Workstation Productivity

[Owen Townend]

>  1) I think not making students submit assignment in one format (.doc for example) will be beneficial. Openoffice formats  (.sxw) are rejected simply because the markers do not think it's part of their job to install openoffice on their box. why?
>

This is strange, are you a recent uni graduate yourself? I ask because
I am currently studying and my experience has been that reports could
be written in anything and had to be submitted basically in a format
that the lecturer could read. Most of the letcturers were open to
installing standard/free software if need be. To me .doc, .sxw, .ppt
etc are formats for authoring, but why would you submit a report in
one when the marker has _no_ need to edit your work? PDF is a format
that is ideally suited to the job and this is what I submitted in.

>  2) When students do coding using different JDK (for example IBM/Open-jdk) and do not wish to use Sun Microsystem's Java, he/she should be allowed to do so and do so without having to to worry whether it may run on marker's box/laptop. Why should student have to chose to do their homework using some particular JDK by some particular software company? If it was a task of essence such as real product, then I can understand but for assignments? come on, gimme a break. Students are there to learn and so should be able to experiment and play around with different compilers of their choice. Same goes for C++ ("MSVC++ on Windows platform"). Why not Gcc or even if proprietary path Icc(x86 is common amongst student's laptop & uni labs and they'll learn thing or two about optimisations)? Gcc-portable builds for windows are already available platform (MingW) and if the markers do not wish to use Linux, then it's their freakin problem. The university pays them to mark it for us. Not the other way around! The onus is on them, not us!

For me this is/was not the case at all:

1st year: Program in Java using command line `javac`. Submission
requirements for the code was that it should be able to be compiled
and run on the Uni's lab PCs (Solaris 9, Sun Java 'javac/java').
2nd year: Program in C, must provide a makefile and again, it should
be able to be compiled and run on the Uni's lab PCs (gcc, make).
3rd year: Program in C++, must provide a makefile, must use subversion
revision control, must be able to be compiled and run on the uni PCs
(g++, svn, make).
4th year: Program in c/c++ and opengl, same reqs as above.

There was no point where I could not program in my own chosen dev
environment using my own tools, I simply had to ensure that ultimately
my work was tested using the tools used by the marker. If I did not
have my own computer then the Uni's labs were there with all necessary
tools available.

>
>  3) Free software that University should recognise should thus be -
>  a) Openoffice.org and PDF(open standard now I think?)
>  b) Gimp
>  c) Makefile (and not some windows msvc++ crap project files!)
>  d) Gcc
>  e) Open-jdk
>  f) Mozilla firefox ("The code should work on Internet Explorer! what a crap!)
>  g) Zim (personal wiki)
>

I'd possibly add Eclipse, gedit, RapidSVN and Pidgin.

Don't forget that these are _authoring_ tools. We were learning the
languages and, more importantly, the concepts and processes. I agree
wholeheartedly that the above kit is a decent set of tools to support
as 'nix alternatives to the currently supported Windows tools. The OP
is asking for help writing a guide to assist users migrating to 'nix
to find equivalent tools and these are fine examples, but ultimately
the choice is up to the end user, same as it is when running Windows.

The problem you bring up of the lecturers and tutors not being capable
of accepting submissions in these formats should be moot. For
programming there are tools provided and they are standards. For
reports the marker shouldn't care what program you used to write it,
in the same way that it doesn't matter if you code in vi or emacs or
notepad or Visual or Eclipse. When making an electronic submission you
should ensure that the person who _wants_ to give you marks is capable
of doing so.

cheers,
Owen.