Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

On Sun, 23 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

This is very interesting! What was it that the student thought was crazy
complicated compared with git?

>
Not compared to git.  They did not get to see git.  They just hated
fossil to the point of almost giving up on the whole course altogether.
Very likely they knew that other courses would give them the same
credits and they could try it afresh on the next semester.

Ahh, got it! Yes, sadly this happens to me as well. At the slightest hint of
difficulty or effort, about 20% of the class riots, complains to the school that
the teacher is evil, that the difficulty level should be lowered etc. They do
not realize, that the only ones they are cheating by doing that are themselves.
The sad thing is that business owners (including myself) have noted a dramatic
drop in skill from graduates over the past 3-4 years. One reason is that the
government has changed the funding of the schools, rewarding schools that pass
all students. So of course, the schools pass all students, since it means more
money for them (they are paid by the government upon graduation) and you get the
situation where awful students graduate, and now, where companies no longer hire
them.
Usually in order to buck the trend somewhat, I make my first course more
difficult in order to get rid of the unmotivated ones. If I don't have the first
course of the semester, the following 1-2 are pure hell, since the bad ones
remain and complain about everything, but after 1-2 semesters they usually quit.
It is just sad that I could not make them realize this after 3 weeks, and
instead they waste 1-2 semesters. But such is life.

I don't have much information.  The command line seemed an awful
experience to them.  I suspect that they thought that the command line
was archaic means of system interface and that perhaps it was just a
teacher idiosyncrasy.
>
This experience gave me the following feeling---they ask for real-world,
pratical experience, but they're not up to an introduction to the tools
used in the real-world.

True. But from time to time it is fun to see when they really "get" the
terminal. It's such an eye opening experience for them, and they, themselves
become completely amazed at what they can do with a computer all of a sudden!
One guy told me he had no idea and it was amazing the day he understood the
terminal concept. He went on to become a rock star! Those students are what
makes it worth it for me.

I have taught classes with git (basics) and at the end of the day,
regardless of if you use git or fossil, it just requires a few simple
commands to get started at the basic level (we were not discussing
rebasing and huge software projects).

>
I think it boils down to a lot more because these are compouter users
that even ``environment variable'' is a never-seen concept.  I watched
them opening a c:\> prompt on their Windows system, slowlying typing up
their very long path to their project, say, and then doing it again on
the next class---paths with spaces and other complicated symbols.

Haha, yes... I think I have to tell them about ls, cd, pwd etc. about 30-40
times before they finally start to remember what it is. ;)