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From: Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:34:22 -0300
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> 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.

Such is life. :)

>>> 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. ;)

Oh, yes, memory is another thing I notice.  Not only students, but
teachers, too; I'm known as having a superb memory or something.  Truth
is, though, it's their memory that is not doing very well.