Programming in Linux

[Paul King]

Date sent:      	Sat, 28 Feb 2004 16:54:28 -0500
From:           	William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>
To:             	tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
Subject:        	Re: [TLUG]: Programming in Linux
Send reply to:  	tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org

> On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 04:33:27PM -0500, StreetSmart wrote:
> > I'm just interested in learning about the program it self. I herd
> > about it, and it seems cool.
> 
> Then, you heard wrong.  Linux is not cool.  It is in fact excruciatingly
> painful.  It requires years of problem sets, lectures, midterms, and
> exams, just to learn how to use editor and shell properly.  
> 

Well, I wonder how I learned it.

I was completely self-taught before my first programming course (in C/C++) at U 
of T. Before that, my only computer background was in Fortran, BASIC and 
PASCAL. All done through some kind of user-safe "sandbox" they set up. For you 
geeks out there, it was worse than tcsh. Far worse. Basic was on RSTS/E. Anyone 
remember that? The only commands it supported was "dir" and "basic".

I taught myself UNIX in around 1988 by going up to a sysop guy on campus and 
saying "uhhh ... can I have a UNIX account?" (that was before security became 
an issue). And to my luck they even gave me privelages to use the SUN graphics 
terminals instead of those boring VT100s and XL87s. I played with it and taught 
myself how to configure my X environment and to program with pointers. In 
PASCAL.

Paul King
=========================================================
Paul King              http://www3.sympatico.ca/pking123/


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