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Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

nora.codes

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Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#251

Post by lazulicurio »

sullyj3 wrote: post #242
lazulicurio wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel that way a few years ago, but my opinion has shifted over time. C# has its own issues with verbosity and bloat. For example, although I appreciate the readability increase from overloaded comparison operators, it's a lot of boilerplate to write a class that implements IEquatable and IComparable and overloads all of the related operators.

Check out Rust and Haskell, both have the ability to derive the interfaces/traits/typeclasses for equality and comparison automatically.

Discovering Rust is actually one of the stepping stones that led me to my "this shouldn't be this hard" moment!

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#252

Post by Nightshaxx »

lwf wrote: post #104
Nightshaxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the article is the very concept that the compiler and the Java runtime environment are not the same thing (which an IDE obfuscates to some extent) is what he wants students to learn early on. (And details like that). This leads into a lot of important concepts around how programming languages are seen by the computer.

> what he wants students to learn early on The author, Leonora Tindall, is a woman.

whooooppsss

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#253

Post by Nightshaxx »

dvt wrote: post #37
Nightshaxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the article is the very concept that the compiler and the Java runtime environment are not the same thing (which an IDE obfuscates to some extent) is what he wants students to learn early on. (And details like that). This leads into a lot of important concepts around how programming languages are seen by the computer.

> ... how programming languages are seen by the computer Learning a programming language has nothing to do with how it's seen by a computer. That's a different class (a class on compilers, maybe). You can even turn Java into Javascript if you want to[1]. The fact that the compilation/transpilation flow here is Java -> Java Bytecode -> JS is meaningless in the context of learning Java. [1] https://github.com/google/j2…

You have completely missed the author's point. The issue is not "how can we help students learn to code" the issue is "how can we help students understand the systems that they are coding on since that affects how they code"

Knowing Java runs in a VM very much affects how you have to code. Sure, when you are learning in a 100/200 level class it doesn't, but by the time you graduate if you don't understand the implications, that is bad. Why not make a very simple change early on that gives context for students later on? We shouldn't be teaching students that Java runs in a virtual machine in a 200/300 level class, by that time we should have moved on to why that matters.

Forcing students to continually use java/javac will make them start learning the concepts on how a computer actually processes their program. It makes them think a bit more about it and the concepts are not foreign when they learn it in a full class. The IDE just turns the whole process into a single button with little context.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#254

Post by Nightshaxx »

Nightshaxx wrote: post #253
dvt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... how programming languages are seen by the computer Learning a programming language has nothing to do with how it's seen by a computer. That's a different class (a class on compilers, maybe). You can even turn Java into Javascript if you want to[1]. The fact that the compilation/transpilation flow here is Java -> Java Bytecode -> JS is meaningless in the context of learning Java. [1] https://github.com/google/j2…

You have completely missed the author's point. The issue is not "how can we help students learn to code" the issue is "how can we help students understand the systems that they are coding on since that affects how they code" Knowing Java runs in a VM very much affects how you have to code. Sure, when you are learning in a 100/200 level class it doesn't, but by the time you graduate if you don't understand the implica…

It is a way better way of learning the concept through practice, rather than having students memorize it for a multiple choice section on an exam, then forget it.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#255

Post by haskal »

lwf wrote: post #104
Nightshaxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the article is the very concept that the compiler and the Java runtime environment are not the same thing (which an IDE obfuscates to some extent) is what he wants students to learn early on. (And details like that). This leads into a lot of important concepts around how programming languages are seen by the computer.

> what he wants students to learn early on The author, Leonora Tindall, is a woman.

Was the gender of the person specifically mentioned on the website? I couldn't find it.
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