[Haifux] Student complaints.

[Nadav Har'El]

On Mon, Feb 02, 2009, Dotan Cohen wrote about "Re: [Haifux] Student complaints.":
> > CAD/CAM for linux:> http://www.haifux.org/lectures/159/>
> Orr, there is nothing that even comes close to competing withSolidworks. Moving students from Solidworks to anything that runs onLinux would be like removing MS Office and giving them Ed.

I want to be clear on one thing - everything I said I said under the
assumption is that we're talking about students whose goal is to learn
*software development* - programming, operating systems, and so on.
For these students, I explained why I believe that Linux is a great
educational device, and also a very useful and practical tool.

I never said that people for whom the main use of a computer is to run
a specific engineering tool available only for Windows will benefit from
Linux, any more than a doctor will benefit if the computer he types patient
records on will be switched from Windows with doctor-specific software, to
Linux with Emacs.

Sure, even students whose main needs are programming have secondary needs
like viewing movies (of lectures? really? :-)), reading Internet sites,
and writing documents, and these needs should be met, and there is no reason
for Linux not to be able to. But students that have a completely different
main need? Students whose basic premise is that only one specific Windows-only
software can meet that need? Well, sorry, Linux is not for you.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Tuesday, Feb  3 2009, 9 Shevat 5769
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
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