You are definitely right that they are not comfortable in the command line. They do get exposed to it quite a bit in the curriculum, but not prior to the Java class. I have been using Vagrant in the senior class, and quite a few of the students end up installing Linux for RoR dev. It might be too much for the sophomores however.
Or it may not be too much. My whole university year was required to use some
unix variant starting with the first semester, where we learned C (so add
memory management and pointers arithmetic to things to learn, and I didn't
even start with mathematics we were taught at the same time; computer usage
was not the only totally new subject for us).
Of course I agree that it's not an insignificant load. Learning how to write
programs at all is difficult enough, and what I propose is just adding
learning new environment on top of it. On the other hand, a shell server with
compilers and editors already installed may be a good start. This way students
get stable environment which already works, so they can focus on learning how
to use it instead of struggling with administering it.
Comments
You are definitely right that they are not comfortable in the command line. They do get exposed to it quite a bit in the curriculum, but not prior to the Java class. I have been using Vagrant in the senior class, and quite a few of the students end up installing Linux for RoR dev. It might be too much for the sophomores however.
Or it may not be too much. My whole university year was required to use some unix variant starting with the first semester, where we learned C (so add memory management and pointers arithmetic to things to learn, and I didn't even start with mathematics we were taught at the same time; computer usage was not the only totally new subject for us).
Of course I agree that it's not an insignificant load. Learning how to write programs at all is difficult enough, and what I propose is just adding learning new environment on top of it. On the other hand, a shell server with compilers and editors already installed may be a good start. This way students get stable environment which already works, so they can focus on learning how to use it instead of struggling with administering it.