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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.
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
While the article brings up an interesting point, most of my friends who are still in college actually aren't interested in Microsoft for a different reason. As bright, motivated, hard working people, they see Microsoft as a place that has had its moment of glory in the sun; true growth will spring from other, more innovative companies with new ideas. While Microsoft guarentees plenty of money, I see CS people as wanting to be with the next big thing, not the last big thing. I'm not in CS, but if I were, I wouldn't want to be a Microserf either.
Wow! Programmers are working on a new program called KDE which will be released this spring! That's what the article says. I can't wait to try it out.
Maybe by next year they'll report on the 2000 USA elections.
I just reloaded my home PC this weekend. Replaced a slowly dying Pentium II with a newer AMD box, which required reinstalling everything on the new box.
Everything went fine until I got to Outlook 2002, which won't accept my serial number (since it's "registered to another computer" - no kidding. That box is headed towards the dumpster).
Apparently my only choice (besides tossing the piece of junk software out with the old PC) is to call microsoft and try to get it re-registered through that process. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to get me to buy a new copy since the old one was tied to that processor.
Microsoft, you sure are making it easy to break up with you...
*scoove*
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
1st-As much fun as it is paying a few hundred dollars (including student discount) for a 'stable 'operation system, let alone development tools, its better, and cheaper, to get them for free.
2nd- As a student, it is better to open up some code under the GPL and see how you can implement things, rather than see the application run. Linux apps are a great place to see howto write things, and what good coding style looks like.
3rd- The university that I goto only uses windows for the public labs, duh, and the first year CS labs. Second year uses a combination of NetBSD and solaris boxes.( Gnome and KDE are being looked at).
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.
Of all the things I pick on my school for they do approach this debate a bit more maturely.
We start off learning Perl, C++, C, various data structures ideas, algorithms, etc..
All using MSVC. But they also dedicate portions of the course to learning Linux, QNX and how to develop applications on those platforms.
The goal is to appreciate both sides of the OS wars.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Since then, I have learned patience, and am getting increasingly fed-up with MS.
This is why I think the baby-CS folks will go with open source: MS doesn't document well, and they don't follow guidelines.
I thought VB was pretty OK, till I started developing with PHP and realized that a language (even though it is just a scripting language) can actually work exactly how the documenatation says it should. And besides that, the documentation is searchable, and organized gasp.
I am about ready to dump Windows for good, just because I like PHP/mySQL way better than anything MS can throw together (read: ASP).
To summarize, I think CS folks goto Linux 'cause it is written with functionality, not profitability, in mind.
I'm a freshman at a major Virginia university and have taken Computer Science I, aka the CS class for people who are computer science or computer engineers. in it, you're basically taught straight C++ programming.
anyway, the professors, on the whole, strongly dislike Microsoft Visual C++ and let that be known...it's not as standard as other compilers on basic issues that get beginning C++ students and that can cause a lot of problems/frustration. we're encouraged instead to use the cxx or g++ compliers on the school's computer system, g++ if we have Linux, or another freeware compiler for those with Windows.
among the students though, a lot of them use Visual C++...they either have it because they got it free (pirated or their work has it), cheap (student discounts) or just went out and bought it because they thought they'd need a complier, knew nothing about compilers, and recognized the name Microsoft. And a lot of them continue using it, even on projects where the professors *strongly* encourage other compilers and give instruction on how to use those compilers.
so, I don't know. at least at my college, just because the students are being taught one compiler in class, does not mean that that's what they're using outside of class, unless forced to...
Of course, having generations of CS students hating Microsoft will only help Linux. However, Microsoft will not topple automatically over time.
At Oberlin, I helped install Linux & BSD on all of our lab machines, and with a friend founded the our (still active) Oberlin Linux User's Group. But living in NY, I have seen the worth of C++, Linux System Administration and Perl skills go down while my friends who can hack Java and VB are always in demand. The moral - as harsh as it seems - is that students who learn Linux in college will probably just have to learn Microsoft later.
That MS has dumbed down their software to the point that you realy need very little learning to be able to be very effective with it. with Unix, you need to more time and resources. If you are able to learn how to admin using Unix, you can then pick up a book on win 2k and learn what you need from it to be able to admin a windows network. you make better use of your resources in the University if you spend it learning Unix than if you spent it learning somthing that a book and 3 months on the job caouls teach you.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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*.
here at CWRU, microsoft showers us with donations of hardware for the labs, and software and books for the students. as well as contests, events, and has been incredibly helpful for our branch of the ACM. as for documentation, free copies of MSDN and all the microsoft press books you could ever want go a long way. A large chunk of the Comp Sci's even intern out there. myself included. I started out loving unix, but the dot-com crash and the shady recruiting of some more linuxy corps made me shift more toward MSFT.
you dont see redhat coming by and pitching woo.
I am a senior CS major, and I can tell you for sure that MS's high prices, "rights management" techniques, unethical business practices, and buggy ass software has hurt them. My senior seminar class has been talking about this phenomina. In my class there is a large 'anti-microsoft' sentiment not only among students, but among professors.
This is not only true for the seniors, but a majorirty of the students in my CS classes stay away from MS products as much as a matter of principle, but also because they are not nearly as secure as other alternatives. In an upper level adminstration course we are taught to never use IIS, or ASP on any part of a network that will touch the outside world in anyway. Most projects I'm hearing about are involving Linux, BeOS, Solaris, Java, and JSP.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but if my college is any indication of how things are, MS products may be on the way out in many academic circles, and losing ground in the commercial world as current CS majors graduate, and start getting into decision making areas.
here at Stanford, we have the GATES COMPUTER SCIENCE building. The rumor is he entered the discussion with "what isthe absolute minimum I have to give to get my name on the building" -- and proceeded to negotiate his donation down.
none of the people in the gates building use MS stuff, as far as I can tell.
they also seem to have some primitive screenshots of this here.
I mean really, what civilised person would have their desktop like this rather than this.
0xC3
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.
"What students learn in school is key to what they go on to do."
I hate to break a bad bubble, but this isn't really true. This is more true of engineers than it is Liberal Arts majors, but even so, it isn't a great rule of thumb. Most kids go to college and get "educated", not neccessary trained to participate in a trade.
That's a big misconception. People view college as trade school, and it isn't. Most International Relations Majors don't go on to do things involving international relations; most history majors don't go on to do things involving history.
Granted, a lot of Computer Science majors go on to do computer science stuff, but tons of them go on to the business world as well.
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 $.02 at least.
Sure students are going to be turned off by M$ actions. I'll bet a high percentage of them are turned off already just because M$ has already happened. Why work on the established order when you can be working on something new?
Getting back to the schools, I see a different problem. Working on M$ stuff brings dollars to the school. OSS projects don't.
So I say the students will become interested only to find that the school is not...
Blogging because I can...
and here I am, working as a computer technician.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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
[Microsoft's software] has some advantages: it is generally more consistent in quality ..
Yes, I suppose if there is one thing you can say about Microsoft's software, it's that the level of quality has been quite consistent.
Students will pretty much do what their teachers tell them. I don't know about your side of the atlantic, but over here that is mostly Java these days - though I heard that the EE department at my university collectivly switched to .NET already.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
That MS has dumbed down their software to the point that you realy need very little learning to be able to be very effective with it
We are talking about Computer Science students. These are people who are learning programming, not system administration or use of business applications. So your point doesn't really apply. Programming on the Windows platform is different in the details to programming on other platforms but is not significantly easier.
Using (for example) Visual Studio as your IDE is just as challenging as using development tools on Linux/Mac OS/whatever and you will learn just as much about programming principles.
Sailing over the event horizon
That's one of the reasons they've introduced their 'Student Consultant' program in Europe (and I believe in the States). Microsoft are aware that students often have very strong opinions about Linux and Microsoft, and have been trying to forge a relationship with students to improve matters.
:)
:)
So two years ago a lecturer I knew at my university in England put me forward for a student consultantship. Microsoft were taking between one and four students from the best Comp. Sci. universities in Britain. I got a reasonable sum of (tax-free) money, a laptop, an Aero PocketPC (the precursor to the Ipaq, which I have also received), a couple year's MSDN subscription, and trips to TechEd '00 and '01 in Amsterdam and Barcelona. In return I was to do some research vaguely involving Microsoft technologies over my summer break. It was a pretty sweet deal, and I'm typing this from my free laptop
Microsoft have also pushed the 'Academic Alliance', which serves to give Comp. Sci. students at various universities free copies of practically every bit of Microsoft software (they exclude Office) in return for the University handing over a nominal fee. There have also been various deals regarding free games for completed Web Services, and such like.
Of course, in an ideal world, students will leave university with a completely objective viewpoint, ready to pick the software that best fits their (and their company's) needs with respect to price, performance, stability, features etc. Most CS students I know don't really care about the software they use - this reflects the fact that CS degrees should have very little software-specific content. However, there are always a vocal few who are pro- or anti- this or that. They're kinda boring
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
Thanks to the incredible blunder of licensing the source code from Sun, Microsoft can never make a compatible version of Java 1.2 or higher. I predict that C# will never be able to overcome Java's head start as far as being the common programming language for CS. Java will dominate the CS curriculum for at least two decades--possibly forever.
It is not Linux that will contain MS's expansion to the enterprise, it is Java. Java is the language of interconnection, and it is interconnection that is the major computer project of our time. Sun's firm grip on its copyrights and trademarks for Java are a far more effective barrier against Microsoft than any antitrust judgment could have been. It is Java that has united everyone from Oracle to IBM to Sun against Microsoft. The line has been held. With everyone against them I see Microsoft making little further headway despite .Net.
KDE 3 will be out this spring! Although KDE 1 and 2 are out, they should probably be ignored just like Windows before version 3, Internet Explorer before version 4, and so on. Hasn't Microsoft taught us that the first versions of any software are completely useless? That people who try them are just dooming themselves to expensive retraining and conversions when the interfaces and file formats all get switched around? Clearly this "KDE" thing must just be starting to work out the bugs, if they're not even at version 3 yet.
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"
If you ask me GNU Applications and a few other programs are the killer apps for GNU/Linux as a CS student.
1. GCC, Binutils, Emacs/Vim (General Hacking)
2. Mesa (Graphics)
3. Bison/Flex (Compilers)
4. Linux (Operating Systems)
5. Various Packet Analyizers (Networking/Security)
5. MySQL/Postgres (Databases)
The only non opensource application I use is Mathematica, but Wolfram provides student discouts and packages such as Combinatorica are opensource.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
The part of the article that I find most insteresting is the discussion on Linux in Europe. I am sure that most of us have read some of the articles where Germany and other countries have openly denouced MS, and Sun for that matter, for the backdoors that are [most likely] in it, but that they actually followed through is interesting. With Germany being the economic powerhouse of the EU this trend will only spread to the other member countries.
Why I find this interesting is the potential shift in the computer world. The US may not see Linux on the desktop in the near future but perhaps in Europe, Russia, and China we may. With strong economic powers outside the US using operating systems that are MS incompatable this may force a change in MS practices with regard to other products, perhaps the selling of compatable versions of MS products within those countries (and making it illigal to use such copies in the US, ahh locale).
As for the CS students in the Colleges in the US not wanting to use MS products. Something tells me that economics will win in the end.
Disclamer-Opinion of Person
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
MS is hosting an event here at Miami University (Ohio) in conjucntion with the CS department to celebrate the rollout of Visual Studio .NET tomorrow. "All attendees will receive the full version of Visual Studio .NET Academic, a full version of Windows XP Professional, and other valuable items. Join us for an overview of the .NET Framework and a live demonstration of Visual Studio .NET." That's about $1700 (retail) of software that they're giving away. My suitemate and I are both Linux junkies, but we're both going for the software and out of curiosity. They giving out free food & even have a band scheduled to play. The notice is on MS's website here. They're also giving away an Xbox, Microsoft Press Books, $500 American Express Gift Certificates, MP3 Players, "and more!" MS is definetly pulling out all of the stops to try and hook the next generation (big surprise). I'm interested to see how it will go...
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. A good CS curriculum would cover how the microcomputer world has repeated the same mistakes made in computing forty years ago, and is now returning to a glass house model of central computing with terminals (dot net, anyone?).
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
The Linux vs. Microsoft debate is far from over. As a student in England, I have noticed that the current batch of University students who do CS, are split into two camps. As mentioned in the article, many programmers and those who wish to become serious computer professionals, are horrified with current events surrounding the Beast at Redmond. Not only do they recognise the disadvantages of MS products and ethos, they see how linux can be useful to all kinds of users, due to its highy configurable and open nature, as well as its free cost and massive support network.
But the honest truth is that this is only a small proportion of the Computer Science population. Many more casual students: the type of students more suited to simple application programming as well as web design, hate Linux with a passion. Any truly honest computer enthusiast or porfessional knows that for simple functionality, MS Windows cannot be beat. No matter how much we hark on about Bill Gates being the anti-christ and Microsoft as some form of cult, ordinairy users find using Windows relatively painless. [Excluding crashes, inefficiencies, dubious business tactics and annoying paper clips] This goes for students who simply don't care that much about programming and the basics behind computing theory, but are more interested in application of knowledge gained, in the real world.
The whole IT market has grown so large, that many people who come into it looking for work, merely do so for the money. There are many students on my course with a shockingly low level of computer knowledge. These students have no deep interest in computing. They want quick, simple and easy tools computing tools that will allow them to get good jobs doing precious little. These people do not want to be on the forfront of technology, they merely want to ride the wave and let it take them wherever. These people may keep Microsoft alive because they don't care enough about the direction the IT industry is heading to realise what is happening. Until the Linux community tries to beat Microsoft at its own game by making a simple and easy packaging of the OS, that requires little computer knowledge to setup and maintain as well as having the kind of applications that they are used to, Microsoft will maintain its monopoly in the home, workplace and to some extents, academia.
MS is going to start pusing .NET tomorrow - BIG TIME.
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.
Even if CS students switch from Microsoft, they'll learn that there's more money to be made by selling stuff for Windows rather than OSX or Linux, and the majority of people without CS degrees will stick with windows.
But I digress.
My nephew is at that stellar CS institution in the middle of cornfields, the University of Illinois. And he's still a Microsoft zealot, and no amount of articles that I send him about MS shenanigans can dissuade him from the ideal that MS is the way to go professionally. No matter that it crashes on his computer -- that's supposed to happen, right? -- or that there's all sorts of ways (and more daily) to compromise a MS system.
But a little perserverence is starting to wear him down. He's actually thinking of putting a distro on another partition to see what all the fuss is about. There's hope yet.
On the other hand, with the market the way it is, especially in Austin, perhaps I should tell him to stick with MS so he won't be competition when he gets out of college. It's pretty bad here when a buddy of mine with 20+ years has to settle for entry-level wages in a contract job after getting laid off.
So, uh, yeah, Microsoft is a good thing to have on your resume, college kids.
Is this thing on? Hello?
Actually many Microsoft development tools are available for free download or can be shipped on CD for the little more than the price of shipping and handling. These include
- Microsoft
.NET Framework SDK
- Handheld PC SDK
- Direct X 8.1 SDK
- Microsoft Passport SDK
- Microsoft Speech SDK
- Windows Media Player 7.1 SDK
- Microsoft Agent SDK
I also know that one can download the data access SDK to allow development of ODBC and ADO apps but don't have a link handy. Anyway my point is that Microsoft does allow developer's to learn about their platform without requiring them to part with some cash. However some of these SDKs do require Visual C++ which is priced academically starting at $44.95Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft employee but this post is not being made in any official capacity nor does it reflect the wishes, intentions, strategies or opinions of my employer.
Its for this reason that M$ has "buddied" with some universities (like UT Austin), where they sell full blown professional copies (not educational or home versions) of their software at $5 a cd...
I'm only paranoid because everyone is against me...
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
I've always loved computers, and know that programming and working with them is what I'd like to do. But as this has come closer to being true (because I'm in college now, as opposed to the 7th grade), I have become extreemly disenfranchised with MS. MS was a company that I had always wanted to work for, (or Nintendo) because they make computer products, they do all sorts of cool stuff, and they are based in Seattle, Washington (MAJOR plus for me, used to live there, loved it).
But as I've gotten older, my oppinion has changed. I'm not sure if this is mostly my maturing, reading more news about the computer industry, or a multi-fold increase in the evilness of Microsoft. At this point in my life, I really don't want to work for Microsoft. As it stands (at least from my point of view) is that their products are getting bigger (bloated), buggier, slower, and more expensive. The biggest problem for me is the new features. They seem to keep adding this that are either useless or worse.
Let's review a quick list of "features" as I see them in recent products:
Now don't get me wrong, MS has done some great things too. DirectX started out life very patheticaly, but has really become an excelent API. MS made it so my soundcard doesn't have to be a Sound Blaster, become we all know that in the dos days "compatible" meant "good luck getting your games to work". The only mice and keyboards I have are ALL made by Microsoft, becase they are the most comfortable, and I know there will not be any compatibility problems (although I'm sure that that is rare with keyboards and mice).
The other big thing that has happened to me to change my oppion is Linux. I'm sorry but I just don't see how anyone who is in the CS field can look at Linux and not be inspired. Linus wanted to make his own operating system, and he wanted to it be good. He wanted it free, and now we have Linux. It's free, you can see how it works, and it runs great on hardware that's more than 6 months old. Yes, Linux has some serious problems from the desktop standpoint (we can argue this later), but it's getting there. This has made Linux VERY attractive to me, while MS just seems to sit there saying "I know what you need, it's my newest $100 upgrade that won't change a thing." Of course, what this really means is "don't like the bugs? Too bad! Pony up or suffer!"
It is for these reasons and many more that I have begun to dislike MS. They hold the computer world in the palm of their hands, and so they are squeezing money out of us. Yes, Office is a great program and they should charge a premium for it, but $600 for a full version? $250 for an upgrade? $100 for a full copy of Word? That's ludicrous.
In summation, I don't really want to work for MS anymore. I still like Nintendo, but I think it would also be fun to be at iD and some other companies. I can't think of anyone I've met at my school who don't use Linux, or at least have a grudge against MS. With Microsoft going the way it is, I really don't see how CS students could see them any other way. At this point I'd like to say thanks for listening to my rantings. They are my opinions and once again, I know that I can't spell. I'd copy and paste this into Word to be spell checked, but I don't feel like waiting a full minute for it to open on my 1 ghz laptop that has 512mb of RAM. Also, in reality I'm a CoE student, because I like the harware side too. I used to want to be CS, and I can't help but wonder if I've moved towards CoE in part because of how my feelings of MS have changed.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
All CS majors at my university worked on a Mac II's running A/UX. We also worked under MacOS (version 6.something at the time). Later classes worked with Amigas, the NT, then PCs running both NT and FreeBSD then PCs running Win2K and various flavors of Linux.
I've not used A/UX since I graduated and moved on from MacOS a few years later.
What did this teach me and all those in the program since then? Use the right OS for the job. Maybe it's commercial maybe not, maybe it's made by Microsoft, maybe not.
You know what? I agree with this. I know many protest this fact, but I LIKE messing with the metal. I liked the DOS days when I could change just about everything and had to mess with obscure and confusing config files. But also, to me seeing AOL commercials on TV just reminds me of what I see happening to the Wintel market: it's getting dumbed down to the point where any IDIOT gets a computer, uses it wrong, and then complains to me to fix their computer because pressing "print" doesn't print when then don't have a printer. What we need are computer licenses, sorta like amature radio has.
Michael Cook (MBCOOK) - Going AC to save my Karma
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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
Those 6 little letters (which stands for MS Development Network Academic Alliance) have become quite popular in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments at my school. They offer: - Visual Studio - .NET Enterprise Servers
- All Microsoft operating systems, SDKs, DDKs
- Betas, new releases, updates
- Visio Professional
- MSDN Library (Documentation, technical articles, code samples)
etc. etc.
It's a lot of software, and it's all free. This just happened maybe a month ago, and the software "library" has been close to checked out of the popular software ever since. Everyone knows it's an obvious ploy to get students dependent on MS software, but a good majority don't care - we're going to need to know it for industry, we can use Linux in our spare time. But it's expensive in the real world, we get it for free, why not?
Yes, Microsoft is evil. But free. That's life, eh?
None of this matters anyway. WHEN (notice I didn't say if) the SSSCA passes, all Operating Systems besides Windows XP and Apples OS X (MS will give them a license so as not to appear as a monopoly) will be illegal, because Microsoft owns the patent on the idea of a DRM Operating Systsem, the government mandated anti-copying technology will be a closed standard and reverse engineering it will be illegal under the DMCA.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
MSDE is basically SQL 7.0 with a few switches thrown so that it can't have DB's bigger than 2 Gig or more than 5 Concurrent users. Even installs on 98.
i ns /msde/
It's completely free and all of the SQL Server management tools (Enterprise Manager) work with it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/add
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Oops, that wasn't AC. He he he. Be nice guys.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'm currently working as a PhD student at my university. We are doing parallel computation projects inside the BioMedical Engineering faculty (involves simulations of heart, bone, molecular simulations and gene analysis). All of our students (we attract CS and BioMedical Engineering students) have to use (mostly) Linux on their projects, since, in our opinion, *n?x platforms offer the best opportunities for scientific work.
This involves experimentation (especially in our case, since we are doing parallel computations on beowulf clusters), result analysis and report/paper writing.
But the student's work is not only limited to working in a *n?x environment, we also ask them to write clean code, so we can bring their code and work back into the open source community, giving their projects an even better boost.
I couldn't imagine students working on scientific projects in our department without *n?x based platforms.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
But now Apple seems to have learned their lesson.
All of the dev tools for OS X are free for the asking, as is the documentation. And ProjectBuilder and Interface builder are good tools, too.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has gotten greeder, charging upwards of $1500 for Visual Studio, which is your only choice now. That's a far cry from $99 for Visual Basic 1.0 or Visual C++ 1.0.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
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?
C# throws Java's security model out the door by having backwards compatibility to C++ and C where you do manual memory allocation also.
Got friends?
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.
I'm not a CS major, but a EE major who has a work-study job with the computer center. Here are some of my observations:
1. Many students prefer the Sun boxes to the NT boxes, especially in the ME program. The CAD software they use is availible both on the NT machines and on the Sun machines. The main reason for the Sun preferece is that the software (and underlying OS) is much more stable. It was not uncommon in my ME-101 CAD class to lose hours of work when the software crashed and corrupted the file.
2. There are two things that keep a windows partition on my machine: Games and the ability to open word/excel/matlab documents distributed by professors and project groups. (I won't touch AIM with a 10 foot pole, but the lack of a decent AIM client has been mentioned by some other students as a reason why they keep windows around.
3. Some of the techinical staff seem to have become very frusterated with Microsoft's tatics, licensing, and upgrade cycle. When asked a while ago why we didn't have Office 2000 in the labs, one administrator clearly stated that they would not pay Microsoft repeatedly for the same product; without any new and useful features in the latest MS offerings, there is no reason to upgrade.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
I am not a developer, but I do get lost when it comes to the windows registry... seems like there's stuff in there you're not supposed to know about.
/etc directory, seems to spell everything out in plain text.
Linux, however, with the
Given nothing but a Copy of WindowsXP ($200) and a copy of Mandrake Linux(Free, or $30 with a nice book), it would seem to me that the ability to "look under the hood" on the Linux box would win lots of curious students over.
Add to that the lack of License restrictions, and the multiplatform nature of Linux, (MAC X86..and almost everything else) and MS Windows starts to look like a ball and chain.
MS does have the installed user base, but I'm confident that will not be an advantage for much longer.
and after all that _THEN_ there is the cost, before I found Linux I thought I wanted to be a MCSE, I got some books, and quickly learned that I'd need to purchase several different MS operating systems in order to follow the labs in the book. By contrast, I can learn how to administer Apache servers for FREE. I've not run an MS OS since, What a RipOff.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
I attend Texas A&M University and in our courses that use C/++, we use Visual C++. The lab machines have Borland and the Unix machines have gcc, but the reason VC++ is used is the professors can get copies of Visual Studio for free for every student.
In addition to this, our school is in negotiations w/ MS to bring a licenseing plan to A&M to make copies of all MS OS's and Office to students for about $5 per copy. A plan like this is already in the works at U of Texas.
It's hard to get away from it when its getting shoved down your throat...
------
zap.....
And in Win32, you constantly have to deal with bugs, inconsistent behaviour, GUI bug workarounds, and so on and so forth. I think Unix is a far better learning (and production) environment.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
The article is taking about how current Computer Science students are starting to dislike Microsoft. My question is, when did they start to like/use Microsoft? How many (good) CS Schools have labs of windows workstations and teach using MS tools? Most schools take pride in their facilities that are full of Suns or SGIs.
Does or does not Microsoft have a monopoly?
If they do have a monopoly then there are no viable alternatives to Microsoft software.
If there are viable alternatives, Microsoft does not have a monopoly.
I am, however, happily using the GNU/Linux OS and have decided that there is no monopoly.
We here at Clarkson University, the place where two of the students won the recent linux challenge, there's a huge linux following. There's even a professor here whose sole job is basically heading the COSI (scroll down a ways)(clarkson open source institution).
I also remember talking to a grad student whose experience after an internship with microsoft was nothing less than "I would never work for them, and I will never again use their software" Now them's fightin' words, and the general feeling isn't quite that harsh, and windows still gets used to a large degree here, but that's mainly because there's nothing much to do at Clarkson other than play games.
So yes, the educated will turn to linux, that's really not that big a discovery. It's really always been this way. Just don't think for a second that Micro$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.
I haven't used the tools (and really don't want to) but how do you debug anything more complicated than "Hello World" without Visual Studio?
They've had a command line compiler for years, but it has so many switches that Visual Studio was a godsend. I think giving away the command line tools is a publicity stunt.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
What a laugh. I can't say what things are like anywhere else, but at here at Case Western Reserve University, there are plenty of CS students who are big Microsoft fans. Many of them are very smart people. Microsoft hires a lot of interns from here and is very active in gaining student mindshare. All the Windows boxes in the CS labs are from Microsoft Research. Entire classes get boxed copies of Visual Studio .NET. The Windows Users Group is one year old and well attended.
Sure, there are still a good number of students who do everything in gcc (we've also got a bunch of sun boxes in the lab) and CWRULUG continues to prosper, but to say an _entire generation_ of CS students are anti-microsoft is absurd.
Microsoft isn't student. They invest a lot of attention (and money) in colleges There are many students who have known only the Microsoft way and are perfectly happy with it.
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
If i were a student and wanted to learn about operating systems, what does M$ have to offer me. Instead i'd get the Linux kernel and play. Who knows, a smart student that figures out a better way to do something, has an excellent shot at having it incorporated into the real thing.
Same goes for device drivers, if you are a student playing with a piece of hardware, are you going to create a device driver for nt? Not likely, linux, sure there is no barrier to entry.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Dude,
.95seconds for a Word load. And if it matters to you, Windows is not my primary desktop environment; this is being written on a FreeBSD machine.
1. Learn how to spell. It'll get you farther in life. Besides, if you do migrate away from Microsoft, emacs doesn't have a built-in spell checker, AFAIK.
2. I don't know how you ever felt enfranchised with Microsoft; maybe you held their stock and could vote by proxy? Or maybe Microsoft has now put shackles on your feet and made you their slave...
3. I worked inside MS, so I feel obligated to say that I think the code reviews done inside my unit (ISBU = Internet Services Business Unit) were pretty darn good. It's hard to catch every bug, and people like features. If you don't like the feature creep, use Windows 95 or 3.1. Sure, you can't use brand-spanking new hardware, but often you can't with Linux anyways, plus the lack of bloat will make up your speed difference. Better yet, run Win95 on VMware atop Linux.
4. Product activation is bad. Would you rather have a dongle?
5. Frankly, to anyone in the Real World, $600 for Office is _nothing_ compared to the productivity you get out of it. Sure, I enjoy tweaking every last parameter in LaTeX, but give LaTeX to the average secretary, and you'll be spending over 100 hours of their time with training and support and looking stupid things up in the manual. (Don't believe me? Tell me where TeX keeps all its hidden math font metrics... I spent a day looking. Not that MS gives you the control; it just lets you know that it's in control and there's nothing you can do about it) That'll make up your $600, even at salary alone, let alone fringe, office space, etc.
Life's too short to worry about cost for products like Windows and Office. The obnoxious thing about MS is how they implicitly encourage people to upgrade, then send non-backwards-compatible file formats around, so you pretty much _have_ to upgrade. Not to mention their wonderful security.
BTW You should consider reinstalling Windows and Office if your Word loads are taking 1 minute. I just timed my P3-850 at
I really don't see how dissing passport and suggesting libery is any sort of a contradiction. The reason people distrust passport is because they distrust you, your bosses, and the rest of your company. It has nothing to do with technology or methods just with the ethics of the people who will hold your data.
This is not to say that SUN is a more ethical company then MS (although relatively speaking they probably are). The truth of the matter is that a consortium of companies is more likely to have an neutral outcome. Usually the contradicting wishes of a couple of dozen corporations is more likely to favor the consumer then the monolithic wishes of one monopoly. This is afterall the underlying premise of capitalism.
Ideally of course there would be an open source, distributed authentication mechanism and it would be out of the control of all corporations. Perhaps being overseen by a non profit privacy coalition but we know such a entity could never survive an assault by MS let alone the likes of Visa etc.
In the end the point is mute. Like all other things in the computing world it will be MS vs the World. Everybody in MS feels that everybody else in the world are idiots and the feeling is recipricated. Without the backing of Visa and the mjor banks passport will die a slow death. Unfortunately MS has made too enemies in their run to the top.
War is necrophilia.
I think Microsoft is aware of this, and they are trying their hardest to avoid it. Consider the following. I attend a medium sized (16,000 students) Midwestern University. While our CS department isn't world-renowned, there are about 400 people majoring in it. Tomorrow (The 4th) we've got Microsoft coming to town for the VS .NET "launch party"
.NET Academic, plus who knows how much other Microsoft "Stuff" (Lots of Xboxes floating around)
No big deal you'd say...Here's what they're ponying up:
* Up to 700 people can attend, Students, Faculty, Staff
* Everyone who goes gets a full version of XP professional, full version of VS
Here's the kicker. I was talking to our secretary the other day and she said the whole thing basically went like this: Microsoft calls and says they want to have a launch party, we get $50,000 to spend for $700 people, plus the department gets $10,000 in discretionary "thanks" cash.
We're having a hard time racking up over $15,000 in expenses for this three hour event. We simply can't find $35,000 in other things to buy for this room! I might add also, all 700 slots were filled in less than a day.
Is it just me, or does this smack of a company that really, really, wants to protect its future interests?
The interesting part is how preachy some of the profs get. The prof for my programming (C) class this semester went into a little speech on the first day about how Linux was far more technically advanced than windows and most anyone (except perhaps BSD fanatics ;-) would agree that linux is what should be used if you're doing something important.
Furthermore, one of the engineering profs one day got into a talk about how he runs VMWare in his machine which allows him to run linux, because linux is 'good.' (This was in a mathematical, not computers course, btw.) If we (students) tried to do some sort of major design project at my school using windows as the platform to run it, we would be fried to a crisp by the profs for it. This prof often talked about how he avoids MS products like the plague because of unreliability and bugs.
Yes, the conversion away from Microsoft has started, and the people to thank are the folks with the Ph.D's who get the idea that linux is better into students' heads, and choose linux as the platform for the course, thereby causing many students to install it on their own machines so they don't have to use the public labs to do their work. Yes, where I come from, linux has become both cool and elite among undergrads while microsoft OSs have become connected with cluelessness and a lack of technical competence.
I am sure that Microsoft's SIT (slashdot infiltration team) will read this and immediately alert the top brass about this grassroots subversion away from MS software, and try to initiate a whole new marketing campaing aimed at college/university students and well as Profs. It's only a matter of time...
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.
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
We simply can't find $35,000 in other things to buy for this room! I might add also, all 700 slots were filled in less than a day.
The obvious solution for any large party on a college campus:
Beer!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Ever see Pinocchio (Disney version) when the fox and the cat convince Pinocchio to ditch school to play games, drink beer, and smoke cigars all day? Turns out there was a catch.
If you go after M$ free stuff and propoganda, garunteed they'll find a way to make an ass of you and extract their price in the end.
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Solution: $35000 / 700 people = $50/person
;-)
Buy a boxed Linux/FreeBSD distribution for every person who attends.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
I recommend you learn a different interface. The Windows XP GUI is good for the eyes, but it's not really that efficient (usability-wise).
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));
what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do
I did a CS degree many years ago. At my school, Apple had a strangle-lock on on supplying all the general purpose computing labs with gear. There were a few IBMs, but lots of Pascal, C, and of course all spreadsheeting, word processing, and presentation preparations were done on Apple hardware. This near-monopoly went on for a very long time. Additionally, on the computing-specific side of campus, Sun had a monopoly on the programming lab hardware. Actually, there were a bunch of NeXT cubes there also. But absolutely NO Microsoft OSs. So I did a lot of Mac and Unix programming, and only touched a PC once for an OS course (ie, didn't even use DOS). Did it make me want to program Macs (or Unix) when I got out? No. I learned the concepts of software design, and if anything, I wanted to apply those principles to different hardware and OSs than I'd been exposed to thus far. So I went towards proprietary game consoles and PCs (DOS at the time, followed by all flavours of Windows). There was a little bit of Unix work in there, but I've never professionally created an app on Apple hardware. I had a huge grad class in CS and I'm not aware of anybody that went on to create Apple applications despite 4-5 years of exposure and programming on them.
Maybe the "what they learn at school is what they go on to do" theory works at community colleges or vocational schools where training is very specific and more resume-based rather than fundamental-based.
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.
I'm sure this will be lost in the shuffle and consumed by the abundance of posts - but here goes ...
There's a little thing called "Industry Standard". Whether it's the best way, the right way, the cheapest way, or the most effective way doesn't really mean dick when you hit the corporate level. They want the stuff that everybody else is using. Talking someone into using a new product that isn't very compatible with everyone else is rather difficult.
Example:
Quark Inc makes a layout program called QuarkXpress. It's the industry standard. It costs over $800. Adobe Systems Inc makes a competetive (some say better ) layout program called InDesign. It costs $700. The really big difference is that Adobe GIVES its software to design classes to be taught to the students, Quark requires the school to purchase their software.
This has been happening (PageMaker before InDesign) for about six years. Quark is still the industry standard and I don't see it changing for another year. Fortunately Quark screwed the pooch and didn't make Xpress native for OS X, and everyone is dumping them. It'll take time to filter through the entire graphic arts arena.
The same thing is going to happen with Microsoft. Their products are industry standard. They're going to have to make a MAJOR mistake before anyone else comes along to take the lead.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Students use the Microsoft tools and think that that's what software development is about. They end up being incapable of developing with anything else when they come out. In fact, they can barely develop with Microsoft's tools, but because Microsoft's tools make it easy to create lots of impressive looking windows, they think they are experienced. It takes a lot of work to bring those people up to speed, get them used to some professional tools, and fill in all the gaps and missing skills.
I got tired of M$ about a year ago, well truthfully before that, but we'll call it a year.
The thing that kept me using it for as long as I did, was the support for my sound, the cs4281, which was finally handled last year in a kernel update. Quite frankly, I love the switch. All our lower division programming projects are done in java here at OSU, so linux works just as well as windows. If they tell me I have to have codewarrior, I use gvim, it's as simple as that.
There was one more thing that kept me on windows for so long, the game engine, Half-Life. I used transgamming's winex to get it to work on RH 7.2, and it runs better than in winbloze.
I look at it this way, when I get a job doing real programming, I'm going to be using Unix/Solaris. In fact, both my intern jobs, where I did things with computers, went to Linux/Solaris. The fact that I had as much experince, with not only windows, linux, but also Macintosh made my work that much better.
My Macintosh experince has shown me that user design can make or break a product.
My Windows experince has shown ease of use of databases through odbc, and the importance of flat files.
My Unix/Linux/Solaris experince has shown me the power of using small programs to take on a big problem, thus making each part work together to complete a common goal.
I think all three are needed by any cs student, but as long as schools continue to cater to M$ products, such as requiring you use code warrior, or visual c++, I think they will stiffle what most cs students really need.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Just a nitpick: the article was written by Newsweek. It gives credit at the top (just under the authors names) and has the copyright notice at the bottem.
Just my 4 pages.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
It's really hard to say how things will play out.. Most CS students here at UMN have programmed on Unix, Windows, and Mac (okay, the Mac was just m68k assembly, but whatever). I've done assembly, C, C++, Perl, Java, JavaScript, and Scheme (how could I forget Scheme!). I've avoided Windows systems personally, but most of my friends have at least done some Visual Basic work.
I definitely don't think it's appropriate to box students in and only let them use one platform, ever, though there is a strong push here that software must run on the Solaris systems. Of course, since the languages we use most of the time are cross-platform, it's usually possible to do most of your development on your favorite platform, then twiddle a few things to get it to work on the lab machines.
I personally wish that the labs used Linux machines, but that's just my own pet peeve. I figure in the grand scheme of things, this is probably the way to go..
Beside from Linux I use WindowsNT and Office 2000. I will never upgrade from there. I don't want to get caught in Microsoft's activation hell. It is only going to get worst.
Chris Southern
"how do you debug anything more complicated than "Hello World" without Visual Studio?"
You can use WinDbg, which comes with the (free) Microsoft Platform SDK. It's a better debugger than the one that comes with Visual Studio anyway; it allows kernel debugging (useful for driver development), as well as any number of other features.
it would mean switching to Microsoft first. I'm within a handful of classes from graduating with a CS degree, and I've not used a Microsoft product for program development since 2000. (I have used MS Word a couple times when I had to write a paper and there weren't other options available. I still feel dirty)
Of course, the rest of the department has gone overboard implementing whatever they view as "currently being used by the marketplace" (note the awful flash animations on the page. Also note that many pictures of students hard at work are not students, but paid models at somewhere definitely not at our school. I don't know why the hell they went down that road), and for now, Microsoft and the marketplace are linked in many people's minds. The real trauma is that they keep getting rid of pure CS classes and replacing them with gimpy CIS classes (which is another program). The classes on AI and parallel processing haven't been held for years.(rumor has it the parallel processing class ceased after the hypercube had a meltdown) Of the new classes we've been offered in recent semesters, only one is what I'd call actual computer science (Quantum Computing. We've also received classes on J2EE and web-enabled databases. Yuck.)
But I digress. My point was that using unix or unix-like systems, even within a great sea of Microsoft, is not only possible but arguably preferable. I've had to jump through a few additional hoops, such as porting code provided by the instructor to be os-independent, having to arrange showing my projects during office hours in lieu of turning in a binary, having to persuade instructors that I'm not on crack....
So I've had to learn more on my own. Big deal. I'm still quite a bit more happy using joe and gcc to write code rather than the point-and-drool nature of MSVC. It's also worth noting that I'm starting out ahead of my peers in my compiler class this semester (where the instructor is requiring our projects to run on a solaris box)
-transiit
While the gist of my (intended to be joking) comment was that you could implement essentially anything in emacs via elisp extensions, you don't have to get quite that complex in order to add a spell-checker to emacs. It can simply call ispell externally to do its spell-checking.
Upon some further perusal, it seems that Emacs 20 at least actually does have built-in spell-checking (M-x spell-region and M-x spell-buffer, among others). I'm not sure if this is actually coded in Lisp or an ispell hook though.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
... 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%.
While StarOffice/AbiWord/etc. can replace MS Office for many uses, LaTeX is the only UNIX text formatting tool powerful enough to actually fully replace MS Office's functionality. In particular, no UNIX word processor that I'm aware of has an equation editor even approaching MS Office's, so to write any sort of a math paper it's either LaTeX or MS Office. I'll let you guess which is easier to use.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Learn how to spell. It'll get you farther in life. Besides, if you do migrate away from Microsoft, emacs doesn't have a built-in spell checker, AFAIK.
Try Meta-X "ispell-buffer"....
Before you say anything else about Emacs, remember that "Emacs is a operating system cleverly disguised as an editor". Now, how do I run windows emulator in Emacs???
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Actually, I agree with the Sig. I don't want to have neither MS nor SUN hold the numbers of all my credit cards, and passwords to all my accounts. I'll keep them myself, thank you very much.
If these companies were really interested in my convenience, they would release sofware that keeps all the info securely encrypted on my computer, with an unreadable (to them) backup on some server.
Instead, I use GNU Keyring to keep my passwords in my PDA.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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.
(Hopefully, this is only a joke)
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I went to my girlfriend's Speech 111 class a few years ago and one of the CS students who was in the class was doing a presentation on Linux. Then I found out my Dad's ISP used Linux. So I took a Unix class, doing my homework logged in as root on the ISP's server.
Now I'm a loser living alone in Seattle after I quit a job at Microsoft after I dropped out of school and spend my weekends posting on Slashdot and working on my website (changing from PHP+Apache to Jetty+JBoss) that noone visits.
For the record, my girlfriend's speech was about the "warm fuzzies" and "cold pricklies". As you can tell, she left me, but that was before I fell in love with Linux. I drew my own penguin, but since I can't get SANE working, I guess the world is stuck with Tux.
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.
We have a dozen or so secretarial types who use LaTeX every day and are very comfortable with it. Training a new person takes a few days - but we just sent some of these same people off to a class for MS Office, which is also taking several days out of their lives. Not really very much different. One thing about somebody with secretarial training is they know how to type VERY fast, so the point-and-click stuff doesn't seem to do much for them.
By the way, I delved into TeX's math font metrics recently. It's not that hard to mess around with them; there are several open-source programs for pfb/pfa/afm etc. conversion (it's been a few months so I don't remember all the details, but it only took me a couple hours on Google etc. to get it figured out). And have you tried doing ANYTHING similar with MS font formats?
Energy: time to change the picture.
Several points.
Actually, Java has the syntax of C and C++. I see no difference.
If you want to see the perfect language for teaching CS, see Lisp or Scheme. Java has many pitfalls of its own*.
* Footnote: For a short review of Java see http://tunes.org/Review/Languages.html#Java.
Use the other $35k to hire RMS to do the keynote...
just a suggestion...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I see you haven't got gturing installed yet. A must for Computational Theory, and it can run any program with polynomial time modifications.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Is it just me, or does this smack of a company that really, really, wants to protect its future interests?
It is just me, or does this smack of a company that really, really wants to buy its future customers?
Is it just me, or does this smack of a company that wants to give all of the college students legitimate copies of the software that they already downloaded from a P2P network?
greg
I am about three years through CS and Math undergrad degree at a major Canadian university. And yes, we are being snowed under with MS Visual Studio, W2K, etc.
However, the question has to be asked - is it really going to affect Microsoft's fortunes? This dislike of MS products is hardly a new phenomenon - in my experience, people with a strong interest in computing have ALWAYS held Windows and other M$ products in low regard, and with good cause (they're flaky, limited, bloated, and irritating). However, Microsoft is not making its billions off the backs of computing science students or other demanding users - their target market is precisely that segment of the population that don't know or need any better. They aren't too concerned with how fully-featured the OS they use is, they use it because it's familiar, it's widely available, and it (sort of) performs the tasks they need. And seeing as most software development companies sort of enjoy getting a bit of remuneration for their efforts, as long as MS hangs onto the home market we are going to be stuck with wading through Microsoft garbage in an attempt to produce something for the home market.
Of course, one obvious counter-argument would be that the more developers get driven into the Linux camp, the more feature-rich/easy-to-use Linux will become, which *may* in turn cause Bobby-Joe Punchclock to try out this "new Linux thingy". I suppose to a certain degree this is already happening, but will it be enough to make a real difference?
Feel free to commence screaming about how much you like linux. =) Yes, I like it too... settle down.
When I did my CS degree, we worked exclusively on UNIX boxes - but it didn't stop the majority of my friends and I ending up in Windows-programming jobs.
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.
CS is not about what kind of features are in Windows, or are in Linux or are in XINU or in SunOS. It's about HOW you can develop software to solve a problem, by investigating the WHY first. This has nothing to do with any language nor platform.
In my days at the uni we had to write parts of the XINU os. (It's a unix clone for the PC, for educational purposes). Linux was in its 0.x versions. Is Linux inspiring? No. Not at all. You know why? Because I've seen it all before, even XINU had lots of stuff that's in Linux.
Ever looked at designdocuments of the Windows XP kernel? Or the Mach kernel? There is more on this planet than Unix.
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
& dwarfs walking arround with bowls of cocaine balanced on their heads
Ywh I know its been done before.
My favorite line....
:)
Linux hackers from Germany and elsewhere are working on a Windows-like graphical interface for Linux PCs called KDE (for K Desktop Environment). They expect to release it this spring--free of charge
And all this time I have been using vaporware I guess...
You will never "find" time for anything. You must "make" it.
this whole get the students to use your hardware/software certainly worked for apple, right? hmmmm (checks market share)
i personally think that the whole point of this article is like saing the political energy of students doesn't change to the bitter cynical views of the middle aged.
lets face it. first off, the college/univ students are exposed to this stuff because unix was developed in academic environments and have always been embraced by such. i've never seen a csi program built on windows alone.
it has ALWAYS been this way. it's nothing new. we worked on a bunch of sperry 5000s or whatever running system V i think.
right now i am coding using VS.NET. why? because the job i'm on demands it. previous to that i was at various dotcoms where unix rules. now i'm building enterprise software. does it really matter what platform i learned to code on?
and besides. in a few years all the kids entering college would have been weened on XBOX and cheap PCs anyway.
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
"...what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do."
Who made this fable up? When I went to school - yes it was a long time ago - everyone learned on a VAX or a Unix mainframe.... and we all (well - OK, most of us) went on to become M$ - based developers.
How many Windows hacks first computer at school was a Mac? Many!
That statement is groundless, and in my experience, false.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Not only that, but you have had zero effect on the actual problem.
Actually that is not entirely true, my employer (a telco), has a division. It regularly drops it's customers (Businesses), if their customers (consumers) are abusive to its staff, because of the staffing problems it causes, it causes.
50 dollars of beer -- per person?
Well, only if they're engineers. CS students don't drink that much :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
When I hire someone, I'm looking for BOTH theoretical knowledge AND practical experience. I'm liberal in terms of theory - most of the market is very much looking for people with very specific skills. I believe they are shooting themselves in the foot.
However, I hire a good CS student with good social skills over an excellent CS student with bad or mediocre social skills. Good CS students in a good enviroment are more productive than excellent CS students in a bad environment. To my knowledge.
Stop the brainwash
I was raised on DOS. Started with 1.1, and went from there. As far as I was concerned, 5.0 was the mecca. I went kicking and screaming into the "GUI revolution", stopping briefly by Win 3.1 on my way to OS/2 (2.0?) and quickly to OS/2 Warp.
Even then, everything beyond WYSIWYG was just eye candy, and my 486 dx2 66 (with 32 megs of RAM!) was a little slow. Not that it wasn't "pretty good" for the time, it was! I still preferred Word Perfect 5.1 for word processing, and the print preview button for WYSIWYG as a combination of efficiency and page accuracy.
Based on what I actually did, for a while I was labelling myself as a member of the "Operating System of the Semester", because that's about as often as I switched. Did I pay Microsoft for everything I used? No, but I actually had licenses (trading favors/work/things/trinkets) for unused licenses -- M$ got their money, and no copyrights were violated (I still don't buy the whole prohibition of transferring ownership). I just couldn't afford to do all that expirementation and learning! But my skills were growing quickly. Eventually, I went to NT 3.51 server and had enough spare parts to go to Linux 2.0 (Slackware '96 was my friend) on a different machine. I couldn't do everything I needed to for my classes with Linux, but I had NT there to do that for me (no games under 3.51, remember? kept my GPA from falling too far).
Then I realized that, in order to compete, I had to learn Win95, because potential employers were asking about that. I traded for WinNT4.0 workstation, and that gave me the GUI experience I needed for a job. I really resent having to do all that grey-market trading to get the experience I felt I needed, but at this point I feel I'm pretty well rounded. My workplace bought me a computer with Windows 2000 Professional (and I'm competant there), a workstation (with AIX on it, so I'm still good), and at home I have two computers, one with Linux (2.2.flavor-of-the-month) and one with OS/X, my current favorite.
Before I left, my school was replacing all the UNIX machines with Windows machines because of an Intel/M$ grant to do so. The CompSci classes were changing their curriculum to accomodate, but there was an underground movement to "upgrade" all those machines to Linux so CompSci wouldn't have to change their curriculum ("But it worked on GCC in my dorm!" was a realistic thing to hear when working against Visual C).
Will CS students switch from Microsoft? I hope so -- if only to learn what the alternatives are and their strengths/weaknesses. The ultimate question is, what will they do about it? Will they keep their non-Microsoft tendencies, or switch back?
I'm about ready to give back a Windows 2000 Professional license to my company, because I've recently learned that Wine can do everything I need to in order to do my job, and Linux is more what I prefer anyway. Sure, I'm just one engineer, middle management is making all the purchases, but I'm one more in a growing culture here. Our voices will be heard. I'm not saying that as some zealot trying to change the world, but as one engineer who thinks that there's a more efficient way of getting work done, and it happens to cost less in licensing fees. After all, money is what managers care about. If my manager can avoid one more license, and get increased efficiency out of me, what do you think he'll do?
Yeah, he'll probably blacklist one of my favorite news sites in the name of efficiency.
"Computer programmers are quick to point out that they don't impugn the quality of Microsoft's software. It has some advantages: it is generally more consistent in quality and easier to install on servers, especially for inexperienced programmers."
Perhaps programmers don't, but any Software Engineer worth his weight in sand certainly does (and let's face it, so do many competant programmers as well.)
Clearly, anyone who prefers an OS because it's easier to install must by definition be inexperienced. Is the solution here really to perpetuate that inexperience?
The biggest problem I see here is that those who use Linux as an example of good Software Engineering are perpetuating a horrible practice in the industry. You see, Linux Source Code sucks as an example of good Engineering. It makes a great example of excellent hacking, but does not meet the first criteria for assesing the quality of Source Code
The more people who get confused into thinking Linux is an example of good Engineering, the worse the overall quality of the worlds engineers will be.
Does that constitute diatribe, or a tirade? 8^}
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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
As the Purple One (no, not Barney the Dinosaur) has said before:
Forever is a mighty long time.
I give Java only a few more years before capability-based distributed programming languages become widespread.
I am a very angry techie who was told that in order to be of any real value to the tech industry (Re. IBM), I would need to put aside my Linux "hobby," and focus on the "real" operating system for every PC -- Windows. If this is the way that IBM is supporting Linux, I do not feel that they should get ANY kudos for their "efforts" (or lack thereof). I'm tired of being told that my interests and skills are useless. I don't think that any of the Unixy variants or Linux are useless. Back to school once again to become a CPA I guess. They can always find work. Maybe 10 years from now they will realize their mistakes.
Maybe.
On the programming side of the house, however, things are just the opposite - the Unix syscall interface, while not perfect, is limited in complexity. You can pick it up in a semester, no problem. The windows API is quite a beast. I can't imagine trying to do the practical component of a semester-long OS class using Windows (although I know someone who did).
My experience:
"Now that we've talked about process management, here are the fork(2), exec(2), and pipe(2) system calls. Go do your project (which involves some actual thought)."
Someone else's experience:
"Now that we've talked about process management, here is the CreateProcess API. It takes 1,358 arguments as follows.... Oops, we're out of time."
Does the company you work for (if you don't work for yourself) switched to a Linux solution with all the free tools you have mentioned? If so, I'm really surprised and rather impressed. Who do you work for - I want to be there!
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I mean, I thought that thing died last century - nobody here in Seattle uses that OS - it's so OS/2 that it makes crufty look cool ...
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
That's good discipline too. I hated it at the time, when I was using Linux at home and had to go to the computer lab before class to compile for DOS. It helps you learn two things, ANSI -- and portability. GCC is worse than Visual Studio about non compliance.
I'm picturing a terminal and keyboard sailing out the window with "deleting inode 041523...." fading from the screen.
And the truly sad thing is that the main reason users fear the command line is that MICROSOFT'S command line (COMMAND.COM) was so crippled, and they've never seen how useful a command line can really be when designed by someone other than Microsoft. So in the end MS's own incompetence ends up being a boon to them. They now have hordes of users who fear the command line, which is just how MS likes it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Well, did you know that c was the first massively-distributed language in the world to have all of the following in one package:
/* and end with */
<ol>
<li>Semi-colon delimited lines
<li>the function "printf()" built into the standard library
<li>A product called "Borland Turbo C"
<li>A debugging tool named "lint"
<li>A derivative language called C++
<li>Standardized libraries
<li>An internet worm made with it
<li> Comments that begin with
<li> um, gcc was around long before kaffe
</ol>
<br><br>
Its amazing how "feature rich" a language can be when you choose the features.
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
me too...with mono
Does anyone else get this mental image of a guy in a trenchcoat standing in a dark alley holding his coat open to reveal the rows of .Net CDs lining it? "Pssst; hey, kid... over here... the first one is free... just a little taste to whet your appetite... send all your friends my way..."
At least it isn't physically addictive. But then again, neither is gambling...