Had dinner tonight with an old friend and he works for a telecom company as a Senior Architect. What he stated is that the kids that have been hired by his company straight out of college are not prepared for the rigors of what he is working with, i.e. they only know Windows and do not know Mac or Linux. The reason: all of the heavier software development is using Sun's Solaris or Linux as their OS of choice and Windows is not capable of doing the things that they do. So it seems to him that the colleges are dumbing down the Computer Science degrees in favor of Windows "usability" rather than the harder aspects of using UNIX versions such as Mac OS X and Linux.
Is this article Toronto high school expels Linux lab you find the same thing happening. But what is interesting is that it seems that schools are cowtowing to the students rather than teacing what the real world is expecting based on this comment: "Worthy, however, said that the Linux lab was more Montgomery’s project than what the students wanted."
Since when are the students running the schools?
But, on the other hand, take a look at what others schools are using: this School Successes article states that Linux is being used more and more to offer those that Windows is priced them out of getting "connected' with the rest of the world.
What you find interesting is that when you look at what Apple has done at Apple Education you find some stark similarities between what Macs and Linux are doing together. They both are UNIX "compatible" if you learned on one or the other.
Is flash of the OS more important than the function?
Your thoughts?
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3 comments:
Kevin,
You are so right, I was somewhat surprised when my new company informed me that is is policy to not offer ongoing support contracts to those who insist on running Oracle on Windows. They will however take on a project to migrate them to a Linux platform.
-Scott
Scott,
I'm glad you stated that the "those who INSIST on running Oracle on Windows" (my emphais added) really means that they believe they are getting the cheapest product when in reality it's one of the most expensive.
Thanks
Kevin
Here's a post from a Linux User's group I belong to:
"I'm in college right now. Our Computer Science program teaches "alternative OSes" very heavily (literally including everything out there from SunOS to Unix to Mac to Windows; we even have a Linux lab, though access is limited), as well as teaching several programming languages in the mandatory curriculum. Grouping "all college kids" into some arbitrary stereotype is a very bad idea. Your friend either made, or led you into, a generalization that is clearly based on limited exposure to the "college kid" population. Frankly, if any colleges are cutting back on their OS exposure initiatives, then those colleges are just appealing to the masses -- Windows is, after all, the dominant OS. Regardless, my college isn't in that group.
On a final note on this subject: There's no accounting for slackers. In other words, if someone graduates my college -- with all that exposure -- by barely paying attention and sliding by, that person might seem uneducated or inexperienced. That's not the college's fault and is certainly not a good measure of the rest of his/her classmates."
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