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Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Teaching UNIX
Message-ID: <371@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Nov-84 12:19:45 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.371
Posted: Thu Nov  8 12:19:45 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Nov-84 07:17:17 EST
References: <88@athena.UUCP>, <640@clyde.UUCP> <625@watdcsu.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 43

> Knowing about Un*x and learning Un*x are two different things.  I strongly
> believe that Un*x is, and will remain, an influential operating system
> in its design concepts.  Any program which does not do even a casual study
> of it in an operating systems course is suspect.  However, sitting down
> and actually using Un*x is not required, or even desired, in some cases.
> Also, the operating systems course should cover OS/360 and its successors,
> if only to learn how things should not be done.  Sitting down at a terminal
> and being able to write and run a program in C is a poor criteria for the
> worth of a computer science program.  
> 
> Herb Chong...
> 
> I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....
> 
> UUCP:  {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!watdcsu!herbie
> CSNET: herbie%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet
> ARPA:  herbie%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
> NETNORTH, BITNET: herbie@watdcs, herbie@watdcsu

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
It is one thing to study an operating system for a few lectures in your
operating systems course, and quite another to use it for long enough to
develop a feel for what you like and don't like about it.  And, I believe
that the instinctive "feel" that a student develops for what methods are
"good" and what ones are "bad" is likely to be reflected in the software
that he/she writes once employed.

If you do all of your programming in Fortran, you are likely to think
about handling problems in a considerably different way than if you have
been exposed to, and USED, the different approaches taken by C or APL
or Lisp or Snobol or Prolog or even Pascal.

I believe that the same applies to systems.  If you have actually USED
UNIX and VM/CMS and RSX and a Macintosh, you will have a much better
idea of how systems can be designed (and mis-designed!) and what choices
are best for the system (or perhaps just user interface) you are building
today.

So, I don't believe that exposure to UNIX or C, per se, are necessary.
But they are good choices as examples of the present technology of
computer science.  So the question to ask is not "why aren't students
exposed to UNIX?", but "if students aren't exposed to UNIX, what better
system are they exposed to instead?".