MIT '07 here. Interesting read, and speaking from my own experience I can kind of see both sides of the issue.
(Also, to be clear, this is about the department that provides the IT infrastructure and tech support to MIT, not the EECS department at MIT.)
I always thought the IT setup at MIT was a little weird. As an MIT student you chose a campus-wide Athena account name. I liked that you could choose anything (mine was the same as my user name here, not just gdurazo or something like that). There were Athena clusters (computer labs) all over campus that you could log into, but it seemed like it ran an old version of some Linux distro, I forget which. You could also ssh in via `athena.dialup.mit.edu`.
But you didn't really need to use it all that often. If a class required Matlab, or something, you would log in to use it, but I don't really remember using it for much more than that.
I can certainly see the argument that IS&T should do more programming - MIT didn't have that great of a scheduling system or framework for classes to host their assignments and lecture notes, etc. So more custom development could definitely help the student and professor experience.
On the other hand, the underlying infrastructure worked great. The internet was fast everywhere, WiFi was fast and open and free, and you could request static IPs and host stuff. It's definitely what you'd expect from MIT. In addition, the tech support was wonderful. A few years after I graduated I remembered a blog I had kept from my athena account, and emailed in to ask if they happened to still have it. They kind of did; they sent me a SQL dump of its contents, which was enough for me.
I hope the outcome of this is MIT provides more web services for students for class registration, scheduling, submitting assignments, etc. But I hope it doesn't gut the fast and free infrastructure that was there and the great and friendly tech support.
> In addition, the tech support was wonderful. A few years after I graduated I remembered a blog I had kept from my athena account, and emailed in to ask if they happened to still have it. They kind of did; they sent me a SQL dump of its contents, which was enough for me.
While it's true that helpdesk at IS&T was all sorts of wonderful prior to the transformation, that particular example wasn't handled by them, but rather by the student volunteers running Scripts (scripts.mit.edu), part of SIPB (sipb.mit.edu). SIPB does get its funding from IS&T, and worked pretty closely with many people there on initiatives ranging from the Scripts platform to the whole Athena operating system.
I don't know if the "fast and free infrastructure" and "friendly tech support" will continue, as it requires the new IS&T to continue supporting the student volunteers.
(Also, to be clear, this is about the department that provides the IT infrastructure and tech support to MIT, not the EECS department at MIT.)
I always thought the IT setup at MIT was a little weird. As an MIT student you chose a campus-wide Athena account name. I liked that you could choose anything (mine was the same as my user name here, not just gdurazo or something like that). There were Athena clusters (computer labs) all over campus that you could log into, but it seemed like it ran an old version of some Linux distro, I forget which. You could also ssh in via `athena.dialup.mit.edu`.
But you didn't really need to use it all that often. If a class required Matlab, or something, you would log in to use it, but I don't really remember using it for much more than that.
I can certainly see the argument that IS&T should do more programming - MIT didn't have that great of a scheduling system or framework for classes to host their assignments and lecture notes, etc. So more custom development could definitely help the student and professor experience.
On the other hand, the underlying infrastructure worked great. The internet was fast everywhere, WiFi was fast and open and free, and you could request static IPs and host stuff. It's definitely what you'd expect from MIT. In addition, the tech support was wonderful. A few years after I graduated I remembered a blog I had kept from my athena account, and emailed in to ask if they happened to still have it. They kind of did; they sent me a SQL dump of its contents, which was enough for me.
I hope the outcome of this is MIT provides more web services for students for class registration, scheduling, submitting assignments, etc. But I hope it doesn't gut the fast and free infrastructure that was there and the great and friendly tech support.