Advice On Teaching Linux To CS Freshmen? 467
copb.phoenix writes "I'm a sophomore Computer Science student teaching computing labs to a freshman class, getting ready to go over the major ins and outs of the Linux terminal and GUI. While I have my own ideas and the professor over this class to lean on, I've found it difficult to get the few students that I've tried to teach in the past to connect the dots and understand how it relates to what they already know about computers. Does anybody out there have any advice on how to engage and inspire our upcoming class? (Perhaps important: Our machines are running Ubuntu Hardy.)"
Everything and Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Start with vi and go from there.
University or Trade School ? (Score:5, Insightful)
My undergrad CS was in a unix-based environment(*). Professors in class taught concepts that could be applied in a variety of different environments. Teaching assistants (TA) in study/discussion sessions taught implementation detail like editors, compilers and other tools for the environment provided by the school - which in this case was BSD, vi, cc, lex, yacc,
So if you are a university and your labs are Linux based, great. Your TA's should help students with all the implementation details of getting their assignment going under Linux. However Linux should not appear in the classroom that much, it is just the tool of the day, more of an implementation detail than a core concept. The university classroom should spend most of its time on concepts that transcend the tools of day, regardless of whether that tool of the day is MS Windows, Mac OS X or Linux; or Direct 3D or OpenGL.
(*) FWIW this was a DEC VAX based environment. I would have loved to have had a Linux or FreeBSD running on my PC rather than having to dial in over a modem from home when not on campus.
Re:University or Trade School ? (Score:4, Insightful)
LAMP (Score:4, Interesting)
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I picked up Linux when I was 16, working for a local ISP. It was the first time I ever worked with a RADIUS server to auth our dial-up clients.
I was encouraged by the sysadmin to try out Debian and just go nuts with it. I remember doing a complete install, getting X to work and then proceeding to fuck everything up. By the time I was 18, I was proficient enough at setting up a LAMP stack from scratch on Gentoo and eventually getting a Tomcat and Apache to work together with mod_jk.
What sold me on learning L
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While you're at it, teach them how to use vim. Knowing how to use the editor well will make all those little administrative tasks so much easier.
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Don't forget to teach them punchcards, too!
Seriously, vi(m) is an editor. Some like it, some do not, but it is not anything but an editor. Editors are dime a dozen, and most of them can do as much as vi can.
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Given that most command shells have a Vi and an Emacs command-line editing mode, I'd say that a day or two spent reviewing some of the easy ways of getting things done in vi/vim or emacs would be time well spent.
Yes, they *can* learn it on their own. Just like you can toss somebody into the deep end of the pool and say "Thrash around for a bit while I go have a sandwich, when I get back, we'll see if you've learned to swim!"
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I wouldn't start on vi. I'd start with nano because it follows the same logic as programs the students would likely be familiar with. On most distros nowadays even when you run visudo you get nano.
The key here is to make the learning curve not resemble the White Cliffs of Dover.
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+1 nano. Around 10 years ago during my CS undergraduate classes everyone could just pick what they were used to, but students that were still getting used to this here shell thingy were nudged to use nano first during the unix introduction class. Easy to pick up and get stuff done and graduating to emacs (or vi if you like colons) is relatively easy.
And to the sibling post about nano not conforming to any standard: you're right. But when you've barely touched the surface of programming it's a relief to have
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Here here. Good idea.
Other possibilities:
a firewall
a proxy server
a group source code repository
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This is a FRESHMEN course. It is VERY LIKELY the concepts of "Linux" / OS, "Apache" / Web Server, "MySQL" / Database, "Perl/PHP/Python/whatever" / Scripting are all completely new to them. You want to throw all four concepts at a group of 18-year olds who may have never seen them. Fine, maybe as an optional reading for those interested, but not as a requirement.
Look up North Carolina State University's E115 course. It is a required one-hour course all College of Engineerin
Linux is not a topic for a CS program ... (Score:2)
Have them set up a basic LAMP server. That's how I learned Linux. Or for something somewhat more practical for them, how about a seedbox or a mythtv-box. Frankly, the best way to learn linux is to just get your hands dirty.
Given that we are discussing freshman computer science students we are probably talking about a university environment, not a trade school. Linux is not really a legitimate topic itself, its just a tool, its just a convenient place to do class assignments while learning core ideas and concepts. Setting up a LAMP box is something university level CS students should do on their own time. For a longer discussion see http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1952834&cid=34898826 [slashdot.org].
how i learned to use linux in 4 days (Score:4, Insightful)
as a basement dweller i seriously needed an anime hookup. i spent 4 days straight learning how to compile programs, then mplayer, then what a codec was, via system libraries, the gui, how to compile E16, how torrents and other p2p worked.
figure out something that drives today's youth with the same vigor, from the subdomain of scholastics. figure that out and you're a rich, rich person.
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as a basement dweller i seriously needed an anime hookup. i spent 4 days straight learning how to compile programs, then mplayer, then what a codec was, via system libraries, the gui, how to compile E16, how torrents and other p2p worked.
figure out something that drives today's youth with the same vigor, from the subdomain of scholastics. figure that out and you're a rich, rich person.
Porn, booze and drugs.
That's been available freely on any campus LONG before open source was a buzz-word.
Show the CLI controlling the GUI (Score:5, Interesting)
Many GUI applications can be controlled via GUI commands. Showing this helps students understand the link between the magic that goes on under the hood, and the actual action that takes place to make that happen.
Sure, not everything is a GUI shell over a CLI program, but the concept of typing a command isn't that different from one of making an API call to Qt or GTK+.
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I learned my meager CLI skills by installing Dapper server, then xubuntu gui and then proceeding to dissect the link commands, investigating switches/man pages and Goog'ing for fixes because many things didn't work right. Linux not quite working as well as Windows was a bonus for me(in hindsight, not at the time), and I'm better off because of it. Believe it or not, for that reason I am also thankful to Microsoft for Vista. If Vista wasn't a steaming pile I would have continued to put off delving into the L
Teaching the basics of linux use to freshmen (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd start with a two-pronged approach.
1. GUI. Using something like Ubuntu, although I'm generally a CentOS bigot, teach them how to do all the things they know how to do in Windows: download and install software (using apt, for instance) and how to add an icon to the desktop. Teach 'em where to find applications of interest.
2. Start teaching the command line. There are times when a GUI... anyone's GUI... is too cumbersome/restrictive to do things quick and dirty.
2a. introduce them to 'script' and the concept of shell (batch) scripting.
2b. as an addendum to 2a, above, give 'em an overview of the major shells and explain why Tom Christiansen thinks csh is totally unsuited for scripting.
Don't preach about how much better Linux is than Windows... If they continue, they'll understand themselves. If they fall by the wayside, they never would have understood, anyway.
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Simply make them use it for their assignments.
It could be Linux or it could be any other Unix. It could even be MacOS System 6.
This isn't exactly a new problem.
Re:Teaching the basics of linux use to freshmen (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing that should be teach to them is the disk space organization. This is quite different from Windows and newbies tend to put everything in a single huge filesystem. They should know some basic principles about LVM and all the kind of filesystems available with differences between them. Not an indept review, but a basic review of what is available and what they can do with this stuff.
Well, what DO they already know about computers? (Score:4, Insightful)
You won't get any sound advice if you don't tell us the background of your students. It is the most important thing in any tutoring class. If they have no idea what an OS is, perhaps you should start there. If they know how to use Windows (and understand what an operating system is actually doing), perhaps you could start by making a comparison of the two systems. Oh, and please, do not start with the "on UNIX everything is a file" thing. This has never, ever, helped anyone at that stage. Perhaps you could make a historical review to show, e.g. that in the before time, DOS was the OS and Windows was a GUI. Then tell them that Linux is the OS and Gnome is the GUI. If they get that, then jumping from DOS to Bash will be easy. And some general advice: If possible, do not guide them through a trivial task as a tutorial to show them how "things are done". I have always found such tutorials boring and uninspiring. Instead, give them a book, a manual, an online link or whatever where they can search for stuff and an easy task to perform. Make it like a competition: "let's see who can figure it out fiiiiiirst!" kind of thing. Also, remember that it has to be something that they can accomplish by looking in the material you gave them. The exercise is not for pumping up your own ego when you come to them after two hours with an answer that they could have never found.
Split the class in half (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't take much (Score:2)
They're CS students, so at least a couple kids in that class have certainly used Linux before. When it comes to teaching the GUI - you shouldn't have to teach anything. It's pretty much the same as Windows or Mac - if they can't figure it out just because it's a little bit different, they certainly shouldn't be in CS - or any science or engineering major for that matter.
As for the command-line: Make the point that it's similar to what they're used to, but far more powerful. I.e., ls instead of dir, cp inste
What I had... (Score:2)
In my second year at least, was "C programming in a UNIX environment".
It scarred me for life. But you learn so so much about how *nix works from the inside. I'm assuming "CS" is the developing sector , not learning how to get it to run.
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It scarred me for life. But you learn so so much about how *nix works from the inside. I'm assuming "CS" is the developing sector , not learning how to get it to run.
I'm sorry you have such a fragile skin ;) Joking aside, "the developing sector" includes, usually, things like "getting it to run" (installation and maintenance). You don't program in a vacuum, and if you develop enterprise software you will have to worry about little things like that.
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(Added):
Just to give an idea of the things we did, the assignments were
1. Multi-player (different user) version of snake on the same machine. Needed to use shared memory to pass information - no pipes.
2. A system whereby a function is executed remotely over an internet connection and returns an input. Think "Web services" written in C.
First Time Teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
As a teacher, your responsibility is to help them learn. Remember that learning takes place inside the student's head; you can present the information, but if it they don't learn it, it is not a success.
1) Some people have indicated that the students "should" know certain things. I'm assuming that the class has no pre-requisites, so you shouldn't be assuming that they know anything. Many people who do things like that do so to make themselves feel better; these students are the ultimate newbs, and treat them like you'd like to be treated. Remember that they are not stupid, just uneducated, and they are in your class to correct that.
2) When you give an assignment, make sure you have done it yourself, on a box that has nothing more installed on it than what they will have installed on theirs. Nothing is so frustrating for students and embarrassing for instructors as an assignment that can't be done because something silly wasn't set on their boxes, such as path variables.
3) Remember that things that don't take you very long will take them many times longer, probably 3-5x as long. So if the assignment you give them takes you an hour to do,... You may want to give them that much work, but make sure it's because you planned it, not because you didn't think it would take that long. I would also recommend giving an estimated time, which should be for the average student it class, and tell them that if it is taking them longer, they need to get help somewhere.
4) Read through the assignments carefully, making sure that they are unambiguous. Not just to you, with your great wealth of knowledge, but to someone of the students' level.
5) Plan to spend significantly more time than expected on all this. This includes time in class explaining things that you expected them to know or thought were obvious and outside the class preparing your lectures, labs, etc. Until you've taught a class 2-3 times, there are always time sinks that you didn't anticipate.
Good luck!!!
Re:First Time Teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone with long time teaching experience let me give my own version of #1 above:
1) Find out what they know. Survey the class to see what computers, systems, computer-like devices etc. they have had experience with and then you can perhaps take a lesson or two to try and get everyone up to about the same general level of understanding as their fellow classmates (as it pertains to the course of course). After your first feedback do a bit of research and try to find them some extra material for the ones who will need to do the most catching up, for them to read/examine on their own time.
Otherwise you will be spending the entire semester with a set of students who will be having fundamentally different problems learning the same material.
Pipes and more pipes. (Score:5, Insightful)
ps aux | grep username | grep -v grep | awk '{print "kill -9 "$3}' | bash
is awesome to understand.
Have them do a dpkg -l on a box and make an install script for hundreds of packages. Have them hunt for credit cards #'s using regular expressions, then pipe those through a cc# validator script (yes how to use a computer for evil-- a nice weeklong break of doing bad things).
Teach them how to use Wget to stalk on facebook... heck that will keep them engaged the most, though it does rack up their dark side force points a little too quickly.
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# man pkill :)
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that just makes them remember one more linux command..
though I would still mod you informative
Concepts and implementation. (Score:2)
Not to be mean-spirited, but this generally means that either you don't have a strong enough grasp on the subject material and ability to relate it in terms to which your students can relate, or your students don't actually know anything, or enough, about compu
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Good points here. Additionally, learning the command line is like learning the wrench. It takes a few minutes to get the basics down, the rest is all in how you use it in different ways to solve different problems.
Besides, after the first week, what you should be teaching is scripting, the concept of gluing together prebuilt tools to work on a given data stream to do wonderful things.
The Power Tools book could be a good asset to you, here. Tons of great, short, impressive examples of things that are rela
Doesn't compute (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] Teaching Linux [...]
Best thing is to not "teach Linux," but to "teach on Linux."
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Best thing is to not "teach Linux," but to "teach on Linux."
Yes, I'd agree with this. Nobody reads man pages for fun, but will happily read them to figure out why things aren't working when they have a goal in mind. Give them a basic (interesting!) project to do (parse some data to do something neat or somesuch?), tell them about man pages and other internet resources and let them have at it. Be around to help if things don't work though: don't forget how incredibly frustrating getting stuck during debugging in an unfamiliar system can be.
Their Imaginations (Score:2)
I think that the trick may be to cater to their imaginations. The young have all kinds of desires concerning computing that adults may have shed off already. I'm still eager to recreate that certain girl from high school. The catch is that they have been exposed to some neat stuff through their friends as far as programs go. So try to sell them on what the future can do for them with computers. robots, etc.. Towards that goal Linux and Ubuntu in particular can make it rather easy to set up computing c
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Along the lines of what b4upoo is saying, team them the TimeCube.
Thanks b4upoo.
It is a tool (Score:2)
This may mean allowing different student to persure different products. Some can build a web server, some can write an online application, so can write security utilities. I recall one class that taught fortran through
50% basics + 50% question and answer (Score:2)
As others have said 'teaching computer labs' is a bit ambiguous. The fact that you are talking about a 100 series class, I'm assuming means something more along the lines of 'how do I work in this linux based computer lab', not 'how do I learn everything there is to know about linux'.
Though the majority of the people here are flabbergasted that those in a CS class haven't touched linux already, it is a different time. Keep in mind, those same people haven't touched VMS . . or punchcards. A brief history
it's a bit dated... (Score:2)
but chris taylors' thesis [http] is something i give to unix neophytes who might be interested in learning more about unix and vi.
it either scares them away, or draws them in, but that's up to them to figure that out, evangelism will eventually just wear you out.
IMHO taylors' writing style is amusing and might keep a reader engaged. even though it is unix agnostic i think the ability to speak to the uninitiated and offer them a quick stepping stone document without being overly cryptic or aloof is more helpful the
Filosophy and history (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget to talk about the history and the philosophy; while it might seem less important than getting everything in their heads; motivation is key. Because it's hard. Really hard; for them in the beginning. Motivation is everything. Don't waste your time with complicated stuff which can be easier (such as trying to fill their head with vim as joe is there too - if they like Linux, later they'll come back to vim).
Talk about the hippy-like Richard Stallman who got everything started and what the Free Software Foundation is all about; freedom in a digital future and such. And about the 'other side' within the community with the 'OpenSource' people who just think it's very convenient to be able to work together, but not morally wrong to write proprietary software. Whichever you prefer; 'welcome to the opensource community'.
Involve them.
If you can come up with something which can help them to accomplish something; go for it. Whether it's a LAMP box with Dyndns or something completely different. If they think something is 'stupid', point out that it's OpenSource, so they have the freedom to change it and fix it according to their wishes.
And don't forget: 'Have Fun!'
Good luck!
Jasper
Yo, /. geeks pay attention! (Score:2, Insightful)
He is a C.S. student teaching a freshman lab; nothing in his post indicates that the freshmen in question are C.S. students. In fact, since they're freshmen it's pretty likely they're undeclared. Yet already we see tons of condescending answers that are based on the assumption that this is a C.S. class.
Don't (Score:2, Flamebait)
Don't. That's what my school did, and it's very representative of the kind of help they'll get online. Have you ever tried to get help in a linux IRC channel? You're more likely to win the lottery and never have to use linux anyway.
Teach them how to develop on Linux (Score:3)
Hopefully, at this point they can figure out how to use a GUI by trial and error. I would introduce them to the customizability not available on Windows with being able to choose Gnome, KDE, Unity, Avant Window Navigator, etc. Also little niceties like middle click pasting, multiple desktops, and focus follows mouse that they may have never seen.
Since they are CS students, I would also cover the basics of developing on Linux that may be unfamiliar:
Basically, cover enough so when a professor gives them a programming assignment in subsequent semesters, they should be able to focus on the code more than the operating system. A typical assignment toward the end of the class would reflect mastery of the development environment but require little programming expertise, something like "create a .deb package containing a program that displays hello world in a Gtk window" or "submit a git bundle with a change from hello world to hey there world."
CS is not an OS class. (Score:2)
Seriously WTF... and to *freshman* no less?
I am afraid the sophomore has failed to grasp the point of CS, and unfortunately it looks like most of the posters here dont have a grasp either.
You do have to make some specific choices when teaching CS, but never the whole god damned OS as the 'subject.' You would choose a specific set of programming languages when teaching computational theory, algorithms, and so forth..
CS is not equal to "using computers"
Go back to the origins of the OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Give them all a user account with shell only (no X) on some headless machine somewhere and make them do their work there. Have it be a different distro than what their desktop machines are; in your case I'd recommend CentOS as being different enough to understand that there can and will be some variation between two different "Linux" machines in the real world. Teach them to actually do work on a machine that they have no physical access to and make sure they "understand" (rather than simply "know") that physical access to a machine is not required to do real work on that machine. Make them do their work in vim or emacs and turn it in by dropping tarballs into a shared directory.
Somewhere about 3/4 into the semester, bring them over to the GUI and show them a IDE like netbeans (free, easy to use and supports a decent variety of languages). Spend your GUI time teaching them that on *nix the GUI exists primarily to support tools that exist in the CLI.
On the last week that isn't review, give them access to a Solaris and a HP-UX machine and give them an assignment to do on both machines that is similar (but not quite identical) to something you gave them just before the GUI switch.
Possible first assignment: (notes in parenthesis are for you and not to be included in the actual assignment)
1. Create a directory named "assignment-01" in your home folder. (introduce mkdir)
2. Within "assignment-01" create the following sub-directories "pets", "color", "os" (introduce cd)
3. In the os directory create a text file named "home" with one line naming the OS you use at home. ex. "Windows 7", "OSX Snow Leopard", "Amiga OS", etc. (introduce vim)
4. In the color directory create a small HTML web page named "color.html" complete with well formed <html>,<head> and <body> tags. In the body of this page name your favorite color and make it display in that color. If your favorite color is white or too light to read on a white background, change the background color to black or lie about you favorite color and pick a new one. (multi line editing, interpreting requirements, that warm fuzzy feeling of making something "real"; check for opening and closing tags on html elements, mention in class bonus points if they include a DOCTYPE and/or a page title but do not list in the written assignment)
5. In the pets directory create a Comma Separated Value, CSV, file with one line per pet in your home. The column should be as follows {Pets name, type of pet [cat, dog, goldfish, etc.], latin name for species}. All columns should be wrapped in double quotes. If you have less than 3 pets, create imaginary pets until you have at least 3. (create machine readable text files)
6. In the assignment-01 directory, create a text file named "hello" with one line reading "Hello, World" (necessary for a later step)
7. create a tar zip file with the name cs101-{username}-01.tar.gz of the assignment-01 directory and copy the resulting file to
8. Move hello from your assignment directory to your home directory. (introduce mv)
9. Since you're on Linux now you need to let go of your old OS. Delete the os subdirectory and it's contents. ( introduce `rm -r` )
10. Make sure your instructor can review your work by making the assignment-01 directory readable but not writable to the cs101 group. (chmod, ls -l and maybe chgrp)
Linux from scratch (Score:4, Interesting)
Give them a box of computer parts and a printed copy of linuxfromscratch.org and tell them their grade for the class is going to be the one displayed on a web page served by apache under Linux installed on the machine they assemble from those parts by the end of the semester. Best class they'll ever take on Linux.
Ok, I doubt this will be seen, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is, there's actually value in teaching the inner workings of Linux because there's no guarantee anymore that you'll encounter sed, awk, vi or even a command line just because you're using "Linux".
My course curriculum (Score:3)
I used to teach Linux, a few years back, in TAFE (provides further education in Australia, from high school, but not to the level of universities).
I created all the coursework myself. If it helps, below is my lesson outline. I designed it to be generic Linux for the most part, but when I get specific, I concentrated on RedHat. At the time, that was the Linux distribution that most people were aware of. If I was doing it today, I would probably go for Ubuntu.
----------
Week 1
Introduction to Linux
A brief history of Unix
How Unix is organised
Features of Unix/Linux
Week 2
Installation of Linux
Steps to installing Red Hat on your computer
Week 3
The Linux Console
An Introduction to the Shell
Basic Linux commands
Shutting down the system
Week 4
Managing Files
The Linux Directory structure
Week 5
Redirecting I/O
Basic Regular Expressions
Unix Permissions and Attributes
Week 6
Using VI
Linux Kernel Modules
Week 7
Unix Shell Scripts
Scheduling and Cron
Week 8
Adding and Removing Users and Groups
Managing devices and Mounting Filesystems
Week 9
Mid-semester Lab Test
Week 10
Managing Processes
The Unix boot process
Week 11
Setting up a Linux Printer
Using a Linux Printer
Week 12
Linux Networking
Week 13
Unix Network Services
FTP and Telnet
Week 14
Linux Network Filtering
Week 15
RedHat RPM
XWindows
Week 16
Revision
Week 17
Exam
Re:Start by... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Slack has some benefits if only because you end up having to compile from scratch in most cases, which can be instructional. However, Hook 'em and reel 'em in, then teach 'em what the tricks are for deciding on a distro, and help them do more complex things.
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I cut my teeth on slack and it is a fairly straight forward system.
It will get them the basics of package management and the startup scripts can be easily dived.
I probably would have stayed with it if work had not been redhat centric.
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What can you do in Slackware that is impossible in Ubuntu?
Re:Start by... (Score:5, Funny)
What can you do in Slackware that is impossible in Ubuntu?
Feeling leet.
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Impossible? Little, if anything, of course. All based on the same upstreams, and source is available for all.
But Ubuntu has a very nasty habit of making lots of normal, easy tasks extremely difficult, in their quest to make a windows-replacement for people that hate computers and dont want to learn anything. Bypassing all the GUI crap so you can actually get some work done or just get a clue what is actually going on can easily take a lot more time than just wiping it out and installing Slackware.
Re:Start by... (Score:4, Insightful)
What can you do in Slackware that is impossible in Ubuntu?
In Slackware, you learn how to do things on any Linux distro. In Ubuntu, you only learn how to do things in Ubuntu, Debian, and Debian derivatives. I owe to Slackware the fact that I can sit down and work with any Linux distro out there. It doesn't include its own special tools for anything, so you are forced to do everything the "standard Linux way," which is the way that works on every distro (with some special exceptions, like DSL).
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you can waste your time compiling source packages and re inventing the binary wheel
That's otherwise known as learning how to compile your own packages. It's only a waste of time if you never progress from there.
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Amen to that. With 400 line grub config files, there seems to be this auto-complexification syndrome in Ubuntu. Not using the gui has become something for the advanced only. It's not really tinker friendly, and I think has become rather windowsy in that regard.
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If you want them to actually learn anything, I'd get rid of Ubuntu and use Slackware.
Fixed that for you. Ubunto does not now, and never has had, the same goals as the rest of the community. It has a lot more in common with the over-hyping of vaporware (eg: Wayland) and the crappy software release history of Microsoft than with the stalwarts of the linux community.
Overall, we'd be better off without them.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Spot on.
If you want to confuse the poor windows brainwashed dears then try to teach them the Bash Shell and the Linux/Unix command line. That will only turn them off Linux for life.
Switch it around and find things that make you drop into a shell.
regex - very powerful.
parsing OOTB
Command chaining. - the awsome power of 'sed' & 'awk'.
Do stuff that Windows just can't do. Find the USP's for FOSS/Linux etc
Sell that to the poor dears.
A Dad wants to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
....why am I paying $20,000 a year (on the low end) for my kid to go to school and study Computer Science just to have a freakin sophomore teach him?
Major WTF?
Re:A Dad wants to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Professors are not rewarded for good teaching. We're rewarded mainly for bringing in grant funds. So getting good teachers depends pretty much on the luck of the draw, unless you're up at Stanford or Harvard levels. Community colleges often have better teachers than 4-year schools because they have much more focus on teaching.
The main thing you're paying $20,000/yr for is the higher class union card. A better name school is a ticket to a better-paying job. Which means, in terms of bang for the buck, a student is best off going to community college for the first two years, and then transferring to as flagship a school as they can manage.
As for actually learning something, well, that's a different matter entirely...
yes they will (Score:5, Interesting)
These are CS students. Discounting the ones who will be quickly switching majors or dropping out, sed, awk and regex are going to convert Windows/Mac users to command line Linux.
Really, it's just plain mean to wait until senior year for the weed out class. Freshman year is the time to ditch people who think that a love of playing computer games means that they will get to enjoy a well-paid career as a game designer.
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Guenter: All I want is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit... that's why I'm transferring to business school!
Professor Farnsworth: NOOOOOO!
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That's so completely wrong I just don't where to start.
Linux (with the nvidia binary drivers) gives me the power of a minicomputer (I'm an old CLI geek) and us (me, wife & kids) simultaneous access to modern s/w and h/w without having to worry about malware.
(FreeBSD is certainly in the same class, but I have no reason to use it instead of Debian Sid.)
Re:Lol (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually... :)
My girlfriend has a Mac. Right now, I have a Windows machine beside hers, because I'm gaming on it a good bit. I make up for this by having a Linux server farm, so I do "real" work on those machines.
She's seen where I've had issues on my Windows machine. I get frustrated. She watched me work through a mystery blue-screen problem that turned out to be a particular version of the video driver was causing. It was very difficult to diagnose, and using the Microsoft provided driver, or the manufacturers most recent driver was not the fix. {sigh}
On her machine, she was running into some issues also. She plays a few full-screen games. One of the games was performing horribly. To diagnose it, I ssh'd to her machine while she was gaming. Using standard tools (like top, ps, and kill), I was able to help her out. For example, from the desktop, she knew she had closed an application. From top, I could see that it not only wasn't dead, but it was taking up half the memory in the machine. While she was playing the game, I could see the system was using over 80% of the memory (2Gb), and and when it started swapping, that's when the performance went to hell. I helped keep the machine performing ok by killing unwanted applications while she was playing. You can't do that on a Windows machine without a bit of 3rd party magic and virgin sacrifices.
Then there was parsing some information. She has a book cataloging program. She wanted to import the information from one application to another one. She pointed & clicked around for a while, and was making very slow progress. She was to the point where she had a file with almost 2000 records, that she needed to clean up to import. It would have taken her quite a while, so I shelled in and did "cat file.txt | cut -f 2 -d , | sort > import_me.txt" Voila, one line, and it was done. Again, standard tools for *nix, Linux, and OSX, that are not standard for Windows (adding 3rd party apps doesn't count).
I've been trying to encourage her to get familiar with working in the shell. She understands what to do.
We're to the point of wanting to set her up with a hackintosh. I have spare hardware that would build her a very nice fast machine with more memory than hers has. Even the 2GB upgrade was expensive for the Mac. It's outrageously priced from Apple, and still overly expensive from 3rd parties. We ordered it from Crucial, who had the best price for the required full buffered RAM. She likes the idea of my spare 6GB RAM, and faster CPU, than spending thousands on a new Mac. Her only consideration now is how pretty the case is going to be. There's an alienware-like case on CompUSA's site that I'm considering for her. :)
Beat me to it. (Score:2, Insightful)
These are the types who will mostly not graduate beyond "I can admin a server because I know where to point and click" anyways.
Even the simplest of tools, like vi or ssh, are pretty much beyond them.
Re:Beat me to it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
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If you consider vi simple as opposed to a complex tool, then Linux is pretty much beyond me, also.
The basic commands are VERY easy. Most people get flustered when they accidentally get into "beep mode." (you'll recognize it when it happens).
It's certainly no worse than debug or edlin were, and those helped bootstrap an entire industry.
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Vi *is* simple, but it's also simply different from what you're used to: it's a modal text editor, while you're used to text editors with just a single mode.
It came from an era before we had menus and freakin' arrow keys, but you can get by quite easily knowing only that you can drop into text mode with 'a' (append) or 'i' (insert), get back into normal mode with <escape> or control-[, and move the cursor around in normal mode with h/l (left/right) and j/k (up/down), and get into command mode with ':'
vi's fine as long as you remap shift-J (Score:3)
I used vi for years, and had convinced myself I actually preferred it to, say, the editor in Visual Studio. It's definitely true that there are things you can do super-fast in vi once you commit its commands to sense memory - once you've mapped the brain-dead 'join' command away from the Shift-J keystroke. Is there anybody who hasn't been driven nuts by having their entire file collapsed into a single line just by trying to 'scroll down' with Caps Lock on?
That said, I've gotten used to using a PC editor (
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Vi is like a car with a key, and a flap you could open to crank it if you wanted to. Or you could set it up so that the door opens automatically for you when you get close to the car, and it starts automatically when you sit down, and drives to your five most common destinations on its own....
Re:Beat me to it. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't flamebait. I teach community college IT courses, and I would agree that if someone's a CS major and has to be dragged into checking out Linux, that person would probably ultimately be happier switching majors.
Re:Beat me to it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Beat me to it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is one of the potential components of your workflow as a computer scientist, and one of the major potential platforms for any work you may want to do. A mathematician who spends their life working in set theory still needs to know what differential equations are, and what they mean.
Software engineering is a critical component of computer science, because computer science isn't mathematics, they are deeply related and intertwined, but not exactly the same. Computer science is about what you can do with information, that includes how you organize it. Computer science is both more and less than pure math, and different schools emphasize comp sci very differently, some are right on the metal focusing on building from hardware up, others work from pure math down, (and if you're in the area, waterloo starts at pure math and works down, Laurier which is basically in the same place starts with hardware and works up). You cannot actually implement the vast majority of ideas in computer science without some basic skills in software engineering, nor can you communicate effectively with other computer scientists about what ideas they have, or what ideas you have. Computer scientists and physicists aren't engineers, (and I count myself as both a physicist by training and work and a computer scientist by training now), but you need to know some of their tools to do your job. True, a purely theoretical physicist doesn't use a whole lot of electrical engineering. But a experimental physicist uses a lot of engineering materials regularly. A purely theoretical computer scientist, may use relatively little software eng, but a experimental computer scientist may use quite a lot. In that sense computer science is as much math as physics is, but it's something else too, since experimental computer science is concerned very heavily with how you actually store the information everything that comes with that.
There's also a lot of very real research in software engineering processes as done by computer scientists, the big area at my school that I'm aware of (University of Western Ontario) is in automated software testing and performance analysis. Software engineering is a very real field, but until you try and build software involving dozens of people (not all of whom are programmers), and then try and keep it updated and maintained over many years, it's hard to appreciate how there's science there, but there can be quite a lot.
Computer scientists *can* be programmers, they *can* be system operators or administrators, or something else, and or all practical purposes they have to be minimally skilled in programming and system operation. Please don't confuse job training with academic training. We aim to empower students to learn effectively and give them the skills and knowledge they need to be prepared for a general area (computing), what they choose to do with that is up to them. Some, well, the vast majority, will end up programming or
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Right on. Most CS students are unaware that they have signed on for math, set theory, relational algebra, etc. They mostly think that they're going to learn how to program games and become rich.
There's also the other subset of CS students who are forced to take beginning CS classes due to their major. Bioinformatics for instance. They really don't have the head to figure this stuff out.
I would say that 95% of the CS students I have taught in lab or tutoring were in above their heads and 60% either switched
Re:Beat me to it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. You don't have to like linux, or want to use it as a computer scientist, but you should have some basic familiarity with what it is and how it works. I'm a PhD student in computer science and my actual work doesn't take me anywhere near linux, but I need to know what it *could* do for me (or more accurately for my workflow) in case that helps.
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I suppose it depends on the person. I knew just enough about linux (specifically the CLI; GUIs are all similar enough) to get around, but I didn't really start to get to know well it until about a year ago. It wasn't a lack of interest by any means, just a lack of needing to do it. This is mostly a result of changing from a managed to an unmanaged server environment, and the resulting need to fiddle more with config files and various extensions that were specific to the application I develop. People tend to
I'm glad you weren't my teacher (Score:5, Insightful)
If they haven't already looked at linux, it's because they lack the innate curiosity to find out more about their chosen profession.
These are the types who will mostly not graduate beyond "I can admin a server because I know where to point and click" anyways.
Even the simplest of tools, like vi or ssh, are pretty much beyond them.
Wow, what an arrogant, asinine point of view. These are college freshmen that we're talking about here. Yes, there's a good chance that many of them have had no exposure to Linux, since statistically speaking, most college freshmen probably come from households which have only used Windows or Apple PCs. They're majoring in computer science because they want to learn about computers, not because they already know about them, duh.
I'm glad that I didn't have teachers, parents, or friends with this attitude. When I started out as a computer science major, I knew my Commodore 64 in and out, but I had maybe touched an Intel-based PC a handful of times. I was dumb as dirt too, and I didn't know a damn thing about various Unix- or PC-based editors. I was motivated, though, so I came up to speed. Believe it or not, you were dumb as dirt at one point, too. Back when vi and ssh were beyond you (and I'm 100% sure that at one point, they were), how would you have liked it had someone told you that those simple tools were pretty much beyond you, and that you probably would never graduate beyond "I can admin a server because I know where to point and click"? Such comments are completely non-productive, and irrelevant to the submitter's question.
Maybe some of them will drop out of CS. Maybe some of them really don't understand what they're in for and will leave. But then again, I'll bet that there are quite a few who are going to college to learn about stuff they want to know, not more about stuff they already knew. Some will undoubtedly be part of the next generation of people who will make fun of you someday as one of those old fogies who can't keep up with the stuff they're working on.
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they can't learn unless it's fed to them in dribs and drabs, so they aren't really "learning" anything.
It's called "grade inflation" for a reason. Time to put some rules into place, such as "if you don't have basic reading, writing, and math skills, you don't get in."
http://education-portal.com/articles/Grim_Illiteracy_S [education-portal.com]
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don't bother..
That was the case for my introductory csc course; almost everybody already knew linux.
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Not necessarily. I've been trying to find a couple of good, linux-savvy student workers, and they're rare. By the time I hear about them, someone else has generally snagged 'em. I'd have to say maybe 10% of our CS freshmen know enough about Linux to have installed it themselves on a home machine.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They should already know! (Score:5, Interesting)
What good first year students should have difficulty handling is handling their time well enough while they obsessively dig into the computer systems around them. You shouldn't have to teach them about Linux, you should have to teach them about how to lay off the obsessive installing, poking, modifying, developing, etc.
If you have to push them /towards/ computing, they're not going to be any good at computing. They should get into something else quickly.
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You're backing up your "Not necessarily" with any arguments, there. 90% of CS students may turn out to not be any good.
Re:They should already know! (Score:5, Informative)
Really, if they are going to be any good, they will most likely ALREADY know what Linux is and how it works.
If they don't, really, don't bother them with it. It'll just confuse them.
Really, if they are going to be any good, they will most likely ALREADY know what Linux is and how it works.
That's exactly the approach that makes most people who try Linux give up after a very short time. I personally tried it twice and found any problems I encountered making things work had no simple step by step instructions on how to fix.
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That's exactly the approach that makes most people who try Linux give up after a very short time. I personally tried it twice and found any problems I encountered making things work had no simple step by step instructions on how to fix.
Research and independent learning, not everything is going to be spoon fed to you.
Re:They should already know! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a joke, i hope. It sounds elitist and exclusionary. A lot of great hackers are self taught. But, there a many people who learn by seeking the help of of others. There is nothing wrong with that. Who is to say they don't already know what Linux is? Do *you* know what Linux is and how it works? I've been using it for over 12 years, and I sure as heck don't! I still rely on the knowledge of other people to make the best use of the tools I have available. Some might argue that this is what it takes to be "any good".
Re:They should already know! (Score:4, Interesting)
You make a good point. It's not the knowing which is required. It's the wanting to know.
If the student is poking and asking questions, he or she will be good.
If the student is just asking question, without poking, that's a warning sign of a lack of self-confidence. And at 18, that's possibly not going to change that much throughout life, and may indicate a person who's not going to succeed.
If the student expects you to tell him or her everything, and is annoyed at the instructor/materials when things go differently, that's a very bad sign.
If the student only really wants to know what's going to be on the test, that's deadly.
Ten years down the road, you want to work with the first, might put up working with the second, and probably will avoid the third and fourth.
Certainly all this can start at 18, but it's odd, in today's society, where computing information is all around and computers are very cheap, that the exploration process didn't happen earlier. If you have an 18 year old who wants to be in CS and isn't excitedly exploring computing already, unless he or she comes from a family which is dirt-poor or believes that computers are a tool of the devil or ascribes to a strictly no-screens great books sort of education (none of which should necessarily be crippling -- in fact the last /could/ give the 18 year a big leg up), then the student is probably going to fit into one of the latter three categories.
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This is a joke, i hope. It sounds elitist and exclusionary. A lot of great hackers are self taught. But, there a many people who learn by seeking the help of of others. There is nothing wrong with that. Who is to say they don't already know what Linux is? Do *you* know what Linux is and how it works? I've been using it for over 12 years, and I sure as heck don't! I still rely on the knowledge of other people to make the best use of the tools I have available. Some might argue that this is what it takes to be "any good".
Great point. I'd say the thing to do would be to leverage that collaborative spirit.
How about a '100 lines' assignment: Every class, a different student spends 5 minutes demonstrating what they've been able to accomplish with no more than 100 lines of Perl/Python/Ruby/Lisp/Whatever. Make half the mark discretionary based on the enthusiasm shown by the class for that particular hack. The value of the grade doesn't have to be high - just enough to put some stakes in the game. Once people see that a little ing
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Sure. By the time someone is 17 or 18 years old, they either know Linux or they don't. At that age, they've got their lot in life and if they haven't picked up Linux stuff by now, fuck 'em. Damn, you sir are an ignorant asshole.
Or a deep-cover Microsoft salesman.
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You could say the same thing about a programing language. "Either by 18, they know a programing language or they shouldn't be a CS major." The problem is, they may think they know a programing language, which as a CS student was something I saw cause a good many students to fail and leave for an IT major. Maybe their family couldn't afford a computer for them to reformat constantly, maybe no one around to direct them to a distro that was usable. They are not going to college to get a sheet of paper that say
Re:WHAT? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WHAT? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are metallurgists and steel workers, and you're right, seems a lot of people go into cs now to be steel workers. I noticed this even at a school known for cs, many years ago (hmm, and steel too). I'm sure a core of metallurgists will remain though.
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This.
I never really grokked Linux so well until I set up my MythTV box and had to use Gentoo because it was the only distro that had the ridiculously bleeding edge kernels that I needed for the drivers to support my DVB-T tuners.
The setup guide was excellent - it explained the commands you needed to use, and WHY these commands and what they did as well.
The first thing you teach should be how to summon a man page. And encourage that it be read before you issue the command.