Re: Teaching Java, teaching what?
On 12/8/2013 11:00 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
Many Java classes and Java books teach Java foundations and
then Java OOP to finally be able to show how Swing can be
used to create programs that look like beginners expect
programs to look like, i.e., they do not write some text to
an old-fashioned text console, but run as a GUI windows.
But then, I hear everywhere: ?Java on the Desktop is dead.?.
Now I asked myself: Is it wrong to teach how to write Java
desktop applications in a class (using Swing)? After all,
you do not want to waste the time of the students by
teaching them something that is ?dead??
Java on the desktop has not died - it never lived.
:-)
But I don't think it matters.
You students need to learn OOP and Java programming.
Creating desktop Java applications is fine for that.
JSF web apps, JAX-RS web services with non-Java frontend,
Spring MVC web apps, GWT etc. may be more common than
Java desktop apps, but I think they are less suited to learn
OOP and Java.
And Java desktop skills are not wasted:
* such apps do get written - maybe not as state of the art
commercial applications but still a lot of utility apps - and
even though maybe 90% of Java developers work in the Java EE
world, then my guess is that 95% of Java developers know how to
write a Java desktop app
* it is easier to learn writing desktop application sin another
language after having learned about it in Java - all the stuff
about event thread etc. also exist in other technologies
Arne