This story doesn't have any real point, except maybe to say that knowing your way around a shell is up to the arbitrary whims of your university's administration and lecturers.
The only class I took that touched on anything practical for the working world was “programming for scientists and engineers”, CME211 I think? And most people only took it because it counted for grad level math credits.
I switched majors so didn’t have any freshman courses; I certainly hope they taught people how to use the system. You couldn’t pass a class, let alone graduate, without being able to use UNIX.
There were a few side benefits to this setup. First, it allowed you to use the Sun pizza boxes in the engineering admin building, which were insanely powerful (back then). Second, it meant you could use any computer lab on campus, because they all had terminal emulators installed. So while the average student waiting in line for an open Windows PC, you could go down the hall and sit down at a Mac in a lab that had maybe two other people in it. Third, you could submit all your print jobs to the service center in the basement of the math building, where they’d collated, staple, whatever you wanted and then put it in a mailbox for you to collect at your own convenience, rather than deal with the clown show at the printers in all the Windows computer labs.
Good times
Good times indeed!
As far as I've seen, basic linux skills are taught if not required in the CS programs of colleges of any reputation or stature.
