> I'm pretty sure that, as an undergraduate, had I never seriously used a computer command line before, there is no way I could have gotten through that course.
I'm very well familiar with the firehose :-) But mechanical engineering there, for example, did not require anything more than 1.) The ability to get into MIT and 2.) The normal high school curriculum. It didn't require years of experience in stripping down engines and rebuilding them. and, OK, 3.) Dealing with the firehose. :-)