I have four computers at home: my laptop running windows XP (”chaos“), my file server running windows server 2000 (”loki“), my subversion repository running Slackware 10 (”lucifer“), and my linux tower running Slackware 11 (”amon“). At the school, there are many computers, under many different environments, that I can use. When ever I do any development, I have to be mindful of what environment I am developing on, and I have to take into account some of the different limitations of multiple environments if I want a piece of code to run on multiple machines.
For instance, file names can be an issue if code exists in different places. File systems in Unix use the slash (”/”) and Windows file systems use (”\”). Therefore, I would never use either character in a filename if I am writing code that with exist on multiple machines (more).
When you are at the university, take advantage of the different operating systems and hardware available to you. Occasionally, learning about the disadvantage of one operating system will help you understand the advantages of another (and vice-versa).
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