I was a ling-lang major, and I fondly remember us all having the usual Windows and Mac fare. The professor told us for our Intro to Programming Course (all in

I was a ling-lang major, and I fondly remember us all having the usual Windows and Mac fare. The professor told us for our Intro to Programming Course (all in C++ mind, you terrible first choice) that we needed to SSH into a Solaris box and compile with GCC (or g++ rather). Failure to compile with that, regardless of compiling with MSVC, Borland, or anything else was a 0. I am so glad he forced me/us. He spent a day explaining Makefiles and their power, mentioning some people make their living fixing those up and paying attention could potentially help you out. That summer, I finally started using Linux, for personal interest, and I was so glad that class allowed to compile my own device drivers (back when wifi cards were still a novel PITA) and understand the basics of what was happening. Good times.