Article:		Rethinking the Java Curriculum: Goodbye, HelloWorld!
Subject:		Don't have them write the whole app
Date:		2002-08-21 12:33:20
From:		cmoyer
Well, a simple way to avoid the "main" issue and present them with something interesting to do is to provide them with a harness for objects they create. Perhaps the instructors provides aquarium.class and fish.class. Then the students simply write myfish.java which inherits from fish and pass it to the aquarium. The fish can react to events OnFood(), OnTapOnTank(), etc...

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• couldn't agree more
  2002-08-22 07:28:59  dscotson [View]
  
  
  This is important both pedagogically and for real world experience. How often do you sit down and write entire apps from scratch? Surely extending, enhancing, incorporating and fixing(!) existing code are all essential skills to be learnt by any coder.
  
  Robocode (robocode.alphaworks.ibm.com) where java classes compete battlebots-style has the right idea. Unfortunately the current implementation encourages many bad habits and introduces too many concepts tangential to basic programming skills.
  
  Something simpler like Logo in Java would let students learn basic concepts while making pretty pictures - far more stimulating feedback than standard out provides.
  
  Utilizing XP principles you can create self-marking activities with JUnit. The students must make each test pass in sequence giving immediate feedback and breaking tasks up into manageable chunks.
• couldn't agree more
  2002-08-23 11:35:01  tomhunt [View]
  
  
  Guy Haas put together a java curriculum for our middle school, Longfellow Arts & Technology Middle School in Berkeley, CA. He has a large part of Logo as a Turtle Graphics java class. See: http://www.bfoit.org/Intro_to_Programming/index.html
• Coincidence
  2002-08-22 21:54:30  trajano [View]
  
  
  Actually my intro class did use something like Logo for Pascal (that was my generation still). We didn't have to do anything like knowing how to code with XLib and such just pascal with a drawing head.
  
  Though I have to admit it was the toughest assignment I ever had in university considering that it was my first assignment. Everything else was simpler in comparison after that.