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Re: CALL FOR LINUX INSTRUCTORS

Dave Michelson
Fri, 02 Oct 1998 16:47:41 -0700

I based the *proposed* course outline on O'Reilly's "Programming with GNU
Software" because it's readily available and can serve as a useful point of
reference in a discussion concerning course content.

I make no claim that it's ideal. However it's attractive because it covers
only essential material and could reasonably serve as a text for a short
course.

Curt Sampson wrote:
>
> This course could be particularly interesting:
>
> On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Dave Michelson wrote:
>
> > 3. Programming with GNU Software (full day?)
>
> My first question would be, who is this aimed at? Beginning
> programmers? Experienced programmers not familiar with Unix?
> Experienced programmers not familiar with GNU software? These make
> a massive difference what the course can cover.

The O'Reilly book is aimed at people who know C (or Fortran, I suppose) but
are unfamilar with the GNU software development environment. The book does
not assume much previous experience with UNIX. It does not cover system
calls and system programming, which would be covered in another course (cf.
O'Reilly's "Using C on a Unix System")

> > GNU Emacs, the legendary text editor
>
> I'm not sure this belongs in a programming course; Emacs may be
> legendary, but that doesn't mean that the vast majority of programmers
> like it, or even use it.

Well, the book is about the GNU software development environment. It's
helpful to know some of the tricks that are available to improve
productivity. For example, how to use emacs as an integrated development
environment. Use of colour highlighting. Etc. There's no reason,
however, that the instructor couldn't talk about vi as well, I suppose.

>
> > The gdb debugger
>
> You may want to cover a graphic front end for this as well.

Sure.

> > RCS, a tool for backing up and maintaining multiple versions of
> > source files
>
> RCS is of very limited utility; I'd suggest covering CVS. RCS is
> not helpful for projects with more than one person working on them,
> or more than one directory full of files.

Well, I'll accept that you find CVS more to your liking. I've worked on
multi-person projects using RCS and had few complaints. In fact, without
RCS, they would have been nightmarish.

Your comments underscore one important fact: The instructors can learn
almost as much from the collaborative effort of putting together a course
as the attendees will from the presentations.

--
Dave Michelson