mulix
Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:06:41 -0700
On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Shlomi Fish wrote: > On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, mulix wrote: > > > On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Nadav Har'El wrote: > > > > > On Mon, Sep 17, 2001, Tzafrir Cohen wrote about "[Haifux] using unix page: early >draft": > > > > In this course the students write two c++ assignments, and one csh > > > > assignment (right, Alon?) > > > > > > Forgive my asking (I guess that everybody here already knows my position on > > > csh ;)), but why is the Technion still teaching csh?? Csh has been considered > > > inferior to almost any alternative (ksh, bash, zsh) for at least a decade... > > > Do they teach csh anywhere else in the world? > > > > the technion teaches csh, i suppose, because by the time most students > > take this course (second semester), the ONLY programming language > > they've seen is, you guessed it, c. [1] > > > > the "common wisdom" says that it's better not to confuse them with a > > different programming language syntax. an interesting trivia peace is > > that the csh assignment is considered by far the easiest in the class, > > and usually takes the least time to complete. > > > > Hello? If C-shell looks like C as much as French looks like English, IMO. > Sure, they use the same alphabet, but knowledge on one language will give > you very little help in understanding the other. if csh is to c as english is to french, bash to c is as english to arabic. nothing alike, syntax-wise. csh at least LOOKS familiar, which sure seems like a lot to a frightened freshman. > I found the bourne shell to have a much better syntax than C-shell, and > found C-shell to be awfully limiting and illogical. I think the Technion > should make students get used to learning a new syntax, because there are > a lot of syntaxes out there. i think the technion should not be teaching c as a first language, but rather c++ or even java. i think (some) technion computer science professors should know what they are talking about even if it is outside their direct area of expertise. i think technion programming excersizes (and tests!) should be more than an excersize in programming trivia. i think a lot of things about the technion's way of teaching, and i've made all of them known to the proper people. did it help? niet. in contrast, i dont mind the technion teaching csh. it's a useful tool. > I think that academic studies should teach something that would prove > useful outside their academic studies. And C-Shell is not useful. I saw > how in an assignment we were given in "Structure of OSes" (of EE), which csh is useful. there are a lot of csh scripts out there (who knows how many of them were written by technion graduates? ;)) bash is useful too. and so is perl. and sed, and awk. and python, my favorite new langauge. what's my point? i dont have one. i'm just rambling. > specifically asked for a C-shell script, two students over-blown their > script just so they can handle directory names with whitespace. Needless > to say, in the bourne shell this is a non-issue which can be easily > solved. there's always a better tool. so what's your point? -- mulix http://www.advogato.com/person/mulix http://www.sf.net/projects/syscalltrack -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://linuxclub.il.eu.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]