Women in Technology

Article:		SSS (Small, Simple, Safe)
Subject:		learning a tool != learning a language || learning to program
Date:		2004-05-27 02:27:15
From:		jwenting
And yet another approach to teach students to use a tool or IDE instead of learning to program.

Showing messages 1 through 1 of 1.

• learning a tool != learning a language || learning to program
  2004-06-03 02:31:49  Eyler [View]
  
  
  Learning Java has three rather independent aspects:
  1. Java syntax
  2. OO concepts: classes and objects
  3. Java class library (API)
  
  BlueJ is wonderful in the first two, but it does not supply much help for mastering the API. Small-Simple-Safe (SSS) is another approach, complementary to BlueJ, which bypasses Java syntax
  altogether, and concentrates on the last two aspects.
  
  It allows the student to invoke methods (lightning-fast) without writing any code.
  It allows the instructor to write scripts that automate the invocation sequence to teach a certain topic.
  
  I still encourage my students to use BlueJ, but once the program is written, they inspect their objects with SSS.