Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 04:28:45 -0500 From: W Gerald Hicks <wghicks@bellsouth.net> To: sue@welearn.com.au Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: desktop stupidity Message-ID: <19990202042845R.wghicks@wghicks.bellsouth.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 2 Feb 1999 18:57:13 %2B1100" <19990202185713.43112@welearn.com.au> References: <19990202185713.43112@welearn.com.au>
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Thanks for the reminders Sue. I agree that most people who are interested in FreeBSD *do* want to learn or they wouldn't be here knocking. You're probably right assuming that they have, for the most part, a more inquisitive nature than the 'average citizen'. I feel very strongly that it is important to help a brand new beginner feel comfortable with discovery through exploration. To do this, I also feel it is necessary to teach them the basics of how to save, change, and then restore things. This lends confidence and usually enhances their progress. For these reasons my approach to teaching Unix has most often been the traditional one, discussing Unix history and developing proficiency in areas that are important to Unix. (I've taught regular expressions to a second grader successfully). I do feel it is important to learn how to handle the shell, mostly for navigation at first, and how to use some editor - even 'ed' if there is nothing else available. Otherwise, it is extremely difficult to communicate answers to problems that inevitably will crop up. These skills are *not* beyond the grasp of most people, even very young ones, if the interest is there. They are valuable skills too, despite what M$ or others are saying. It's nothing that happens overnight, but I can count several hundreds of successes after almost eighteen years of involvement with Unix. Quite a few have gone on to very successful careers using these skills we developed together. Not all of them are programmers either. Cheers, Jerry Hicks wghicks@bellsouth.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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