Re:Helping my students overcome command-line bullshittery
by recursive on Friday October 10, 2014 @01:07PM
(#8438850)
There is a lot less bullshittery surrounding the acquisition of notebooks and pens than there is around setting up certain software. A ~year ago I decided to set up a rails development environment, having no experience with it or ruby. I assembled a list of repeatable instructions as I went. It took me about two days, and had over 50 steps. If you are experienced with the domain, you could probably do it in 5 minutes, but there is not a good reason why it should require so much specialized knowledge just to get it set up.
Calling out the pains that students go through having to go to a store and pick out a notebook? And the woes and confusion that they experience with faced with the vast and baffling array of colors, paper sizes, page counts, line widths, and so on.
I found the woes outlined in this article to be dubious. This is simply a "first world problem".
On the other hand, I did get a warm-fuzzy feeling regarding my job security, since I am more than comfortable at the command line and further: learning to use tools I have never encountered before.