[nzlug] University of Auckland - Installfest

[Simon Bridge]

On Mon, 2007-03-12 at 23:04 +1300, Dominic Scheirlinck wrote:
> On 12/03/07, Simon Bridge <corwin at ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > To be fair, the university will be a tough nut to crack. CompSci is
> > heavily java based and they just lurve their windows machines. The
> > forums are all full of how soon they can get vista and which version.
> > Talk about linux and FS/OSS there and folk have been known to actually
> > run away, though most smile absently and tune out.
> 
> Coincidentally, today was the UoA's "Microsoft Installation Festival
> 2007" - in which the "Microsoft Academic Team" visit compsci classes,
> indoctrinat...I mean, talk to the students, demo software and give out
> free-beer copies of Visual Studio and the like.

So perhaps someone like Novell would like to do something similar?

> 
> Applications programming is now taught with reference to .NET and
> Office, not Java, so it's pretty much impossible to pass without a
> copy of Visual Studio. Assignments, labs, tutorials, tests are all
> done in it.
> 
<sigh> I think I preferred the java emphasis.

> On the other hand, the systems stuff is taught with reference to GCC
> alone - albeit with the implicit understanding that you're using
> Cygwin. It also seemed to introduce most of the class to their first
> taste of SSH. There's a definite UNIX flavour to those courses, which
> is nice and traditional in that context I guess.

There used to be some real unix fanatics on the compsci staff back when
I learned programming (1987, vax assembly - yummy - and lightspeed
pascal on mac classics: all algorithmic, not a class to be seen.) I
wonder what happened.