[plug] Starting in Windows not Unix

[Christian]

Leon Brooks wrote:

> > and most have been dealing with Windows at home for years.
> 
> So in other words, they are exploring only known territory. How
> educational is this? I follow Abraham Licoln's idea that "if you know
> what you're doing, you're not learning anything."

When I said "dealing" I actually mean "using normal applications" and
not assembly language programming.  I thought this was obvious from the
context -- sorry.  By starting with something they know (normal Windows
usage) and basing something new on top of this (assembly language
programming) they are going to learn much more than dropping them in the
deep-end with Unix.

> > Secondly, and more
> > importantly from a teaching perspective, the assumption that the program
> > owns the machine is actually quite a useful one.  Having the
> > power/freedom to do anything on the machine at a low level allows the
> > student to learn more than they would be able to otherwise
> 
> No, it doesn't. With the Unix machine you have the option of su if you
> want to be reckless. Recklessness is built in to the winDOS machine.
> It's the only option; in other words, it _reduces_ your choices.

Will programs running with root privilege not receive SIGSEGV?  I would
have thought they would... If not then there are still numerous
problems: teaching them Unix, setting up Unix machines, convincing the
department to give 100 1st year students root access on department
machines......

> Also, if you stuff up in a protected environment (read: not winDOS), you
> get a nice error message and a core-file to examine, rather than a
> locked machine, few clues, and possibly a trashed disk.

If root does indeed have no protection then this isn't true.  If root is
protected like normal users then this was my very original point why
Unix machines would have been blatantly no good for this situation!

> In the case of Linux and (Free|Open|Net)BSD, you also have the advantage
> of being able to personally inspect the code that does the things you're
> learning about, often together with informed comments about why it was
> done that way. Since the source is to hand, you can modify existing
> *working* code to see what effect it has.

For people who were only just learning C, looking through operating
system source code is hardly going to be educational.  Besides, this
would have had nothing to do with the course -- yet another reason why
Windows was chosen.

I think you need to accept Leon that there's a time for advocacy and
there's a time for accepting reality.  This is one of the latter times. 
There are situations where either Unix is unwieldy choice or Windows is
simply a much better one.  This was certainly one of those times. 

Regards,

Christian.

-- 
Love is staying up all night with a sick child, or a healthy adult.