Re: [tlug] Running without Gnome/KDE/xfce/whatever. (was: Ubuntu 16.04-LTS Japanese Text Input)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Raymond Wan writes:

 > Hmmmm, I haven't looked into Watts Humphrey's work.   I'll try to read
 > a bit of it -- thanks!

I think you'll enjoy the PSP books.  Humphrey's writing is dryer than
Brooks, but given that it's about time management for professionals I
hope you can forgive that.

 > Well, you might as well add Hong Kong to that list.  It might reflect
 > a bit on China since this city's tertiary education is increasingly
 > looking to mainland China for students.  No doubt the universities
 > here are adjusting their curriculums gradually to fit the needs of the
 > students there.

Both are quite true of the University of Tsukuba!  

 > > Ahem, that's why you should hang out in LUGs and FLOSS projects, on
 > > company time if possible.  That's where you meet people who can
 > > connect you with people!
 > 
 > Yes...well, the LUGs in Hong Kong tend to use Chinese as language of
 > communication -- something I'm not very good at.  Of course, if a
 > non-Chinese speaker walked in, they'd probably be kind enough to
 > switch to English, but that makes you feel you ought to leave.

Surely they have nomikais?  Buy some drinks to lessen your guilt
feelings.  Also, you don't have to go every time, but you do want to
bring a liberal supply of business cards, and a list of the problems
you wish somebody competent would take a look at. ;-)  Remember, the
point is to meet people, not necessarily to learn stuff.  Start by
introducing yourself to the organizers and letting them know that if
somebody wants to practice English (or any other languages you know
;-) you're happy to help, but you're there for the people and will
deal with Chinese as you have to.  Learning something (a bit of
Chinese? I wish I had time to study Chinese and Korean!) would be
icing on the cake as the saying goes.

 > I do wonder if a systems-level course (i.e., OS or networking)
 > could be taught effectively using something like Python.

An introductory-level course for non-specialists could be taught using
something like Python.  And of course higher-level networking (HTTP,
Web 2.0 APIs) are often written in Python.  But stuff like routers and
virtual memory and inter-process communication, that's all about the
interaction between very low-level data structures and optimized
code.  Students would probably rebel if you tried to teach a course
for majors in those languages.

 > At least one in HK seems to use Windows for most of the
 > undergraduate curriculum...I was a bit surprised...

"curriculum" == "CS curriculum", or undergrads in general?  Windows
programming remains a key to employability for programmers everywhere,
I think.  So universities with a vo-tech orientation for a lot of
their undergrads will use a lot of Windows.  And general business IT
is built on Office and IE ... (and Google Docs, which does its best to
convince you that it's Office...).  An absolute must for anybody who's
going to get a job outside of server admin or cloud development.  So,
we're kinda stuck with Windows in education for the foreseeable
future, I think.

Steve