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MATTHEW BROWNING wrote:
I have spoken to some `key personnel' around here about these policies and the general answer seems to be that it is the responsibility of a University to provide experience of a real world computing environment to its students.
Funny I thought it was the responsibility of Universities to educate, and foster discussion, and development of new ideas, but then I was at Uni a long time ago ;) Their is little point in my opinion in trying to educate people about current technology at University. I learnt a lot about DOS at University, and just before I left they deployed Windows 3.0 (IIRC) all over the place, okay DOS was briefly useful to me at work before 3.11 was deployed, but the Unix stuff I learnt whilst "visiting" the computers at City University has been far more useful to my career. Similarly I was taught Fortran 77 (Hi, Mr Duller), but reading Knuth's Algorithmns, and (some of) the Art of Computer Programming, left me stuff which is still relevant tucked away in my memory. Of course seeing as it was a maths degree I was probably suppose to be concentrating on the efficient LU decomposition of matrices, but we always used NAG for that in anger, rather than the IT side. The real issue here is psychology. People are comfortable with Windows, even though it may give them some pain, they think they understand it as they have used it. People don't make decisions rationally, they do what they feel comfortable doing. At the UK Meteorological Office, some of the most successful and radical IT ideas were those that could evolve. The Intranet was deployed early and became very functional, because free webserver software made it possible to do without spending tax payers money, and thus without senior management committing themselves to something they didn't understand. Similarly the way to break barriers in other organisations is to solve real problems. The web proxy is a good example, it solved the problem cheaply and quickly, management like that, and they won't worry about the HOW, if it is executed efficiently, and doesn't become an issue. Of course the cynical might say Universities should teach students to use the technology they will encounter in business, not the technology business is using today. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.