Any experience on teaching Perl programmers Java

G

Gene Wirchenko

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:32:59 +0100, RedGrittyBrick

[snip]
There's some truth in this but I program Perl, I program Java. Which
cultural pigeon hole should I cower in? A trainer might address the
different language cultures but I wouldn't focus on it too much.

I have a non-programming situation of cross-culture.

At my alma mater, they have the Writing Centre for helping
students with English. I have volunteered there for years. I
consider English (or whatever the local natural language is (or "...s
are")) to be the most important programming language. (Compiling it
into a computer programming language is quite the trick.)

They also have the Math Centre for helping people with math. I
minored in math.

When the new library -- pardon, House of Learning -- was planned,
they smooshed both centres into one room. There are definitely
cultural issues. The old room for Math had the many bulletin boards
decorated with posters (of mathematicians, of university programs),
cartoons, jokes, and so on. There is not much room for that in the
new room. Math students also tend to stick around for hours at a time
working and to work with each other. Students coming to the Writing
Centre tend to come for their appointments only and to work elsewhere.

There has been a bit of friction, and now, the co-ordinator of
the Writing Centre has set up an opinion box. She is trying to
improve the situation.

I can see both sides. I would not want to be stuck in either
one.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko
 
J

Jim Gibson

Joshua Cranmer said:
I'll admit that I don't really know Perl (I can muddle my way through
reading it, but I have no hope of writing it anytime soon), so I'm
probably more liable to grasp at stereotypes than honest truths.

My first thought of Perl is that it is often used for "little" scripts
(e.g., a script that looks through a log file to find more useful data).
I do know that it has some vague object-oriented features, but I believe
that this feature lacks things like virtual methods and inheritance that
are normally associated with object-oriented paradigms.

Nope. Inheritance and virtual methods are supported.
It is
possible (I'm really bordering on stereotype here) that your Perl
programmers may grouse about how much more difficult it is to do textual
manipulation in Java compared to Perl, particularly in the difficulty of
handling stdin and running regexes.

You got that right!
 
R

Roedy Green

I would also have to teach Perl programmers Java.

If I were in your shoes, here are some things I would do;

1. have a scan of Perl newsgroup and forums. See what problems they
have and what drives them nuts about Perl. I suspect it will be when
little projects grow too big and the whole thing becomes impossible to
maintain. See which of these problems Java has solutions for. This
will provide some motivation. Perl programmers are going to barf at
Java's verbosity. You will need all the bait you can muster to make
them accept it.

2. Lean Perl myself. Implement a small project. See
http://mindprod.com/project/projects.html for some ideas.

3. find some examples of inscrutable Perl code and ask the class to
tell you what it does. Explain that Java is designed for team
projects. It imposes rigid structure to make it easy for programmers
to understand each other's code. Then show them some Java code, (pick
anything from my website). Ask them what the code does. They may be
surprised that, even without yet knowing Java, they have a pretty good
idea.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
It should not be considered an error when the user starts something
already started or stops something already stopped. This applies
to browsers, services, editors... It is inexcusable to
punish the user by requiring some elaborate sequence to atone,
e.g. open the task editor, find and kill some processes.
 
R

Roedy Green

I would also have to teach Perl programmers Java. N

My greatest teaching success was at a computer summer camp for kids 7
to 15. I asked each kid why he wanted to learn to program computers.
Nearly all said to create computer games. So in my opening remarks I
said, "We are only going to teach you things you MUST know to create
computer games. It may not appear that way at first, but it is. I
promise I will not waste your time teaching you anything not directly
relevant to that goal." You have never seen a more motivated set of
students in your life.

You might be able to do something similar with Java.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
It should not be considered an error when the user starts something
already started or stops something already stopped. This applies
to browsers, services, editors... It is inexcusable to
punish the user by requiring some elaborate sequence to atone,
e.g. open the task editor, find and kill some processes.
 
A

Arne Vajhøj

'Cuse my ignorance but what is SAP? I see the product on WikiPedia by
the company SAP, but that doesn't tell me much about it.

It is a standard ERP system (financials etc.) for large corporations.

It is mainly for big corporations because it usually cost XX M$
or XXX M$ to customize the "standard" system to that corporation.

I have heard about SAP installations with 150000 database
tables.

Working with it is supposedly horrible, but SAP consultants make
really good money.

Arne
 

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