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Discord is required for my uni classes ๐ ๐ฎโ๐จ
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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libre
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Welcome to libre
A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.
The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.
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- Free Software, Free Society provides an excellent primer in the origins and theory around free software and the GNU Project, the pioneers of the Free Software Movement.
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$CURRENT_YEAR, flock to Linux Mint!; Apple Silicon users will want to check out Asahi Linux.
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- Avoid using misleading terms/speading misinformation: Here's a great article about what those words are. In short, try to avoid parroting common Techbro lingo and topics.
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I originally was going to major in computer science but unbeknownst to any of the freshmen, almost the entire CS department got poached by another school the summer before. So you had a bunch of inexperienced professors and even more student teachers, along with this fuckwad boomer who came out of retirement but didn't really want to teach. The department head was a smart guy, but he had only finished his doctorate three or four years before I got into college.
Anywho, you had a bunch of students who had no place being in CS and wanted to skirt by like they did in high school then get a six figure job immediately after graduation. Even worse, because the department had only a handful of experienced professors, there wasn't any quality control.
As an example, one of the TAs who was supposed to be grading program submissions was just slapping on As to any program that compiled and didn't seg fault. So you had people submitting Hello World with a menu for a program that was supposed to sort a tree of linked lists and passing classes with flying colors they should have failed. These should have been graded by professors, but some of them were teaching four to six classes each term.
I remember one class I submitted basically nothing except documentation for the final program because I got bogged down in my other classes. The TA's grade came back and said the program did everything it was supposed to. Motherfucker, there was no program. I was willing to bite the bullet and get like 15/100 because my grade in that class was fine and I had other classes I needed to devote more time to.
Sorry I'm rambling. My point is I was one of like 10 people in the freshman class of 70ish who was doing well in all my classes. As I got to upper division, the students who had been passed when they shouldn't have got absolutely fucked as the department started sorting its shit out and getting real teachers. They basically knew nothing and we were over halfway through our degree.
Everything was still a mess, though, and I realized I didn't enjoy what I was doing the way I did in high school. Trying to dodge sketchy professors each term felt like I was wasting money. I switched my major to painting and printmaking, deciding I would just have three minors in math, physics, and computer science. >!I ended up dropping out of college with 5/6ths of my degree due to depression and surviving a suicide attempt that left me disabled.!<
Our main professor just got tenure so they couldn't get rid of him and he basically checked out after that. In order to pass his class you just had to show up and turn in something. He gave B's to broken uncomplilable code. He gave A's to compliance code that had even the remotest of functionality. I found out 2 years ago at my last job that pretty much no one took programmers from that school with a CIS degree. I worked with 3 people who graduated from the same school with CS degrees, including my boss. To put it bluntly, I was mediocre lol.