Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> writes:
That means there are teenagers trying to learn Java who have no idea
what a formal grammar is, or how it works.
In my first Java programming classes for a general audience at
an evening school for adults, I started out to teach EBNF first.
But now I have given up on this, because it confused the people.
Sometimes, EBNF productions were confused with Java source code
and were written into the program! But even if this would not
happen, it costs time to teach EBNF, which is then lacking for
Java in those relatively short-time classes. If I would have to
give classes with more than 100 hours, I might start to teach
EBNF first. But my classes usually have about 18 hours for the
beginner class (plus about 12 - 18 hours for an optional
continuation class, the ?advanced course?).
programming language learning. How much time are the students able and
causing confusion. For example, teach enough Java to write a very simple