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How Ya Gonna Get 'Em Down On the UNIX Farm?
theodp writes "In 1919, Nora Bayes sang, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" In 2013, discussing User Culture Versus Programmer Culture, CS Prof Philip Guo poses a similar question: 'How ya gonna get 'em down on UNIX after they've seen Spotify?' Convincing students from user culture to toss aside decades of advances in graphical user interfaces for a UNIX command line is a tough sell, Guo notes, and one that's made even more difficult when the instructors feel the advantages are self-evident. 'Just waving their arms and shouting "because, because UNIX!!!" isn't going to cut it,' he advises. Guo's tips for success? 'You need to gently introduce students to why these tools will eventually make them more productive in the long run,' Guo suggests, 'even though there is a steep learning curve at the outset. Start slow, be supportive along the way, and don't disparage the GUI-based tools that they are accustomed to using, no matter how limited you think those tools are. Bridge the two cultures.'" Required reading.
I wasn't talking about what 'the tools do, under the hood' (dammit, typical windows speak), my point was that your operating system is a black box. dammit there isn't even source code available.
Darwin source code no longer exists? This link no longer works? In an education environment you can also get access to the NT source code. Either way, it's all irrelevant to most programmers even those on Linux.
IOW, windows experts know how to use windows, unix experts know how unix work (and therefore, due to the openness and clarity, a lot more about how their computers work).
So OS X is no longer Unix? No longer bundles all the Unix utilities? No longer uses POSIX?