The Perils of Java Schools

[wtd]

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

[Martin]

TFA wrote:

All the kids who did great in high school writing pong games in BASIC for their Apple II would get to college, take CompSci 101, a data structures course, and when they hit the pointers business their brains would just totally explode, and the next thing you knew, they were majoring in Political Science because law school seemed like a better idea. I've seen all kinds of figures for drop-out rates in CS and they're usually between 40% and 70%. The universities tend to see this as a waste; I think it's just a necessary culling of the people who aren't going to be happy or successful in programming careers.

Yeah, that's me. Shit.

And see? I'm completely justified in enjoying C++.

[wtd]

You don't need to use C++ to deal with pointers.

[Martin]

What language would you recommend? Ruby, perhaps?

[codemage]

I did
1st year = Java / Pascal
2nd year = C / C++
3rd & 4th years = language independent / misc
(which meant C++ for independent work, and usually java for group projects).

[wtd]

Martin wrote:

What language would you recommend? Ruby, perhaps?

If the goal is to teach pointers, and not a broader introduction to programming, then C is perhaps a better match than C++. While it lacks generics which are exceptionally useful for data structures, it's also a far simpler language semantically.

Pascal can also deal with pointers, and is perhaps even more straightforward for use in an educational environment.

codemage wrote:

I did
1st year = Java / Pascal
2nd year = C / C++
3rd & 4th years = language independent / misc
(which meant C++ for independent work, and usually java for group projects).

Have you worked with functional programming languages?

[Andy]

it pisses me off to see newb programmers play around with pointers randomly and finish their projects using tne.. when i started pointers we did it in c++, and if u sucked, you get the BSOD and you have to reboot ur system.. java is spoonfeeding way too much

[rizzix]

Nah not C, Cyclone and D

[wtd]

rizzix wrote:

Nah not C, Cyclone and D

Well, yes... but given the choice between C and C++ alone, C is the simpler language to teach and does just as much to explain how pointers work.

For it's safety, Cyclone is actually likely a bit more complex than C.

[rizzix]

well you don't have to teach them how to use @ and ? (avoid, non-nulls and pointer arithmetic, until more advanced courses)

the * pointer in Cyclone is pretty safe, since it does not allow pointer arithmetic.


edit: actually, maybe just stick to ?... since you have to use them for arrays.. so yea pointer arithmetic.. but at least it has runtime bounds checking... acutally u know what.. nvm.. teach everything.. it's all there for a reason.

[wtd]

Either way, I trust we can agree that understanding pointers is important.

Maybe they're not something you should use much in production code when safer options exist, but just because you shouldn't do something, doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to do it.

[rizzix]

well you definitely need to know how to do it, if you should not be doing it.

[wtd]

Exactly!

[Martin]

Yeah, at my last internship myself and the other student gave each other nicknames. I was Martin "Memory Leak" Kess and he was Eric "Seg Fault" Lai. Good times.

[Hikaru79]

What's really cool is that article links to a page full of downloadable video lectures: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

Look at that first one, wtd A lecture on Lisp! (it even comes with a free copy of the complementary textbook)