After seeing sophomore/junior CSC/EE majors struggle with "ls" and "cd", I'm confident that the above command is beyond the capabilities of most of the e115 students, particularly those who aren't inclined towards programming.

I agree with Kyle that e115 is not supposed to teach programming except in the most basic and limited sense. The Excel stuff isn't supposed to be watered-down programming- the goal is to teach that specific tool because a very large number of people use Excel's programming features in their jobs.

I think a more firm and lasting introduction to Linux is in order. Many students encounter *nix systems throughout their courses and career, but have long-since forgotten how to use them. I think making sure students understand basic cd/ls/pwd etc. commands and text editing on Linux is a critical minimum. Basic shell scripting would be a good thing too- a friend has recounted to me how he and his project partner spent an entire weekend running a couple thousand test cases by hand for an ECE course because they didn't know that it was possible to make Bash loop instructions and parse their output. These guys are intelligent and technically capable, but wasted a lot of time because their basic engineering courses didn't introduce them to a critical shell concept.

I question whether the HTML segment of e115 should remain. I'd imagine most people won't use HTML again, or of they do, they'll pick it up on their own. The short time devoted to the existing HTML segment of the course doesn't allow (either at all, or insufficiently) for the instruction of modern web programming concepts like CSS, Javascript, databases, or back-end programming. A web programming education that leaves students thinking that 1995 web programming techniques are the correct (or only) way to make a website is not really an education. Between the poor quality of the segment and my perceived lack of utility of the skill, I suggest cutting it out of the curriculum.

-Brian