I agree. While the man pages are meant as a reference, one should be able to get a basic idea of how to use the command from them. For example, "find" is an absolute disaster. I had to find a tutorial on the web (an entire article actually) before I could do the most basic searches with find. Part of this is because "find" is very strange, but the man is worthless.
That's strange. I never bought RedHat (FTP) and my RHN Update still works just fine.
I "registered," a long time ago but I'm not a registered [paying] customer.
While I'll immediately acknowledge that C/C++ is a much more versatile tool than Java and a more essential piece of any programmer's toolkit, Java strikes me as a much better learning language. At my university, CS majors are given an intro course in Java (although not about Java) and a great deal of theory before they hit classes that require C++ (In many cases, higher level classes are language agnostic, although C++ is a req for upper level OO Software Engineering workshops). I'm not sure about AP classes, but at the university level students are expected to pick up specific languages on their own. Java is used in intro courses because the API is so easy to jump into and is so well documented. Java is so simple to pick up that professors can spend their time teaching software design techniques, not programming languages. Once students get a feel for programming techniques they can get closer to the metal. When people dive into C/C++ right away many get so bogged down in the semantics that they learn little about technique, efficiency and style. In any case, Java is a useful tool in and of itself. I'd rather do network programming or lightweight sever-client stuff in Java any day.
At my uni (Washington U), many CS majors pursue a second major in computer engineering in order to have a better understanding of the actual internals of the machines they program. This is sort of a cop-out because a CoE is basically an electrical engineer who takes only those EE courses which apply to digital systems and basic cs courses in algorithms and software design. If you really want to be hard-core, double up CS EE. That way you have all the software design background you need (yes, you can pick up languages on the way but higher-level theory might be a bit tricky to pick up on the fly) and a full understanding of the system upon which you program.
Although I'm not opposed to cloning in the ethical sense, it seems that we already have a pretty massive population problem to begin with. The $50,000 fee might keep the majority of people out of the race to begin with, but these costs defray with time and competition. And anyway, many luxury cars go for more than $50,000.
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I agree. While the man pages are meant as a reference, one should be able to get a basic idea of how to use the command from them. For example, "find" is an absolute disaster. I had to find a tutorial on the web (an entire article actually) before I could do the most basic searches with find. Part of this is because "find" is very strange, but the man is worthless.
That's strange. I never bought RedHat (FTP) and my RHN Update still works just fine.
I "registered," a long time ago but I'm not a registered [paying] customer.
While I'll immediately acknowledge that C/C++ is a much more versatile tool than Java and a more essential piece of any programmer's toolkit, Java strikes me as a much better learning language. At my university, CS majors are given an intro course in Java (although not about Java) and a great deal of theory before they hit classes that require C++ (In many cases, higher level classes are language agnostic, although C++ is a req for upper level OO Software Engineering workshops). I'm not sure about AP classes, but at the university level students are expected to pick up specific languages on their own. Java is used in intro courses because the API is so easy to jump into and is so well documented. Java is so simple to pick up that professors can spend their time teaching software design techniques, not programming languages. Once students get a feel for programming techniques they can get closer to the metal. When people dive into C/C++ right away many get so bogged down in the semantics that they learn little about technique, efficiency and style. In any case, Java is a useful tool in and of itself. I'd rather do network programming or lightweight sever-client stuff in Java any day.
At my uni (Washington U), many CS majors pursue a second major in computer engineering in order to have a better understanding of the actual internals of the machines they program. This is sort of a cop-out because a CoE is basically an electrical engineer who takes only those EE courses which apply to digital systems and basic cs courses in algorithms and software design. If you really want to be hard-core, double up CS EE. That way you have all the software design background you need (yes, you can pick up languages on the way but higher-level theory might be a bit tricky to pick up on the fly) and a full understanding of the system upon which you program.
Although I'm not opposed to cloning in the ethical sense, it seems that we already have a pretty massive population problem to begin with. The $50,000 fee might keep the majority of people out of the race to begin with, but these costs defray with time and competition. And anyway, many luxury cars go for more than $50,000.