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Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

nora.codes

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Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#81

Post by gentleman11 »

dvt wrote: post #5

> ... it insulates the student from the javac command line program, and the command line environment itself Such a misguided article. The Java language has (quite literally) nothing to do with `javac`. In fact, there's a lot of other compilers out there. Taking a Java class should not focus on the intricacies and weirdness of Java compiler command line interfaces. It seems pretty amateurish to argue in favor of it. C…

As a former student who had to use eclipse, I think the ide dramatically slowed my understanding of what was actuay happening in my projects. A command line and a few commands however really makes things simple and clear.

The only thing you need an ide for is autocomplete and refactoring, and in a small project like you have in school, it’s simpler to use a text editor imho and you can fully understand your project that way too

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#82

Post by asveikau »

dvt wrote: post #5

> ... it insulates the student from the javac command line program, and the command line environment itself Such a misguided article. The Java language has (quite literally) nothing to do with `javac`. In fact, there's a lot of other compilers out there. Taking a Java class should not focus on the intricacies and weirdness of Java compiler command line interfaces. It seems pretty amateurish to argue in favor of it. C…

The thing is, early in their study, students are learning that compilers exist at the same time that they are learning a language. They should become familiar with a compiler, and in the case of Java that it generates class files, that they pass them to a JVM, to inform them of the state of the art of tooling architecture, or even to help them imagine that they could change some pieces or swap them out.

Using the tools directly serves to re-enforce all these concepts.

They can get to know other tools for that same language like in your Borland example, sure. But if you didn't know the compiler existed, you would be in trouble. And in C you will also want to understand the preprocessor and linker.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#84

Post by rubber_duck »

shawnz wrote: post #71
dahfizz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. A lot of my peers in college were very bright and could write great code, but they were absolutely useless as developers because they didn't know any tooling. They couldn't compile, run, test, or source control their code if the professor didn't set it up for them. Yes, tools change, but the knowledge from one tool is almost always transferable. Once you're comfortable on the CLI and understand t…

I agree that many developers are not very adept with tooling, but is that because they don't use the CLI? Or is it just that they aren't interested in those parts of software engineering? Eclipse is a tool too, and not a simple one either.

IDEs are convenience layers, compilers are essential abstractions - if you don't know how it works underneath the GUI layer you will get stuck really fast and won't be able to troubleshoot when you eventually run in to inevitable problems with IDE, build, compiler.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#85

Post by vips7L »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #62

I can't help but feel like this article is less a condemnation of IDEs in introductory teaching and more a condemnation of java in introductory teaching. It feels like the use of Eclipse or IntelliJ in intro CS courses is so common in large part because Java has such relatively complex tooling and language conventions. I've never seen someone intro Python with an IDE, because it's extremely easy to use Python without…

I don't see how java tooling is any more complex than any other language, they all have learning curves. Even Python has complexities around venv, requirements, pipfile etc. C's tooling in particular is probably the worst. You have to learn the compiler, the linker, or a 3rd party tool like cmake or meson.

Using an IDE in Java is a choice just like picking PyCharm is for python.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#86

Post by oreally »

erdos4d wrote: post #21

Wait, I shouldn't make students learn the tool they will be forced to use when they get a job? Um, no.

Always good to get students to dig deeper, even if it's for their initial 1st/2nd semester, and especially if they're going to be programming long term. But ofc let them have the freedom to choose afterwards.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#87

Post by vips7L »

bcruddy wrote: post #77

I feel like people upvoted this because it said don't use eclipse but didn't read the article. Now I'm questioning my sanity - given a choice, do professional developers choose to use eclipse? The question is somewhat loaded given the previous statement based on my own biases but I've never written java professionally so excuse my ignorance.

Most java devs use intellij. But the eclipse language server powers the vs-code plugin for java. It's quite good and it's what I use personally.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#88

Post by mr_toad »

lonelappde wrote: post #76

This article is a confused mess with no point. Sure it would be nice to teach students everything at first. But that's obviously impossible.

People often forget how few hours go into a typical university paper.

It’s not unlikely that a programmer with a full-time job could put in more hours in just one month than a student would for an entire introduction to programming paper.

It’s unrealistic to expect to be able to cover all aspects of programming in such a short time.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#89

Post by ineedasername »

Honestly I wasn't aware that current curriculums used any sort of advanced IDE's.

When I took courses in the late 90's & early 00's, from assembly, c++, java and python the focus was on minimal text editors and command line compile, link etc. Though for python, Idle was promoted, but that's pretty bare bones relatively speaking.

I wasn't aware that a shift away from basics had occurred.

Re: Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

#90

Post by bcruddy »

vips7L wrote: post #87
bcruddy wrote: post #77

I feel like people upvoted this because it said don't use eclipse but didn't read the article. Now I'm questioning my sanity - given a choice, do professional developers choose to use eclipse? The question is somewhat loaded given the previous statement based on my own biases but I've never written java professionally so excuse my ignorance.

Most java devs use intellij. But the eclipse language server powers the vs-code plugin for java. It's quite good and it's what I use personally.

Totally makes sense as a plugin - I love vscode for both golang and javascript. The IDE itself seems clunky but I'm not against IDEs themselves.
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