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From: eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Teaching UNIX
Message-ID: <632@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 19:54:46 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.632
Posted: Fri Nov  9 19:54:46 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Nov-84 20:01:00 EST
References: <88@athena.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 37

> We are in (dubiously) good company in teaching UNIX to undergrads:
. . .
> now, with the computer industry as it is, I'd "wonder" about an
> undergraduate program which did not include any study of UNIX or closely
> related system.  I'd discount the program until they convinced me that
> they really did have a good replacement.
> 
> Rik Smoody

Hi Rik, long time no hear, no see.  Friends from Caltech and SB say hi.

I wonder this, too.  As many know, California has a three tiered high education
system: community colleges, state universities (name change care of Ron Raygun,
without any addition of funds), and the UC system.  I have been consulting
recently with members of the Cal State system.  None of the local CSUs are
running UNIX.  They can't afford to, nor do the local community colleges
in Silicon Valley.  I think those of us in know about UNIX are shielded.
At the CSUs, the CSUs can't pay the money for a full-time UNIX person, so
they have to use RSTS-E with DEC support.  Two local CCs have donated
HP and Tandem machines and they don't have the support either.  Both have C
programming language classes, but can you imagine learning C without a
compiler at your school?  They are (maybe if you have a home PC as many Si
Vallees do, you can play with C.  Similarly with a local Ada class.

Most of these people attending the lower tiers are more concerned about
BASIC, COBOL, some Ada, MS/DOS [or PC/DOS] (read: get a job) than about UNIX.
Many of the others are running MVT/MVS, EXEC*1100 and so on.  Ideally,
[certainly?], the principles of operating systems should be independent
and transferable between different OSes, but when you have to grovel in the
assembly language, forget!  I suspect some of these universities are in
bed with IBM and Univac or their profs were involved with development, or
they are unwilling to learn UNIX.

--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Res. Ctr.
  {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,vortex}!ames!aurora!eugene
  emiya@ames-vmsb.ARPA