[PLUG-TALK] What they teach in CS classes

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Tue Dec 6 16:05:08 UTC 2005


On Tue, 6 Dec 2005, Michael Rasmussen wrote:

>  Ok, am computer science major and all my programming class have dealt with
>  java, but I have been given the assignment of writing a shell script in
>  Linux. We haven't talked about Linux, grep, or shell scrips in class so
>  this is a " do some research, try it and see what you get" kind of thing.

>  Did you read the very first post I made on this??  If not,you can find it
>  in the archives. I am taking a class on Operating systems, we don't talk
>  about Linux and how to do shell scripts in class and I have no books on
>  Linux. This email list will be part of my list of recourses along with the
>  numerous web sites I have visited.

Mike,

   Nothing about this makes sense to me. And, the only CS course I had
was FORTRAN 401 in 1973 when I was a grad student and had to take the course
after using the language (learned on my own) to write models for a year.

   Why would any instructor in an OS course give an assignment to write a
linux shell script without an introduction to linux and shell scripting? It
used to be that OS courses used Minix; are they all Microsoft-centric now?

> I still feel like the writer is BSing everyone.

   I agree. It also does not bode well for society if this is the limit of
knowledge for some CS grads. Perhaps he's at a junior college?

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517         Fax: 503-667-8863



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