Do we have educational IDEs?

[Patricia Shanahan]

....for those of us who /know/ what we're doing. The question is in what
order is it best to teach newcommers to the language, possibly newcommers to
programming in general:

1. editor / javac / java
2. IDE
OR
1. IDE
2. editor / javac / java

(and therefore this argument has contorted to...)

1. println()
2. debugger
OR
1. debugger
2. println()

I think that both sides are starting to talk past each other.

For small student programs, the special cases that force use
of one or the other are unlikely to happen, so it doesn't
really matter.

Good decision making about what to questions to ask, and
persistence in tracking the bug to its root causes, are far
more important than the details of what tools are used to
capture the data.

A functioning brain is the one essential debug tool.
Everything else is accessories.

Patricia

 

[Stuart McGrigor]

...for those of us who /know/ what we're doing. The question is in what
order is it best to teach newcommers to the language, possibly newcommers
to programming in general:
.... 1. println()
2. debugger
OR
1. debugger
2. println()

Unfortunately my experience is that most graduates from school have only
learnt the println() method of debugging - and never learn the debugger
method because "it's too complicated".

and the real tragedy is that we need some skill and practice at both
methods.

Stuart McGrigor

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Dale King coughed up:

Dale King coughed up:

....[rip]...

It doesn't make that point. Without a count of the folks that have
no confusion with issue X the number of people who /do/ have a
confusion has no meaning.

It is an existence proof. All I have said is that there exists people
who will have trouble with the command line tools that will impeded
learning. I make no claims about the what percentage so I fail to see
how a count of how many people don't have a problem.

Yes you did. Above you said about that list of people:

Dale King:
It makes a point that running the command
line tools is not as straight forward as those
who oppose an IDE would have you believe.

A simple existance proof does not even attempt to make that point. Put
another way, if you show me 30 people with that problem in the last 6
months, if there 30,000 that did not have the problem, then you are talking
about a .1% of the folks having trouble and pretending that it means
something.

You also reacted to my paragraph elsethread this way:

Thomas G. Marshall:
Usually, when teaching a new language, I (or
everyone else I know who has taught anything),
starts off with how to get something akin to the
hello world example to run. Even when I teach
folks with an IDE, I go through the steps needed
to configure, compile and run a HW app.

Dale King:
The plethora of posts in these groups from helpless
newbies trying to get hello world to run pretty much
proves that your statements are wrong.

What you're establishing here is *NOT* an existance proof. You are
counterring my statements specifically. You are trying to draw a conclusion
from the number of posts you found "from helpless newbies trying to get
hello world to run".

I think we're done here.

Thanks again for the discussion.

 

[Dale King]

Dale King coughed up:

Dale King coughed up:

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Dale King coughed up:

....[rip]...

I could go on, but I think that is a good list.

.....which IMO doesn't make a point one way or another.

It makes a point that running the command line tools is not as
straight forward as those who oppose an IDE would have you believe.


It doesn't make that point. Without a count of the folks that have
no confusion with issue X the number of people who /do/ have a
confusion has no meaning.

It is an existence proof. All I have said is that there exists people
who will have trouble with the command line tools that will impeded
learning. I make no claims about the what percentage so I fail to see
how a count of how many people don't have a problem.

Yes you did. Above you said about that list of people:

Dale King:
It makes a point that running the command
line tools is not as straight forward as those
who oppose an IDE would have you believe.

And it still makes that point very well. I gave a list of pitfalls when
googmeister asked how is that harder than an IDE and pointed to the
lists to show that those are not just hypothetical problems people have.
People post here pretty much everyday with those very problems.

A simple existance proof does not even attempt to make that point. Put
another way, if you show me 30 people with that problem in the last 6
months, if there 30,000 that did not have the problem, then you are talking
about a .1% of the folks having trouble and pretending that it means
something.

And what percentage does it have to before we quit claiming that the
command line tools are the best way to learn? I've been in these groups
for the last 8 years and there has easily been thousands of posts from
those that can't run a simple app. I'm not ready to just discount those
people.

You also reacted to my paragraph elsethread this way:

Thomas G. Marshall:
Usually, when teaching a new language, I (or
everyone else I know who has taught anything),
starts off with how to get something akin to the
hello world example to run. Even when I teach
folks with an IDE, I go through the steps needed
to configure, compile and run a HW app.

Dale King:
The plethora of posts in these groups from helpless
newbies trying to get hello world to run pretty much
proves that your statements are wrong.

What you're establishing here is *NOT* an existance proof.

Nor did I say it was.

You are counterring my statements specifically. You are trying to draw a conclusion
from the number of posts you found "from helpless newbies trying to get
hello world to run".

In large threads posts seem to blur together and you end up responding
to more than the statement quoted. I agree that my statement is slightly
overstated (prove was a bit to strong a word), but not the conclustion.
And the conclusion is that starting with hello world is not necessarily
the best place to start. You can read some papers on it at the BlueJ
site that support that opinion. The best way to teach the language and
OO development (and I would argue that teaching OO is actually the more
important goal than just the language) is to start with objects. You
might want to check out the book "Objects First with Java - A Practical
Introduction using BlueJ" which is linked from the home page of BlueJ.