Every Linux geek remembers their first time - the feeling is not unlike that "other" first time (indeed, I lost my Linux virginity a decade before my "other" first time occurred).
Back in the days of HTTP1.0 and Netscape 4.76,
before WEB 2.0 was even conceptualized, in the
grand year of 1997, yours truly grabbed a free
copy of Redhat Mandrake 5.0 (I believe), which
came with the newly developed 2.0 kernel and all
sorts of goodies.
I was reading either PC World or some other piece
of computing literature when I saw something that
really caught my eye as a budding Internet (yeah,
not just the WWW, EVERYTHING) geek, game geek, game developer, game modder and first-order code geek; Linux.
Something about a free OS that I could install on my own computer that was based on UNIX tickled
the neurons in my brain.
I was forever hooked on Open Source software and the raw, feral command-line driven experience that was Linux.
I believe I wiped my hard disk and tried to dual-boot it (successfully, I might add) after installing Windows 98SE (for games, primarily).
I spent hours trying to figure out which packages I wanted to cram onto my (then huge) 1 GB hard disk.
Eventually, it was installed and I spent hours programming, running programs and bash scripts in more or less the same way as the Forefathers had done in the Age of Bell Labs.
I was 17 then; 12 years later I still love Linux, and have a solid Slackware distro installed and am planning on installing a secondary hard disk
to make it a Linux-only install, as opposed to dual-booting it.
Sometimes, I wish I could relive those days...
Ahh well.
Actually he/she spelled those words you listed correctly, it's just that he/she misspelled narrow, lets, agreed, ? college, actually, focused, assure, grammar, sociology, being, could and cynical. Oh, and you misspelled misspelled. 8^)>
Yes, Java is a very crappy language when it comes to how it handles memory (ugh! has anyone looked at its heap code? appalling.), and it is geared towards GUI programming, but then again most next-gen languages are. The executables it creates suffer from hyperbloat due to the fact that it has to include so many extraneous libraries that don't really need to be there, and all of that needs to be loaded into memory. Thus, if you're writing a very large application in Java, then you're gonna have problems with memory real quick. Forget about using Java for embedded apps unless you like the frustration of porting its JVM to an embedded system.
However, on the gripping hand Java is basically a C++ work-alike, which means that Java-indoctrinated CS students will be able to pick up C++ fairly quickly. Also, students can safely ignore the details of how certain languages work and just get to the fun stuff like data structures and algorithms w/o learning a new programming language (which they can do in their spare time anyway). I don't recommend that option, however, but some might. IMHO, C++ should replace Java as the de facto CS instruction language, since it is more flexible than C and more efficient and extensible than Java.
BTW, IMO, I think most software tech employers, in the corp sector or otherwise, look for folks with solid C++ skills AT LEAST. They'd prefer someone to know a vast body of information regarding current software trends and new languages/tools, but C++ is so widely used that it should be a requirement at all universities and colleges with a CS degree program.
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Every Linux geek remembers their first time - the feeling is not unlike that "other" first time (indeed, I lost my Linux virginity a decade before my "other" first time occurred).
Back in the days of HTTP1.0 and Netscape 4.76,
before WEB 2.0 was even conceptualized, in the
grand year of 1997, yours truly grabbed a free
copy of Redhat Mandrake 5.0 (I believe), which
came with the newly developed 2.0 kernel and all sorts of goodies.
I was reading either PC World or some other piece
of computing literature when I saw something that really caught my eye as a budding Internet (yeah,
not just the WWW, EVERYTHING) geek, game geek, game developer, game modder and first-order code geek; Linux.
Something about a free OS that I could install on my own computer that was based on UNIX tickled
the neurons in my brain.
I was forever hooked on Open Source software and the raw, feral command-line driven experience that was Linux.
I believe I wiped my hard disk and tried to dual-boot it (successfully, I might add) after installing Windows 98SE (for games, primarily).
I spent hours trying to figure out which packages I wanted to cram onto my (then huge) 1 GB hard disk.
Eventually, it was installed and I spent hours programming, running programs and bash scripts in more or less the same way as the Forefathers had done in the Age of Bell Labs.
I was 17 then; 12 years later I still love Linux, and have a solid Slackware distro installed and am planning on installing a secondary hard disk
to make it a Linux-only install, as opposed to dual-booting it.
Sometimes, I wish I could relive those days...
Ahh well.
=- Gravitron -=
Actually he/she spelled those words you listed correctly, it's just that he/she misspelled narrow, lets, agreed, ? college, actually, focused, assure, grammar, sociology, being, could and cynical. Oh, and you misspelled misspelled. 8^)>
Yes, Java is a very crappy language when it comes to how it handles memory (ugh! has anyone looked at its heap code? appalling.), and it is geared towards GUI programming, but then again most next-gen languages are. The executables it creates suffer from hyperbloat due to the fact that it has to include so many extraneous libraries that don't really need to be there, and all of that needs to be loaded into memory. Thus, if you're writing a very large application in Java, then you're gonna have problems with memory real quick. Forget about using Java for embedded apps unless you like the frustration of porting its JVM to an embedded system. However, on the gripping hand Java is basically a C++ work-alike, which means that Java-indoctrinated CS students will be able to pick up C++ fairly quickly. Also, students can safely ignore the details of how certain languages work and just get to the fun stuff like data structures and algorithms w/o learning a new programming language (which they can do in their spare time anyway). I don't recommend that option, however, but some might. IMHO, C++ should replace Java as the de facto CS instruction language, since it is more flexible than C and more efficient and extensible than Java. BTW, IMO, I think most software tech employers, in the corp sector or otherwise, look for folks with solid C++ skills AT LEAST. They'd prefer someone to know a vast body of information regarding current software trends and new languages/tools, but C++ is so widely used that it should be a requirement at all universities and colleges with a CS degree program.