[luau] ics412: operating systems

Ronnie T Livingston rlivings at hawaii.edu
Mon Sep 30 10:55:00 PDT 2002


A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.  -Unknown

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Charles Lockhart wrote:

> remarks about Linux to date, except for this recent statement that he's
> thinking (going to?) partially (completely?) switch the course back to
> the emulator because Linux programming seems to hard for the students,
> who I guess only have one sophomore level course in C programming?
>

I think a lot of students tend to gripe a lot and maybe get there way.  I
am also taking the 412 class and I remember Pat mentioning early on that
he was going to give each student 3 opportunities to take a quiz and the
final score you receive would be given to you.  I liked this Idea because
then I wouldn't be stuck on quizes, taking it over and over until I
receive the 34 passing score, unfortunately that is not the case.


> the geography of UH is part of the problem.  UH is definitely an
> "off-campus" school, as compared to most other college/universities that
> I know of.  Most of the students *seem * (I have no factual basis for
> this, just from meeting people I've gotten this impression) to be from
> Oahu, and at the end of the "school day" they go home or do other
> things.  At other U's, you have a majority of students who aren't from
> the surrounding area, and are basically stuck on campus.  This tends to
> breed a more academic culture made up of kids who get into their field
> of study a lot more, particularly in the comp-sci/EE area, where they
> experiment and play around with stuff a lot.   Just my take on it though.
>
> -Charles
>

This is a good point and there are many a time where I wished that I lived
on campus and didn't have to work.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.

As a side note, I am one of the students who has done poorly on the second
project.  I'm sure it has a lot to do with me working but I suspect that
it has more to do with me being a poor programmer.  I doubt I will move to
using the Java simulated OS because I would probably struggle just as much
there as I am struggling using C.  I have only recently figured out
that I will probably not look for programming jobs when I graduate
due to this fact.

I have known people who can sit down without any reference material
and code in multiple languages, this just boggles my mind.  I love to program
and spend much of my free time doing so but I doubt I could compete with
these type of programmers in the real world.

sorry to digress,
-Ronnie




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