Re: Teaching Java, teaching what?
On 09.12.2013 16:06, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
On 12/08/2013 01:30 PM, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
Depends on what the class is meant to teach. If the point is
to teach GUI or event-driven programming and the students
already have experience with Java from earlier courses, fair
enough. If the point is to teach general programming or the
Java programming language, I think time and effort could
be invested a lot more wisely than teaching Swing.
I'll add this: we're talking about teaching _programmers_, not users of
an application. Hence the comments about wanting to present a GUI rather
than a text console are not really relevant. A working software
developer is going to be looking at text console output and log files a
lot, and maybe debugger displays...regardless of what the user interface
is. So that's what you accustom your students to.
But then again there is the motivational effect: seeing something
visually in a graphical UI can be much more rewarding than some
characters on a console - at least for some. On that grounds I would
not totally dismiss teaching Swing - even if event based programming or
user interfaces is not the primary goal of the lesson. Some care should
be applied to not focus too much on the Swing side then, e.g. by
providing some framework or application where learners fill in certain
parts.
Kind regards
robert