[m463]

I actually think that free software is an excellent choice for a classroom because not only can the students examine how everything works, they can take a copy home with them and modify it.

I wish I had had that opportunity when I studied computer science, because my tools were treated as a sort of "magical black box" with no visibility.

The programs we wrote in class were toy programs, and there was no sort of "reality check" for how our editor or compiler or any other tool was actually written.