Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

nora.codes

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 255 posts

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#161

Post by bokwoon »

ardit33 wrote: post #119
0_gravitas wrote: post #115

I think a better alternative would be "Don't Make Students Use Java", I seriously can't think of a worse language for training beginner/intermediate programmers, I certainly wish my schooling experience consisted of something else. From day one you're introduced to magic on top of magic: "Open up and click 'new project' and name it 'MyProj' and now click on the file in the side menu that says 'MyProj' and inside `pub…

for very beginners, yes... Java is not the right programing language to teach. (I'd say Python is). But for intermediate/advanced classes I think Java is a must learn for every CS graduate. 1. While it is bloated, it has so many modern and not so modern concepts into it, that learning it makes you understand those concepts better. (eg: It is hard to understand Generics if your favorite language doesn't have them) 2.…

It’s kind of embarrassing but I didn’t understand generics from my beginner CS course (taught in Java). It wasn’t actively tested on either. I only began to appreciate it when I took an online MOOC in OCaml on a whim.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#162

Post by therealdrag0 »

closeparen wrote: post #145
chii wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re teaching Java you should be teaching Maven no you shouldn't, because the premise is invalid. A university student shouldn't be "learning java". They should be learning programming, and theory of computing (and algorithms etc), and perhaps use java as the language. None of this requires maven, build tools or any tool chains beyond some unit testing framework (and GUI framework if displays are necessary). D…

CS students should be learning those fundamentals by programming , and so they should be taught enough tooling to program without tripping over themselves all the time. Programming without a build system, a version control system, or a reasonably intelligent editor is unnecessarily difficult and gets in the way of the concepts being taught.

It’s also a pretty decent representation of stuff they will be expected to learn and deal with on the job. I can’t imagine programming without dependency/build tools, and yet I also often struggle with them. It seems dishonest and impractical to me to only focus on core concepts. Students should also be exposed to real life!

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#163

Post by therealdrag0 »

Animats wrote: post #151

"Software Build Processes" is now a field in its own right. There's not just a compiler. There's a build process, a dependency manager, a package manager, a source control system, tools for updating the files those use, etc. It used to be just "make", but now each language has some kind of package management system. Crates, wheels, eggs, containers, boxes inside of boxes - it's complicated. This is all trade-school s…

I disagree that knowledge doesn’t transfer much. The commands don’t but the concepts do. I cut my teeth on Maven, then later was able to pick up a JavaScrip build system, and lately had to pick up a SBT. And I think my knowledge or at least wisdom has compounded. And those previous battles seem to have given me an upper hand or context that other coworkers sometimes lack.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#164

Post by ethbro »

mumblemumble wrote: post #128
atomicpuffin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is great for exactly that reason. It gives students an introduction to compilation, runtimes, stacks and heaps etc. Perhaps you had a poor learning experience due to who/what was teaching you rather than Java? My second comp sci course in college (first if you count high school AP credits), taught me all of this, and prepared me for the "full details" of MIPS and C.

My main complaint about Java as a pedagogical language is that it's just so big, with so many complexities around semantics, compilation, runtimes, etc. So my fear is you end up spending as much time learning Java as you do learning how to build software. I wouldn't choose C# or C++, either. My sense, from working with others who came out of CS programs that relied on Java, is that they end up only really knowing how…

Pass by reference / pass by value is so syntactically batshit insane in Java that it shouldn't even be considered as an intro language option.

And before someone points out that, actually-technically, Java is always pass by value, I will pre-retort that reference-as-value isn't an argument we should ever be having about an intro programming language.

Either teach a systems language with unambiguous pointers, or teach something that abstracts consistently.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#165

Post by grecy »

matwood wrote: post #126
0_gravitas wrote: post #115

I think a better alternative would be "Don't Make Students Use Java", I seriously can't think of a worse language for training beginner/intermediate programmers, I certainly wish my schooling experience consisted of something else. From day one you're introduced to magic on top of magic: "Open up and click 'new project' and name it 'MyProj' and now click on the file in the side menu that says 'MyProj' and inside `pub…

Seems like your complaint is against using IDEs early on and not Java. It's been awhile since my undergrad, but we used Java and text editor. We compiled with javac and ran the jars from the CLI.

Same.

It wasn't until the final year of my 4 year Software Engineering degree I used an IDE for the first time (Eclipse, actually) and I was totally disoriented, not understanding how all the magic was happening.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#166

Post by ethbro »

dralley wrote: post #134
atomicpuffin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is great for exactly that reason. It gives students an introduction to compilation, runtimes, stacks and heaps etc. Perhaps you had a poor learning experience due to who/what was teaching you rather than Java? My second comp sci course in college (first if you count high school AP credits), taught me all of this, and prepared me for the "full details" of MIPS and C.

The point is, it's a terrible first language because it's impossible to actually understand what's going on even in a basic "hello world" program until halfway through the semester. So inevitably you have to start them off by saying "here's a bunch of noise that you don't understand, but that's OK, just copy and paste it" which is a terrible habit to reinforce. You need to understand * access modifiers (public/privat…

> "here's a bunch of noise that you don't understand, but that's OK, just copy and paste it"

Sounds like excellent training for a long and successful career in enterprise Java.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#167

Post by chii »

closeparen wrote: post #145
chii wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re teaching Java you should be teaching Maven no you shouldn't, because the premise is invalid. A university student shouldn't be "learning java". They should be learning programming, and theory of computing (and algorithms etc), and perhaps use java as the language. None of this requires maven, build tools or any tool chains beyond some unit testing framework (and GUI framework if displays are necessary). D…

CS students should be learning those fundamentals by programming , and so they should be taught enough tooling to program without tripping over themselves all the time. Programming without a build system, a version control system, or a reasonably intelligent editor is unnecessarily difficult and gets in the way of the concepts being taught.

> Programming without a build system, a version control system, or a reasonably intelligent editor is unnecessarily difficult and gets in the way of the concepts being taught.

Programming with a build system, with a vcs and/or an editor with intellisense features will unnecessarily burden the student with learning these extra things. vanilla java, taught using a pure text editor (like pico, or notepad++, that has a simplistic syntax highlighting), and make sure the students type out their own imports, etc, is going to teach them more basics.

Until the day you need to build actual working software to ship to people, there's no need for a build system, and until they need to work in groups, there's no need for VCS. And until they start writing something _very_ complex, like a full game using many libraries, they don't need intellisense.

Most CS exercises fit in one class. And when it comes time to design something reasonably complex, the student would've learnt all the fundamentals (like 6 months in), and can move to using an IDE with little issue. And then when group projects come, the students can learn VCS as it makes group work simpler. But till then, showering the first year student with these tooling is just noise.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#168

Post by kyriakos »

0_gravitas wrote: post #115

I think a better alternative would be "Don't Make Students Use Java", I seriously can't think of a worse language for training beginner/intermediate programmers, I certainly wish my schooling experience consisted of something else. From day one you're introduced to magic on top of magic: "Open up and click 'new project' and name it 'MyProj' and now click on the file in the side menu that says 'MyProj' and inside `pub…

I disagree with this as much as I dislike java I believe its a great language to teach someone object oriented programming. And you don't really need and ide at all, any text editor will do and will probably take away the complexity of learning the UI and help concentrate on what actual programming is. An IDE is really not needed to write your first algorithms as a student.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#169

Post by kick »

bokwoon wrote: post #161
ardit33 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for very beginners, yes... Java is not the right programing language to teach. (I'd say Python is). But for intermediate/advanced classes I think Java is a must learn for every CS graduate. 1. While it is bloated, it has so many modern and not so modern concepts into it, that learning it makes you understand those concepts better. (eg: It is hard to understand Generics if your favorite language doesn't have them) 2.…

It’s kind of embarrassing but I didn’t understand generics from my beginner CS course (taught in Java). It wasn’t actively tested on either. I only began to appreciate it when I took an online MOOC in OCaml on a whim.

Generics in Java were poorly-handled and almost universally considered to be a mistake.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#170

Post by shawnz »

NoraCodes wrote: post #137
shawnz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but regardless of if they're exposed to a CLI, they will be exposed to tooling. Why is GUI tooling less likely to spark that interest?

GUI tooling almost entirely uses the command line layers under the hood, so it is strictly more complicated while hiding more of the real process - the worst of both worlds. My point about Git is an example of this. Teaching Git is hard, partly because Git's command line UX is bad, but layering the complexity of, e.g., EGIT on top doesn't really remove most of that and makes it harder to teach (because expressing wha…

EGit doesn't call the git command line application, it uses a Java implementation of git. Although I can agree it's debatable whether they have improved on the command line interface or not.
Post reply on HN