re: Is Java the Problem?

Sam — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:58:51 GMT

"Where are the software engineers of tomorrow?"

India and China. Obviously, you haven't been paying attention. Maybe you should have more high school courses in Mandarin and Project Management. Make sure those future IT workers can create a Gannt chart in Microsoft Project and we should be good to go.

Sample question on a high school computer science test: If it is 3:00 PM in Peoria, what time is it in Bangalore?

re: Is Java the Problem?

Rob Miles — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:02:28 GMT

One of my rules for programming is that "You can write well structured code in any language. And you can write horribly structured code in any language". I think I'm going to have to extend this to "..and you can also give good programming courses using any language and you can give lousy programming courses using any langauge".

The way I see it, the choice of language probably contributes to around 30% of the chances for success of the course. The context, the relevance of the content and (most imporantly) the way it is presented and supported, all make up a much greater proportion.

The most imporant thing that you need to consider is "Why are we teaching this stuff, what will the students use it for?". If you start from there you can decide things like whether and when to teach pointers, what emphasis to place on pre-built code etc etc.

Without a solid context for the teaching there is no point in arguing which language is better for the job.

If you are looking for a strategy to teach what I would call "proper" programming, having done this for a while, I would simply say that you must start with algorithms so you know what computers actually do, and then bring on abstraction, classes and all that stuff as a solution to a problem of organising your data and behaviours.