculty and students freely. On the surface, this seems very good and positive, except that they have an ulterior and very selfish motive - to get the entire next generation our CS students hooked on their proprietary and frequently restrictive and intrusive products, and start developing for their platform thereby strenthening their stranglehold on the industry. Instead of these students to first be exposed and learn to use the openly specified, standardized and frequently free tools, and then later on moving onto any platforms they prefer, all they hear and learn about now is Microsoft (which was never the case until Microsoft became this rich and powerful). I hate to say it, but Microsoft sure knows what they need to do to maintain their monopoly, and they are doing it to the fullest. And the scheme is proving to be fruitful. Over the years (as those "donations" have come), I have seen our CS department in particular and our entire engineering college in general switch slowly but steadily from Unix boxes to PCs (even where we needed the power of the Unix workstations), from Unix to Windows (even where development was traditionally taught in Unix first, everything else later), from Linux PCs to Windows PCs (even though the former were free and simpler to implement and maintain in a multi-user development environment), from gcc to Visual C++ (simply because it has a nice interface and debugger, and MS provided it ->f-reely, the Freedom of gcc notwithstanding)... The list goes on and on. The prognosis, for my school anyway, seems bleak as we move more and more to "the dark side" and increasingly trap ourselves into a world where everything is proprietary, and we only promote the power of the most powerful global corporations at the expense of open, collaborative, community development.
The article is taking about how current Computer Science students are starting to dislike Microsoft. My question is, when did they start to like/use Microsoft? How many (good) CS Schools have labs of windows workstations and teach using MS tools? Most schools take pride in their facilities that are full of Suns or SGIs.
We here at Clarkson University, the place where two of the students won the recent linux challenge, there's a huge linux following. There's even a professor here whose sole job is basically heading the COSI (scroll down a ways)(clarkson open source institution).
I also remember talking to a grad student whose experience after an internship with microsoft was nothing less than "I would never work for them, and I will never again use their software" Now them's fightin' words, and the general feeling isn't quite that harsh, and windows still gets used to a large degree here, but that's mainly because there's nothing much to do at Clarkson other than play games.
So yes, the educated will turn to linux, that's really not that big a discovery. It's really always been this way. Just don't think for a second that Micro$oft will be going out of business just yet. Not until a truly idiot-user friendly Linux version comes out will a conversion of the home PC market come about. Granted, that's not a very large discovery itself, but that's the whole point. This article isn't that groundbreaking.
That's all good. You still have to have a legal copy of Windows XX to test your product. Money is still changed hands, just at different points in time.
No money is required to develop for the open community. Period. That difference is important.
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
I attend a University with an exceptionally good software engineering program. By the curriculum, we are REQUIRED to learn how to develope for both Windows and UNIX systems, along with the cross-platform Java. Approximately equal amounts of time are spent on each, using C, C++, Java, some Asm and even some Maple, along with the standard web languages. Any school that tries to teach development for only one platform (that includes a Linux-only curriculum) or language is shortchanging the students. In the ever-changing world of technology, you can't afford to be a stickler about what platforms you will or can program on. The vast majority of CS students will be employed by a company when they graduate -- not doing self-employed work. This means that you program on whatever platform your employer tells you to program on, and if you can't or won't, you won't be able to keep your job for very long.
-James
When I was in college, MS gave out 500 free, full copies of Visual Studio 6, in an attempt to get the CS students hooked on it.
What happened?? The kids who really knew nothing about computers, and had never programmed before, they used it. But the kids who all knew programming, etc., before joining the CS program, which was about 65% or so, they all sold their copies on Ebay. (This was before MS started shutting down ebay auctions of their software) If they needed to use the software, they would just burn a copy of the lab's install discs. I mean, it was just C++ code, you don't need Visual Studio to compile that!
So, in the end, MS's plan didn't totally work. Hell, half the kids in the CS program weren't running Windows anyway.
> Linux apps are a great place to see howto write
> things, and what good coding style looks like.
Good coding style? Have you actually read some of these applications? I am not going to point out any applications but there are a good number of them that I read through that look like a 12 year old had more time than actual programming experience. I admit, not all programs are like this, and some are an actual joy to read (most of the linux kernel). I am just saying.
--If I said something interesting it probably wasn't correct
Is it just me, or does this smack of a company that really, really, wants to protect its future interests?
It is just me, or does this smack of a company that really, really wants to buy its future customers?
Sure, on the surface it's a "nice thing to do", but doesn't it make you wonder where all of that money comes from? If MS wasn't interested in "world domination", how much cheaper would their software be for everyone, and not just students? It makes me a little sick to think about that.
----- rL
I don't know what rock you've been under, but Java does deliver - on the server. It's not a great idea for client apps, but it's really easy to write Java apps and shove them on a server. With cheap Linux boxes running the Jvms and a fast box running the database, it's a clear winner.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I called up Microsoft, was incredibly rude to the person on the phone.
Congratulations, you pissed on some guy in a call center who's making $8-10/hr. Not only that, but you have had zero effect on the actual problem.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
NOT....
I have an autopc.. I wanted to learn a bit about it...
buy VC++ 6.0 Professional $1300.00
buy the Windows CE dev kit $600.00
download the "free" autopc dev kit.
and everyone stands around wondering why the autopc specification that microsoft touted as world changing died a horrible miserable death. because the large bulk of developers out there cant afford $1900.00 to mess with it.
Microsoft tempts you with freebies, that require expensive add-on's or require the "professional" version of the dev studio and will not work with the regular or educational versions intentionally (it's programmed in! it doesn't need professional for the dev kit but the buttwipe programmers locked it to check every time.)
Sorry, if MS wants people to embrace their ideas.. make it FREE or cheap for me to get into it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I guess my best response to this is to say how I lost faith in MS.
I started programming at an extremely young age. I was around 7 when I first started with LOGO and was programming for long periods of time in BASICA when I was around 12.
As I got older (and learned more math) I started getting very interested in more complex languages (namely C). This was before C++ was really out there. I was very lucky because I had a computer that ran Windows but Basic wouldn't let me take that next step to do real Windows programming.
I wasn't able to write C in Windows because at the time, the only option would have been to buy the MS compiler for like $500 ($200 for students though). Now, I had a hard enough time explaining to my parents why I was spending so much time on a computer without trying to explain why I needed $200 dollars for a 'compiler'.
So I started using Linux, and today, I have a deep hatred towards Microsoft. There is no reason why they have to charge $200 for a compiler for students. Had they been more open or offered reasonably priced products, I would be a Windows programmer today.
It's funny that Balmer screams 'Developers, Developers' because what he should be saying is 'Corporate developers, Corporate developers'. I truly believe MS has lost the CS youth with their expensive products and their predatory practices. That is why I believe in 10 years, MS will not hold the position they hold today.
I know I'm not about to forget why I left Windows and I'm sure most other folks out there aren't either.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Is it just me, or hasen't anybody else started thinking about how Microsoft's customer's money is wasted on marketing and promotion that don't make the product any better?
Maybe, just maybe there is a much more efficient way to develop software.
... doesn't mean you shouldn't learn it.
Regarding topics addressed in the parent post:
1. Yes, Microsoft products are made such that easy tasks are simple, yet complicated setups are still complicated. They put a lot of money into making things generally easy for most people, and although I don't always agree with their choices, I find myself "up and running" quickly with any Windows OS. Mac systems I find to be similarly easy, but more restrictive at times. Unix-based systems... well, it takes a while longer and a lot more effort to get baseline functionality in place. And if you don't know what you're doing, the learning curve is huge and you go through a lot of frustration. Anything requiring reading more than two paragraphs of documentation to get working is harder than what I'm typically used to.
That said, when you're trying to set up complex networks and complicated hardware setups, Windows can be as painful as Unix. But I don't blame them for making a "network wizard" - the target audience is too small, too smart, and needs too much flexibility for MS to really attack those kind of things like they did with simple dial-up networking or playing music files on a typical sound setup. Also, because they left most of the flexibility there, I have as many options as I can afford or comprehend. It's up to 3rd party vendors (software and hardware) to make their own products easy to use, flexible, powerful, cheap, etc. (Whatever market they're targeting)
2. Back to the main topic of CS and MSFT - I agree with the concept of "it's present, real, and you will run into it in the field".
I find it to be irritating when CS departments want to stick to Unix-only programming, just because there's a wide variety of systems out there that students may run into. I went through 4 years of college and, because I never got involved in any non-school projects (I had many problems with staying in-focus with school assignments and had to put extra time into that), I NEVER did a single CS assignment on anything but Solaris. This is just as bad as doing everything in Visual Studio... it's one company's product with one company's vision of how things should be. I may have learned many general concepts, but I won't know for a while just how much of what I learned was tied down to that particular OS or the specific products we used on our systems.
Furthermore, a lot can be said of practical programming experience... and I believe that flexibilty and adaptability among computer systems is as desirable a concept to learn in CS as are program organization and programming paradigms. Yes, we don't want to teach a generation how just to use MS products because they're 90% of the market... but we don't want them to learn only Java, only Scheme, etc...
As it turns out, there are universities out there that don't stick to only MS products for teaching, and that's good. However, many of these same universities are sticking only to teaching on one of the other systems available, and that's a very bad thing. You could say at least one thing about sticking to MS products: it may not be a good teaching philosophy in general, but if you're going to be stubborn and political, sticking with 80-90% of what's used out there is better than sticking with something that's only 5%.
Yeah, Redhat doesn't have more money than God like certain companies that many of us like to think have sold their souls to satan.... myself excluded of course. I hate microsoft, but only because their software doesn't speak to me. Its not how I think, unix is how I think. If that lets me join a group of fanatics and throw pies at Bill in funny Java games online, hey hey! Cool!
:-/
Okay, that was sarcastic, but anyways, my point is, Microsoft has enough cash to send peo0ple to campuses and throw party style presentations, and whoo all the money seeking college students. They do it here at BGSU as well. All my friends want to work for Microsoft, and why not? They pay good, they give out free stuff at every ACM meeting here, and they potray themselves as being as close to a party in the workplace as a company can get........ they even call their HQ a "campus." Makes me think of beer and horny girls..... well, maybe not you, all my friends at CWRU complain about the lack of women, heh.
Red Hat, does not havethat kind of cash. They have more important things to worry about..... like posting a profit
Then, there is me, who doesn't like working with MS software so much that I politely declined an interview offer from Microsoft a few months ago, and started my own company that uses no MS software at all..... Just to minimize my exposure to it in the workplace.
Every man may have his price, and mine is, I gotta be happy in my job. I cannot be happy using VC++ and Windows 2000.
Okay, mod this down.... but it was one college students take on MS. Bussiness practices.... they do bother me..... the fact that their software is just really bad, that drives me nutty.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Maybe all that marketing backfires sometimes: people become so saturated that they feel the need to try something new. Of course, I could just have weird friends.
I'm an Australian CS tutor (I believe Americans call us "T/As"). I have a couple of points:
.NET). It seems to me that APIs come and go, and this year's .NET specialist will be next year's dole recipient if s/he isn't willing and able to retrain to the next fashionable package. As a University, my institution is offering training as a background to a lifetime of employment. We're trying to give you the tools with which you can re-educate yourself: flexibility, critical thinking, logic, and a sound understanding of the basics. You won't come out of one of *my* prac classes without knowing what a "core dump" is for!
1) When my students grizzle that we're teaching them C and MIPS R2000 assembler instead of Java and Pentium assembler, I point out to them that in my first year, 1986, I learned interpreted Pascal and VAX Macro. Where would I be if I'd refused to learn anything apart from what I did at Uni? Unemployable, that's where. Current vendors would like you to think that their products are the final phase of computer technology and will never be outdated. This is, of course, horseshit. If you graduate with a BCompSci and manage to make a professional programmer of yourself, you'll be retraining yourself every couple of years.
2) A related point: people who get most of their computer knowledge from the back of PC Week or similar publications will get the impression that programmers need to know some API or another, and will jump to the conclusion that universities should teach an API (such as
3) Recently, the IT Support department at my university tried to make MS Visual C++ the standard C compiler in our PC labs. The first-year lecturers overrode them: we're currently using Borland C++ for those first-years who choose not to use Linux/GCC (first-year pracs can be done under the OS of their choice, but we enforce linux for subsequent years). The key reason for Borland over Microsoft in this case is that students can fetch a compatible C compiler that they can use at home from borland.com, for free. Not cheap. Free. As in beer. Oh yeah, and when you go to tell me how cheap the academic versions of things are, please remember that the Australian dollar is worth bugger-all at the moment, so it's going to be twice as many of our dollars...
It is a woman's prerogative to change other people's minds.
The article isn't deep or flawless, but hits on a major point: what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do.
During my CS study, the only OS that was appropriate to talk about was Unix. Mentioning Microsoft during classes was forbidden, the only exception was when you wanted to show how great Unix was. (ok, it was back in the early '90 so MS wasn't that big then).
Nowadays I don't touch Unix at all. And probably never will again in the future if the win32/.NET platforms keep on getting better plus the tools keep on getting better.
The reason for this is not that the University was crap or anything, the point about the CS study is that you learn basic things about just that, CS. Not connected to a language, an OS, a certain editor or whatever. Students of today probably all learn Java in the 'OO programming' classes. Will they all keep on developing in Java after they're graduated? I don't think so.
If a student truely did understand what was taught and what was important, he/she will choose the right tool for the job.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
PASCALL was the leading choice of language at university, and for good reason. Back when it was the leading teaching language, it was the most structured language around and forced good programming techniques. University education is to teach about the theory and good practice, not (hopefully) to tie you down to one system or language.
Now I suspect Universities use Java (and just maybe C++ for the sdame reason)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Drug dealers hook kids on drugs by giving out free samples. This works because kids are gullible and want to be cool.
.NET server to best utilize the product. And they will have to convert their backend to SQL server for single sign-on to work. And they will have to use ISA server to actually attempt to secure the web servers...and they are hooked.
M$ can play this same game to increase their userbase but they are giving the candy away to the wrong crowd. CS students are the equivalent of the new "Just say no" generation of kids. They know the dangers of coding in Windows and will not subject themselves to the frequent crashes and eventual blue screens.
If M$ was smart they would move from the campus playgrounds to the hangouts of middle managers. Now here is a gullible bunch. With promises of increased productivity, outstanding support, and the salespitch of complete integration of eCommerce from online ordering to delivery status this group of backstabbing overachievers will try anything.
Of course it they will have to authorize the purchase of the new
Greed rules the minds of considerably more young college-grads than does Ethics/Principle...every man have his price, and Microsoft can always raise the dollar bar a bit higher.
And before you go preaching again about principles and love of CS/code/open source/etc, remember what the majority of people are like, and respect the power of the almighty dollar.
And for the record, I know _multiple_ CS grads who acknowledge that Microsoft is evil, produces inferior software, and should be done away with, and still WORK (or intern) for the company.
Magius_AR