Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 11:06:33 +0200 (IST) From: Nadav Eiron <nadav@cs.technion.ac.il> To: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> Cc: James <higginsj@iname.com>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Back to school Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95-heb-2.07.990128105748.4983A-100000@csd> In-Reply-To: <36B0211F.E6059DC2@uk.radan.com>
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On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Mark Ovens wrote: > James wrote: > > [snip] > > > > Not to mention that in the sophomore "File Processing" course all students > > seem to gripe after being drug away from learning C/C++ in Windows to > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > Err, is this not a contradiction it terms? > > > writing for a UNIX machine. > > > > Well, they'll be able to call themselves programmers then, won't they, > not just drag 'n' drop GUI builders. Where are the days when File Processing was taught in PL/1 under MVS? Students don't get enough challenges these days ;-) Nothing like writing JCL to make you appreciate the UNIX environment. Talking of students and Windows/UNIX mentality: I'm teaching this semester a course call Introduction to System Programming, which is basically the second semester programming course for undergrads here. The first part of this course is title "Advanced C", and teaches things like pointer arithmetics, data structures in C, and the like. Students are forced to submit code that runs on Solaris using gcc. However, at home most of them use Windows or DOS (mostly because they can get Borland C for DOS for free, not that Solaris isn't free for students). After they had their first home assignment they all came complaining: My program works find under DOS, but in UNIX I get Segmentation Fault. What is wrong with this computer??? When asked: Does your computer continue working after your run your program at home, many answered: "Sometimes we have to cycle the power on it after out program runs, but it *does* run". Sigh. I spent a whole hour explaining to them that Segmentation Fault was simply the result of the system protecting itself from their silly mistakes, and allowing them to catch them as they happen. They never thought that the fact that their program, after generating the required output, locks up the machine means that there's something wrong with it. They're probably used for M$ software to behave the same :-( > > > James Higgins > > Nadav To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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