[haileris]

Good as a primer for those that aren't naturally hackers but decided to become computer science majors and have little to no experience with a unix-like operating system.

I learned Linux, the shell, basic scripting, and the terminal environment in high school out of necessity and then began to thoroughly enjoy it. Planning to enter university as a CS student I took the time to learn Vim, though I didn't start using it regularly until much later.

I can't exactly articulate why, but I'm fairly upset these sorts of things comprise an entire course. What happened to RTFM? Where is the general curiosity? Even if you have no prior experience with a majority of these things, these are the kinds of things you figure out over the weekend while doing your regular courseload.

[gowld]

Why is Compilers an entire course? Databases? Operation Systems? All of these topics are covered in books you can read.

[HPsquared]

It's kind of like a special class to teach engineering students about all the features on their graphing calculator.