Month #1 at CS University. We write C on the terminal, with nano. No vi no ide no highlighting. Neither makefile is allowed. Professors don't know what git is.

I am pissed off.

Makes you appreciate all we have now don't it?

@projektaquarius Sure thing. But after the first hour, it's tiring and refactoring nearly impossible. I also think that it's not the best way to teach new students how to code.

Damn, can you not even use Emacs? Or MobaXterm to ssh in and use stfp to open it in Notepad++ or something?

I fucking love nano thanks for reminding me

But why? It doesn't make sense to drive a Model T just so I know how a car works.

@saintograph It's the kind of professor who used internet before I was born :P

@zarkopafilis I'm one of them. It was so hard to find corn back then.

@saintograph corn?

@tisaconundrum Yes, corn. With a dial-up ;)

@saintograph well then respect to you sir but no reason to teach us binary addition on the first semester

@zarkopafilis I only recently became an engineer. I understand your pain.

At least you've got a terminal... I still have some notebooks full of code from my first semester. And OMG my professor was such a debugger, she could spot a missing ; from miles away!

I wonder why uni professors are so resistant to modern software development practices.

@gggggggggg some of it is cuz they're old or have been out of the industry for too long or never have been. Some are trying to teach legitimate lessons (had a prof that would give zeros on assignments if you didn't use his horrible undocumented code). Some want to teach you how stuff works under the hood.
IMO most professors don't teach CS right because they don't teach actual programming skill and most students don't learn CS right because rather than wanting to learn programming skill they want to learn languages.

Ehh, if I was you I'd be using Git anyway.

C is a horrible language to start with IMO, the raw difficulty itself can be a major turnoff.

@alertJS that's why it's a weed out class.

I learned first month with pen and paper. Consider yourself lucky

My experience with computer science is that its math, and math programming.... Only business logic. No model, no views..

*Month 0

Wax on, wax off. You have to learn the basic skills before you can kick some ass.

IDEs and resharper are great, but you if you don't understand how to even do the minor stuff manually, it makes you no different than the "developer" that took a 4-week crash course and now thinks they can make real software.

The university I go to uses visual basic to teach programming... they are switching to c# next semester,(so I've heard)

@alertJS actually I started with C and really enjoyed it. But I know that a lot of the students struggled with it.
On the other hand, having to write software on paper and "run" it in your head really make it better to understand what was going on. We even had tests on paper, oh boy it was a pain when a line had to be splitted in 2, hard way to learn how not to extend it too much!

If it makes you any happier, they tell us to use turbo C on DosBox! I keep a codeblocks zip in a pendrive with me so i could just copy it and use it.

y u no nano syntax hilight? Count as cheating?

Sometimes it feels like uni uses some courses to teach hidden subjects. Like here they probably want you to learn nano and the command line. Both valuable assets when you start working and managing servers.

At least thinking like that helped me when we had stupid requirements like that :)

I always code like that. I really prefer nano to vim, and never learned how to make makefiles...

Teaching with C is ok, in fact I think it's a great language to start with, it gives you a better idea of how things work under the hood.
But forcing beginner students to use vim/nano is messed up. Let them use gedit for a couple weeks, don't fuck with their heads by teaching two hard things to master(C and vim) at the same time.

Just use emacs + evil mode on your local computer -- no one will be able to tell how the c source was edited.

Big problem with modern development is dependency on your tools. If a builder's hammer breaks, they can improvise. Use a brick; use a different hammer; shit use their hands if it's soft enough. That's because they understand the hammers part in the system. If the builders car breaks down because their head gasket blows, they're screwed because they have no idea where that thing fits into the system. It's a harsh way to teach, but it's certainly valid.

@ChrisCooney the point is valid but becomes moot in the context of makefile and vim rather than GUIs or ides like eclipse. Makefiles are merely intelligent terminal execution tasks whose basics are not that abstract. One does not use a screwdriver for industrial work alone merely to obtain the hardcore status, they use a drill, not because they can't use a screwdriver but because it doesn't make sense in the context of the amount of work one must get through.

Is it more important for a student to get through their work, or to understand it deeply?

Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.

-George Bernard Shaw