COP3353: Introduction to UNIX
FSU's one-credit introduction to the shell, taught since 2025 on the existing course framework, with a textbook I wrote for it because the optional ones predate most students.
COP3353 is the course that gets computer science students, and non-majors, onto a UNIX shell for the first time: the history of the system, logging in from any machine, the file system, basic commands, editors (emacs, vi, and pico), processes, and how to find help when the course is over. It is a one-credit course, which means every hour has to earn its place.
I started teaching it in 2025 on the existing course framework, so the design work here was different from CIS3250: not rebuilding the course but making it teachable at a distance and gradeable in volume. There is no required text for the class, and the optional ones are a generation old, so I wrote a textbook for it that follows the course’s own order and stops where the course stops.
Like CIS3250, it is part of the computer science bachelor’s degree and dual-accredited through SACS and ABET.