honton (08/19/82)
In regards to Larry Rosenstein's article about Stevens Tech and MIT computer requirements. (sri-unix.2772) I never knew I had an advantage over MIT students! Here at CWRU, we have everyone, including the liberal arts people, take Intro To Computers. Every engineer also has to take Numerical Methods (in APL), EE's take programming structures and computer engineers must take about 25 semester hours of additional hands-on courses. On the other side, almost every social science course has the students using SPSS, Minitab, Gnosis, and other languages on a TOPS-20 system. What I'd like to know is: What is the access given to undergrads at other locations on USENET? What computers are used by other undergrads? reply to ..decvax!cwruecmp!honton thanks, chas
schoff.MINET-FRKEM@BRL@sri-unix (08/21/82)
From: Martin Schoffstall <schoff.MINET-FRKEM@BRL> I just graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), so I can probably inform you of what we did. Every scientist and engineering major at RPI is required to take two (2) introductory computing courses (this entails F77 programming on an IBM3033 and F77+graphics on two PR1ME 750's), at least one course per semester (on the average) includes "hacking" on the IBM or PR1ME (this is for engineers), but if you really want to hack each student is given about 50 hours of computer time per semester on the 3033 (free, whatever that means at $10k a year). This leaves out a number of unattended mini's that are public access to the students. There is also the ACM which owns a Borroughs something-or-other and some micros. There are also a number of micro's bolted to tables in various departments that can be used (all you need is ask). Just as I left they were placing 10 IBM PC's in an open lab netted together sharing a large hard disk with file access to the IBM3033. I as a Computer and Systems Engineer probably had about half my courses hacking on something including: 1. IBM3033 (and its graphics options) 2. PRIME650's and PRIME750's +graphics 3. VAX-750 4. micros: z-80,6800,8080 based. I really don't consider myself a hacker and I really didn't use many of the resources that were there. schoff at bbn-unix