Re: "Hello world!" without a public class?
On 1/6/2013 11:14 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
Arne Vajh?j <arne@vajhoej.dk> writes:
I have seen so many new Java programmers learning BlueJ and then
not being able to do anything, because they did not understand
classpath, what is Java vs what is IDE etc..
The course announcement of my classes announce clearly that
the participants do not need to have programming knowledge
but need to know how to work with the operating system.
However, in reality often they do not know what the meaning
of the PATH environment variable is. Sometimes, they even do
not know how to create a text file, how to edit a text file,
how to use the clipboard to transfer text and so on. So I am
often forced to give a kind of Windows training, but since
the time for the whole beginner's Java course is very small
(about 18 hours), I hate to waste any time teaching Windows
instead of Java, which is also boring for those participants
who already know this.
So, in the next course I will try to use a Java online
compiler for the first steps. No need to setup any software
at all. Just paste or type the code into the web page and
press ?compile?. The participants can do this from home, too.
No need for any preparation. One can start with Java
immediately, which is very good for a course announced as
a Java course, since that's what one is expecting from it.
Someone who has learned the language Java, but not the
meaning of the CLASSPATH environment variable, can learn the
meaning of the CLASSPATH environment variable whenever he
needs it for the first time. Not learning it right from the
start does not impede learning it anytime later.
In theory you are absolutely right.
Getting a good start on OO should be the focus and not the
trivial stuff of getting external jar files added to classpath.
But my practical experience from various help forums is that many
of those BlueJ users never learn the practical stuff and instead
give up on Java.
In that regard it is very similar to those learning PHP and
MySQL by installing one of the popular XAMP packages. They are
up and running in 5 minutes. But when they run into something that
require them to change httpd.conf or php.ini then half of them
give up.
There are obviously caveats:
1) I only know about success rate among those that encounter
problems - I have no way of knowing about how many that do
encounter problems
2) Making is difficult should not be taken too far - having
everybody writing Ada95 code using COPY CON: Foobar.ada
would certainly not be good
If I were to teach Java for an entire semester, then I would
do the first month with a standard editor and command line
build and run to learn them how things work and then switch them
to a standard Java IDE after that (I like Eclipse, but NetBeans
and IntelliJ would certainly do as well) - sure the options
can be a bit scary, but they are on a path they can continue
on and if they need help, then it is a hell lot easier to
get it for Eclipse/NetBeans than for BlueJ.
Arne