Interests:^_^~
ask me if u wana kno =D Expertise:dragon techniques....and other various things....
=D Occupation:Computer related Industry:Computers (Software)
Java is not what students need to learn, its what the unis are teaching. It is what the industry expects students to have learnt at uni true, but industry doesn't care for knowledge acquisition, they care for productivity and immediate utility of the graduate.
Academia is about learning, and more importantly, about learning how to learn. A complete beginner aiming to learn how to program ought to learn how to think like a computer scientist. That is hard enough for most, without the added difficulty of learning language constructs that have no real bearing on their learning outcomes.
Let me give an example:
in java, the simplest program you can write is a hello world console program. Check out how many parts there are to it that is irrelevent to a beginner, which, if not explained, may mystify, but if explained, will take too much time and leave less for the actual important learning.
package mypackage; public class HelloWorldApp { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello World!"); } }
for the line
package mypackage;
what is a package? why do they exist? do i need to have it? (teacher answers 'no, its not mandatory'). But then why dont you leave it out?(teacher answers 'its good practise'). But then why is it not mandatory then if its good practise? (teacher sighs and goes into a long talk about java best practise, by which time the lesson ends).
for the line
public class HelloWorldApp
what is a public class? (teacher answers public means the class's visibility, while class means this begins a class declaration). What is visibility? (teacher answers visibility indicates what other classes can 'see' this class)But i only have one class, what other classes?(teacher answers you'll see later in the course you'd have many classes). But you haven't told me what a class is? (teacher answers ...mumble mumble... omitted due to space constraints)
for the line
public static void main(String[] args)
I see the public again, that must mean visibility right? What about the static, what does that mean, why do i put that here and not in one after the 'public' before 'class'? (teacher answers static means this method is tied to the class itself and not the instance of the class). but all the methods are written inside this class, otherwise the compiler doesnt compile it, what is an instance? (teacher answers instance is an object that is created from the class, i ll go into that later in the course, its too much to explain right now). OK...(listens away unsatisfied).
for the line
System.out.println("Hello World!");
What is Systems? (teacher answers it is an automatically imported class that belong to java.lang, and it contains many static methods that are of use). What about the '.out'? why is there a dot there? what is out? (teacher answers the '.' means many things, but here, it means to obtain the 'out' property of the class System and return a reference to it). Reference, got it – so the '.println' is a property of the out? (teacher answer not quite, println() is a method of the class PrintStream, of which 'out' is one). PrintStream? So like System it is automatically imported...but why can i say System.out.println() and not PrintStream.println()? (teacher answers ... mumble mumble... omitted due to space constraints)
Time for my prayers: Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck! May all 0ur base someday be belong to you! May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn heaven. Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe. And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz, just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us. Please don't give us root access on some poor d00d'z box when we're too pissed off to think about what's right and wrong, and if you could keep the fbi off our backs, we'd appreciate it. For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever, 4m3n.
