Hello everyone,

This e-mail is going out to everyone registered in CSCI 2341
for the fall term, 2025. The enrolment in the course is capped
at 35, and there are only a few spots still open, so now seems
like a good time to send out this message.

As I'm sure you know, the course will be offered online, but you
may not know that we will be using a virtual Linux server as our
development platform, and it's quite different from the Windows
environment within which you have (probably) been working. I hope
you will take the opportunity that this course provides to learn as
much as you can about Linux, and also the Vim editor that you will
see me using throughout the course. If you are going to be any kind
of "computer person" you need to get familiar with Linux, and although
there are other editors available, Vim is very powerful and my personal
recommendation. You will not be able to use NetBeans or any other
similar IDE on the Linux server, and though there are other options such
as connecting to the server from Windows or a Mac with an editor like
Visual Studio Code, working directly on the server with Vim will give you
advantages that the other options will not.

The start of the course is less than two months away, but you still have
lots of time to get familiar with both Linux and Vim, and I highly recommend
that you do so, since that will save you a lot of time later. Again, it is not
necessary, but just a really good idea!

There are, of course, thousands of references to both Linux and Vim on the
web, but here are a couple that you may find useful (search for others if you
don't like these):

https://linuxsurvival.com
https://www.openvim.com/

Whatever time you manage to spend on these this summer you will get back many
times over, not only in our course, but also in your future computing endeavours.

You may also wish to take a look at the course website, for which there is
a link from my home page (https://cs.smu.ca/~porter/), but keep in mind there
may (and likely will) be changes to what you see there before the course begins.

Best regards ... see you in September!
Porter Scobey
CSCI 2341 Instructor