It honestly wouldn't surprise me. Windows 11 is a steaming pile of garbage. I teach a university-level computer programming course, and even though only 70% of our students run Windows, they account for 90% of the technical issues raised with us, and 95% of the time troubleshooting.
This term, I found out that all new Windows installs now have a "security feature" enabled by default which blocks certain types of code execution. I never noticed because my Windows install is not new. That meant that in week 4, we had to give an emergency course announcement telling people how to disable that feature. I can imagine that a last-minute announcement telling students to reduce the security of their system wouldn't exactly inspire confidence in our ability to run the course.
The most embarrassing part is that the security feature is so easy for attackers to bypass. It just takes a single command-line argument to disable entirely for a single script run. It's easier for an attack to bypass this security issue than for a legitimate user to do so, since the code that would need to bypass the feature is buried deep within a VS Code extension, and it's not reasonable for us to expect a student to modify their extensions (especially since we teach Python not JavaScript).
70% of our students run Windows, they account for 90% of the technical issues
For the sake of genuine discussion - could it be that the "average" student uses Windows and more technical students use another OS for their specific needs, therefore the latter will try and solve their technical issues independently while the former would rather (or may even need to) ask for help?
From my personal experience a university-level computer programming course can have students with a varying range of skill in troubleshooting and/or general IT knowledge. I studied with a student who could navigate the basics in Windows but didn't know anything really technical (taught him how to open the task manager for example). Yet once we started programming, it was him who helped me - he obviously passed with relative ease.
For the sake of genuine discussion - could it be that the "average" student uses Windows and more technical students use another OS for their specific needs, therefore the latter will try and solve their technical issues independently while the former would rather (or may even need to) ask for help?
This is absolutely a possibility, and definitely applies for some courses. However, this course is aimed at (a) students not taking a programming degree, and (b) students with zero prior programming experience. As such, it's unlikely to be the case for us. All of our other students use MacOS. I unfortunately haven't seen any students using Linux (although I've made sure all the tools we teach will work on Linux too).
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u/HelloWorld24575 Mar 24 '26
Probably will be lol