Two things I wish my alma mater had NOT taught me
Posted : June 18, 2004 at 12:15 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
If you’ve ever done schooling in States, chances are you know what Pine and Pico is. I have nothing against these softwares. In fact, I think they’re both extremely well written softwares. The problem is, they’re are really meant for students or folks who really don’t want to be on a Unix system, but have to for one reason or another. In other words, they’re truly meant for rookies.
I went to ASU to come out as an IT professional, which I did, thank you very much. However, there are times when I fervently wish that at the time I had started school, someone would have pulled me aside and said - “Son, you need to stay away from Pico and Pine. They are for students majoring in Arts or Communications, not would-be IT professionals. Try Vim as your text editor and Mutt as your email client. You will be glad you did.” 
Since I had no such angel whispering in my ears, I am starting the switch now. Pine to Mutt has been a breeze. Vim, well, it might be a while before I can say I have nailed it.
Here’s the moral of the story:
Be wise about what you decide to learn. Take a moment to make sure that it will all be worth your while.
Note:
Didn’t mean to pick on Arts or Communications majors. Could not think of any other group that would be a better fit in making my point
- Anand
Category: Services and Software
4 Comments
My undergrad they said “to edit a file, type ‘vi’ and hit return” and gave us a double-sided sheet of paper explaining how vi worked. It was actually a great way to learn it.
Pine, I have no real problem with, but I used ‘elm’ cause someone told me it was better than ‘mail’.
Posted by: Dave at June 18, 2004 @ 12:36 pm
Exactly how are vi’s or Vim’s strengths over Pine relevant to IT professionals or developers? If you can’t put it on your resume or tout it as a skill, then it isn’t worth losing sleep over. Frankly all those people who say “Oh, I use vi/emacs to do all my Java code” are just showoffs who wouldn’t win any accolades for the quality of their code. For what its worth, I use an IDE for my code. Thats cuz software development for me is a profession, not a hobby.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2004 @ 1:57 pm
My anonymous friend:
Not everything in the world is learnt for Java programming or for putting things on your resume. In fact, I don’t think my post ever said anything about Java programming at all.
Frankly, in IT profession, it’s all about:
a. Being knowledgable about your subject and
b. Being smart and productive.
Any IT professional ought to be smart and productive in what he/she does. If you spend time on Unix, you cannot NOT know vim/emacs and claim that you’re a power user.
As for putting stuff on your resume, you might never put unix shell programming on it either. However, knowing it will certainly help you be a smarter and more productive user of Unix.
Hope this clarifies things a bit..:-)
Posted by: Anand Sharma at June 18, 2004 @ 2:48 pm
Dave:
Good for you, my friend.
I don’t think I have problems with Pine either except that Pine does not work at all with Maildir formatted mailbox. Plus, Mutt is a bazillion times more configurable than Pine.
Posted by: Anand Sharma at June 18, 2004 @ 2:51 pm