[geeks] Mac definitions

[Lionel Peterson]

I never said they couldn't/wouldn't gain from learning Solaris, I mentioned
'motive' - in my area, high school kids cobble together high-end graphics
adapters with quad-core host systems and multi-Gigs of RAM boxes and put
windows on it to play games. The few kids that program either dream of writing
an 'app' for a smart phone or a game, most likely for a game console. Web site
development is a given, but geared towards tweaking social media sites, not a
lot of 'from scratch' programming.

Classical programming appeals to some, but not the majority of computer users
- but this is an effect of the broad user base of computers, approaching
ubiquity. I assume the same proportion of people are interested in 'classical'
programming in society as a whole, but they no longer are a significant
portion of computer users - again, because the user-base exploded.

Sorry for wandering off for a moment - bottom-line, I suspect an increasing
majority of college kids are going to college to study computers having never
spent any real time on anything other than a Mac or a PC, and they don't think
they are missing anything.

When I was in high school I used a Basic Four minicomputer until the school
burned down, then we had TRS-80s and Apple ]['s. In college I used DEC
Professional, CP/M, Prime, and a Mac at home. Then I worked on Mainframes (IBM
MVS), AT&T Unix, Solaris, MS-DOS, and Windows 3.1. Then I became a user of
computers, not an admin/programmer/operator. Those days are gone...

Lionel

On Jul 10, 2011, at 2:37 AM, Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> wrote:

>>> There is little motive for today's hobbyist to trouble himself to
>>> learn Solaris at home.  [...]
>> I disagree.   Learning different systems gets you to think about
>> things more abstractly than what you see in a single operating
>> system.  This prepares you for learning new ones when they arrive.
>
> Yes...but that's something that few people realize until they have that
> experience.