A brand new Java course

R

Rhino

tom der rapper said:
Hi!
I have found an interersting Java Course on the internet which is based on
the bock How to think like a computer science. Just have a lokk on this
page! the link is:
http://www.vias.org/javacourse/

I don't think it is quite correct to call this a course; it's more of a
lecture on Java programming concepts and techniques. In my opinion, a course
has exercises that the student is supposed to do and solutions should be
provided so that the student knows if they have the correct solution. The
material at the link does not appear to have any exercises at all.

The chapter on Object-oriented programming seems very weak to me.
Inheritance is mentioned very briefly and many of the other key OO concepts
like encapsulation and overloading don't see to get mentioned at all.
Failing to teach a prospective Java programmer about OO concepts almost
guarantees that the person will not write proper OO code. That makes this
material a very poor choice, in my opinion.

Also, the material is awkward to navigate. There are no "next" or "previous"
page links so I always have to click the back button in my browser to go
back to the index, then, select the next page I want to read. If the index
and the rest of the material were all on the same page, that wouldn't be a
problem but the designer of the site apparently chose not to do that.

Just my two cents worth....

Rhino
 
T

tom der rapper

Rhino said:
I don't think it is quite correct to call this a course; it's more of a
lecture on Java programming concepts and techniques. In my opinion, a
course has exercises that the student is supposed to do and solutions
should be provided so that the student knows if they have the correct
solution. The material at the link does not appear to have any exercises
at all.

The chapter on Object-oriented programming seems very weak to me.
Inheritance is mentioned very briefly and many of the other key OO
concepts like encapsulation and overloading don't see to get mentioned at
all. Failing to teach a prospective Java programmer about OO concepts
almost guarantees that the person will not write proper OO code. That
makes this material a very poor choice, in my opinion.

Also, the material is awkward to navigate. There are no "next" or
"previous" page links so I always have to click the back button in my
browser to go back to the index, then, select the next page I want to
read. If the index and the rest of the material were all on the same page,
that wouldn't be a problem but the designer of the site apparently chose
not to do that.

Just my two cents worth....

Rhino

You wrote: There are no "next" or "previous"
page links.

That isn't correct, because there definitely are such links. At the upper
right. You only have to look a little bit.
Sorry for my bad english. I can't speak english very well, because I'm from
Austria (not Australia)....
 
G

George Cherry

Rhino said:
I don't think it is quite correct to call this a course; it's more of a
lecture on Java programming concepts and techniques. In my opinion, a
course has exercises that the student is supposed to do and solutions
should be provided so that the student knows if they have the correct
solution. The material at the link does not appear to have any exercises
at all.

The chapter on Object-oriented programming seems very weak to me.
Inheritance is mentioned very briefly and many of the other key OO
concepts like encapsulation and overloading don't see to get mentioned at
all. Failing to teach a prospective Java programmer about OO concepts
almost guarantees that the person will not write proper OO code. That
makes this material a very poor choice, in my opinion.

Astonishingly, the author waits until the 13th chapter
to talk about objects and object methods.
Also, the material is awkward to navigate. There are no "next" or
"previous"

Yes there are. They're not at the bottom of the page--
where one expects them. Look at the top right corner
of the page.
 
C

Chris Uppal

George said:
Astonishingly, the author waits until the 13th chapter
to talk about objects and object methods.

That might be a result of the re-ordering of the book's contents on the
website.

But, even if that's not the case, the book is clearly not intended to be about
OO programming -- it's a simple course on programming fundamentals (loops,
variables, functions, datastructures, etc) that just happens to [ab]use Java as
its medium.

The book's title, after all, is (something like) "Learn to think like a
computer scientist", not "Learn how to be a worthwhile Java programmer"...

-- chris
 

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