Re: Money Program Does Linux

["C.Lamb" <nospam [at] sheffield.ac.uk>]

Richard wrote:
> 
> Yes, I had thought about that myself :-)  But we live in a day and 
> age when *really* geeky programs are not required.  We have to 
> produce MS look alike programs or throw the stuff away.

Au contraire. I don't mind the MS look and feel, but the geeky 
programmes will continue. Waaaay back i needed a free FEM programme -
with no graphical interface. The best of the best was Tochnog (look 
it up, it's really good) released under GPL. Looking at the source it 
used some Linux specific code and so the world of free U*ix beckoned.
The marginal stuff (in terms of appeal) will almost always be done on 
free unices (the OS is free, the dev tools are free and there are a 
wealth of licensing schemes available (GPL, LGPL, BSD, Perl style 
- choose your religion) to protect your intellectual rights).
> 
> I'd like to see more academic programs to do with IT or medicine or 
> physics or chemistry be seen more often in the Linux community.  But, 
> we haven't got a group of people who can produce a windows-like HE 
> educational project in five minutes in the way that the windoze HE 
> community can.  Educational software is a way forward to the future ? 
>  Our children will see it and think of their own ideas ?

Principally because it doesn't take 5 mins to produce s/w - Windows 
or otherwise. I've been working on a single piece of s/w for the last 
2 years and it isn't remotely ready for release and yes, it is 
HE s/w.

It would be a very good piece of software that could inspire ideas,
and a very exceptional student. There's nothing like hands on 
experience to inspire and most (all?) educational s/w I have seen is 
insipid at best (mine may or may not be excluded from this category 
:)). Just a bald presentation of imprecise facts with a dancing 
rabbit to appeal to the under 5s. Just thinking about some of it and 
the Education minister saying more children should use IT makes me 
very afraid of bringing children up in a country with such a 
technologically naive government.

> 
> I know that if I want to learn something very quickly then all I have 
> to do is approach a HE group who are working on multimedia software 
> that is aimed at a degree level audience.  How will the Linux 
> community deal with this ?
>
I still use dead tree. There are very few educational packages 
dealing with shear induced changes in erythrocytes :) Most times I 
write the dead tree myself.


Chris
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